Enterprise can't shake WARN Act liability over coronavirus layoffs, LA Fitness says its landlord can't demand full rent when the gym operator was prohibited from using its rented space, and the owners of the Philadelphia Union soccer team are among the latest to take their insurer to court over denied coverage for losses related to the pandemic.

While courts across the country are altering procedures, restricting access and postponing certain cases to stem the spread of the coronavirus, the outbreak has also prompted a wave of litigation.

Here's a breakdown of some of the COVID-19-related cases from the past week.

Banking

A California federal judge on Wednesday tossed a putative class action claiming that JPMorgan Chase Bank and First Republic Bank owe fees to agents that helped businesses file applications for the Paycheck Protection Program, ruling that the regulations "clearly do not guarantee payment or establish a right to payment."

Named plaintiff M&M Consulting Group LLC is one of many businesses working as "agents" helping applicants with the federal PPP loan program. The company sued the banks in July, arguing that its agents were entitled to fees from the banks. JPMorgan Chase, First Republic and other banks have fielded similar suits in the past year, but they have argued that the PPP, part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, doesn't require banks to pay fees to agents without an agreement to do so.

U.S. District Judge James V. Selna granted the joint motion Wednesday, holding that without an express agreement between an agent and a lender, lenders are not required to pay the agent fees under the CARES Act or its implementing regulations. And M&M hasn't pointed to any such agreement with the banks, according to the minute order.

Employment

California's Division of Occupational Safety and Health didn't provide any evidence supporting the need for emergency standards it adopted in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus, a group of California agriculture business associations said in a lawsuit filed last week in state court.

Cal/OSHA and the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board didn't give a "reasoned explanation" as to why the emergency regulations are necessary or why they waited months before deciding to promulgate the rules with five working days' notice, according to the complaint filed Dec. 31 by the Western Growers Association, California Farm Bureau Federation, California Business Roundtable, Grower-Shipper Association of Central California, California Association of Winegrape Growers, and Ventura County Agricultural Association.

The groups asked the court to block the emergency safety rules, claiming the state agencies violated California's Administrative Procedure Act by not providing an opportunity for public comment and exceeded their authority when implementing the rules.

The emergency temporary standards, which went into effect Nov. 30, require employers to maintain a COVID-19 prevention program that includes identifying employee exposures to the virus, implementing policies to correct unsafe conditions and making sure workers wear face coverings.

And a Florida federal judge has cleared a WARN Act case over Enterprise's coronavirus layoffs to move ahead, finding Monday that the federal statute's carveouts for employers facing extreme, unexpected situations don't completely neutralize protections for workers laid off during the pandemic.

Dealing a blow to businesses hoping to stave off legal liability for pandemic-related cuts, U.S. District Judge Roy B. Dalton refused to derail a proposed class case saying Enterprise Holdings — the parent of car rental firms Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Alamo Rent a Car and others — violated the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act when it axed hundreds of Florida workers this spring.

The statute makes it illegal for companies to fire 50 or more people at once without giving them two months' notice, and two fired workers from the Sunshine State sued Enterprise last year, asserting they were sent home with just a few days' warning or no notice at all.

Personal Injury & Medical Malpractice

The operator of a Pittsburgh-area nursing home that suffered a major, deadly outbreak of COVID-19 claimed federal law and guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services gave it immunity from a lawsuit brought by more than a dozen residents and their survivors, according to a brief filed Monday.

Comprehensive Healthcare Management Services LLC, which runs the Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness Center in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, said that the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act protected it from claims related to its use of — or alleged failure to use — testing, protective equipment and emergency plans, despite another judge in the district issuing a ruling that the immunity didn't apply.

The suit had claimed that more than 330 residents and staff at Brighton had contracted COVID-19, and it blamed CHM for understaffing, failing to provide enough protective equipment or taking other steps to prevent the disease's spread, and downplaying its severity.

And a See's Candies worker has sued the candy maker in Los Angeles Superior Court over claims she contracted COVID-19 on the job due to negligent safety standards and infected her husband, who later died due to complications from the virus.

The complaint was filed Wednesday by Matilde Ek, 70, and her three daughters. She says she contracted COVID-19 while working at the candy giant's Carson, California, plant on the packing line in early March.

After becoming infected, Ek stayed home from work while sick, and as a result her 72-year-old husband and a daughter also caught the virus, according to the lawsuit. Her husband, Arturo Ek, died April 20.

Public Policy

In its first ruling of the year, the Texas Supreme Court ordered the halt of a joint Austin and Travis County order prohibiting bars and restaurants from serving dine-in customers late at night over the New Year's holiday weekend because of coronavirus concerns.

Without explaining the ruling, the high court said in a short order that lower courts should enjoin the bar and restaurant restrictions, which were challenged by the state in Texas' latest clash with local governments that want to enact stricter COVID-19 rules than the state's.

Austin and Travis County issued a joint order Dec. 29 that prohibited bars and restaurants from serving dine-in customers between 10:30 p.m. and 6 a.m. Dec. 31 through Jan. 3, but allowed drive-through, curbside pick-up and take-out services to continue.

A New York state court blocked a move by Erie County to close a laser tag facility over coronavirus concerns, saying that while "the fate of the republic is not endangered should lasertag not be permitted," county officials were shooting from the hip when they shut it down.

Judge Emilio Colaiacovo granted Lasertron Inc. a preliminary injunction blocking the Erie County Department of Health's shutdown order Monday, finding in a blistering opinion that health officials used a "cavalier" process and reached a conclusion that was "haphazard and devoid of logic."

Lasertron was shut down in October after being reclassified from a moderate-risk sport or activity to a "place of public amusement," a category not exempt from the relevant COVID-19 closure guidelines. Lasertron sued later that month, arguing the reclassification was arbitrary and capricious. It noted that a county health inspector had found its efforts to mitigate COVID-19 risk — including sanitizing all surfaces, reducing capacity below 50% and closing its arcade area — were "satisfactory."

Native American

The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation claimed Monday that it was stiffed $7.6 million in coronavirus relief funds, saying the U.S. Department of the Treasury used "arbitrary and capricious" tribal population data to apportion the $8 billion of CARES Act funds for tribes.

The Prairie Band said in its D.C. federal court filing that it has 4,561 enrolled citizens — a number it provided to Treasury at its request in April — but that the agency used a census-based metric of 883 citizens when it distributed the CARES Act funds in May.

The tribe said the census-based data is "skewed against tribal governments whose citizens refuse to take part in census data-gathering," which is voluntary and does not account for citizens who live off the reservation.

And the D.C. Circuit on Tuesday revived the Shawnee Tribe's bid to increase its share of billions of dollars in coronavirus relief funds, saying Treasury likely underpaid the Shawnee and some other tribes by basing funding on population data that fell far short of their true membership numbers.

In its opinion, the three-judge panel reversed a D.C. district court's September dismissal of the suit, saying the judge wrongly found that Treasury's allocation of the funding for tribal governments in Title V of the CARES Act wasn't reviewable under the Administrative Procedure Act.

While the department had argued it had the latitude to distribute the $8 billion in funds as it saw fit, the CARES Act requires Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to make sure payments to tribes were based on their "increased expenditures" due to the pandemic, the panel said.

Immigration

A California federal judge on Wednesday extended U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement obligations under court-mandated COVID-19 safety measures at a jail where more than 100 people have tested positive for the disease.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria issued another ruling in favor of a group of detained migrants who say the agency has subjected them to "extraordinarily dangerous conditions" at Yuba County Jail and the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Facility, which is run by private prison contractor GEO Group Inc.

Wednesday's preliminary injunction follows a temporary restraining order Judge Chhabria granted on Dec. 23 and previous criticisms by the judge regarding ICE's "cavalier" attitude toward detainees' safety and its misrepresentations to the court. The restraining order, which became Wednesday's injunction, directs ICE to carry out basic safety measures, including frequent testing, isolating detainees who test positive or experience COVID-19-like symptoms, sanitizing cells before placing immigration detainees in them, and providing disposable masks daily.

Insurance

The owners of Major League Soccer's Philadelphia Union have sued a Chubb unit, alleging the insurer refused to honor its $192 million policy to cover COVID-19-related losses after their athletes caught the virus that physically infested its properties.

The companies that operate the soccer team and its 18,500-seat stadium, Subaru Park, claimed that Federal Insurance Co. breached the insurance contract in a complaint filed Saturday. The companies, Keystone Sports and Entertainment LLC, FC Pennsylvania Stadium LLC and Pennsylvania Professional Soccer LLC, said they paid more than $163,000 in premiums for the policy, which does not contain a virus exclusion.

Federal Insurance denied coverage in June, asserting there was no physical damage, a precondition for coverage. The companies said the insurance carrier did not conduct "any meaningful investigation" and never visited the insured locations.

And a Georgia federal judge on Tuesday ruled that Owners Insurance Co. is not obligated to cover an Atlanta-area hair salon's losses from the COVID-19 pandemic, following a host of courts in finding that the salon's claim is not viable because it did not establish it sustained a requisite "physical loss of or damage to" its property.

Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Thrash Jr. granted Owners' motion to dismiss the suit brought by KD Unlimited Inc., which operates The Artisan Gathering Salon in the Atlanta suburb of Lawrenceville. In its suit, filed May 20, Artisan sought coverage from Owners for financial losses it suffered due to local and statewide COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. The salon was forced to shutter entirely from late March to May 1, after which it was permitted to reopen at reduced capacity, according to court documents.

But the "business income and extra expense" section of Artisan's policy extends coverage only for losses stemming from the direct physical loss of or damage to the salon's property, and Judge Thrash said he was persuaded by a slew of decisions around the country that have found this key phrase requires actual, tangible damage.

In West Virginia, a federal judge on Tuesday tossed a restaurant group's proposed class action seeking to force State Automobile Mutual Insurance Co. to cover its COVID-19-related losses, holding that the eateries failed to show physical damage required for coverage.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin said that Bluegrass LLC, which owns three restaurants in Charleston, West Virginia, was not able to claim that the restaurants experienced tangible physical alterations to trigger coverage, or that civil authority closure orders barred access to its properties. It failed to demonstrate "a nexus between physical property damage and the state's actions," as the eateries operated on a limited or takeout-only basis after state-mandated closures in March, Judge Goodwin said.

And in Illinois, a group of Chicagoland delis is suing Erie Indemnity Co. over the insurer's denial of coverage for COVID-19-related losses, saying the insurance company denied coverage without even investigating its claim.

In a complaint filed last week in the Northern District of Illinois, Halsted Street Deli Holdings LLC, which operates 23 locations in the Chicago area, said its businesses have sustained substantial losses as a result of government orders closing down nonessential businesses, but Erie won't pay out coverage.

According to the complaint, Halsted holds "all risk" policies at the locations, with no exclusions for virus or pandemic-related losses, which entitle it to coverage, as Illinois courts have held that the presence of a "dangerous substance" like COVID-19 constitutes a physical loss.

Real Estate

A bevy of Westfield shopping center landlords and property managers across the country have accused kids' clothing retailer The Children's Place and Korean beauty company Amorepacific of owing millions in rent, according to a pair of lawsuits filed in Los Angeles County.

The Children's Place owes $3.3 million for failing to pay the rent for its stores in Westfield shopping centers in California, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, New Jersey and New York, the long list of landlords claimed in their complaint lodged on New Year's Eve.

Meanwhile, Amorepacific, which operates Innisfree cosmetics stores, owes more than $5.2 million for refusing to pay rent and then unlawfully abandoning its stores in California, New York and New Jersey, according to the second suit, lodged the same day.

The Children's Place leases space at a slew of malls, including at three locations in California and one each in Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey. The Children's Place has leased some of its spaces since the late 1990s, according to the suit.

And gym operator LA Fitness said its Universal City landlord, a unit of NBCUniversal, is trying to squeeze it for full rent, even though the fitness center has been closed for nearly nine months because of the pandemic, according to a lawsuit lodged Monday in Los Angeles court.

LA Fitness International LLC, which operates LA Fitness, said in its complaint that it has consistently paid nearly $15 million in timely rent for more than 150 months to its landlord, NBCUniversal Cahuenga LLC, but now — with the gym closed because of the pandemic — the company is demanding that LA Fitness pay full rent, in breach of the lease.

LA Fitness said it is entitled to use the Universal City premises as part of its lease. It said its landlord cannot expect to receive full rent when the tenant is prohibited from using the rented space.

Media & Entertainment

The Second Circuit grappled Tuesday with a quirky dispute over New York's rules that prevent eateries from holding ticketed live music events due to the risk of COVID-19, with one appellate judge lamenting a "bizarre" juxtaposition of state policy and free speech rights.

During virtual arguments, U.S. Circuit Judges Guido Calabresi, Reena Raggi and Denny Chin mulled whether an injunction blocking New York State Liquor Authority rules that ban "advertised and/or ticketed shows" — but allow for music that is "incidental to the dining experience" — is proper.

The injunction was handed down by Buffalo U.S. District Judge John L. Sinatra Jr. in an August lawsuit brought by locally famous guitarist Michael Hund, whose bands include Widow Maker. Hund claims the rule is arbitrary and violates his First Amendment rights.

--Additional reporting by Hailey Konnath, Jack Queen, Jeff Sistrunk, Daphne Zhang, Mike Curley, Andrew Westney, Jennifer Doherty, Lauren Berg, Diamond Naga Siu, Pete Brush, Craig Clough, Matthew Santoni, Katie Buehler and Anne Cullen. Editing by Adam LoBelia.

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