APPLETON, WI (WTAQ) — Will you get sued if someone catches COVID-19 at your recently reopened business?
“Who the heck knows?” says Appleton Attorney Will McKinley. “That’s been the advice I’ve had to routinely give to clients over the past two months.”
McKinley appeared on “The Morning News with Matt and Earl” on Tuesday. A complete lack of any sort of COVID-19 Pandemic related case law means that all cases will be in a legal grey area.
“Obviously the law is generally slow to catch up to the times,” McKinley said. “We’ve never really encountered anything like this before.”
McKinley says that while there isn’t any legal precedent, it would be a bad move to ignore CDC and Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation guidelines.
“That would be a stupid thing to do,” McKinley said. “Property owners and employers are required to undertake all reasonable and necessary precautions to ensure the safety of their employees and their customers.”
Business owners who don’t implement physical distancing guidelines risk running into liability issues, McKinley says.
For how long that remains the case isn’t clear. McKinley says case law around COVID-19 will take months, even years, to build.
