An increase in litigation this summer could foreshadow a rough few months ahead for employers, especially in the healthcare sector, according to a report from employment and labor law firm Fisher Phillips.
Employment lawsuits have nearly doubled from last year, and healthcare employers are more than 20% likely to be sued than other types of employers, the company said.
“We typically see a slowdown in new lawsuit filings over the summer for a number of obvious reasons,” said Jay Glunt, a Pittsburgh-based Fisher Phillips partner. “But the fact that we didn’t see much of a lull in employment-related COVID litigation — and in fact saw an uptick — sends a clear signal that we could be in for a rough couple of months ahead.”
Employers saw 715 COVID-19 workplace lawsuits from June to August, a number that was significantly higher than last year’s record of 444 lawsuits, according to the law firm’s Employment Litigation Tracker. The first eight months of 2021 have seen a monthly average of 253 new claims filed, which represents a 59% increase in lawsuits from the last eight months of 2020.
The authors opine that the number of lawsuits may be tied to the surge of COVID-19 cases across the country.
“The FP Tracker shows a sharp increase in lawsuits filed from July 2021 (209 claims) to August 2021 (246 claims). And that 18% jump could be just the start of a lawsuit wave that follows the delta-fueled surge, matching what we saw earlier this year,” according to the report.
