McGuireWoods’ Sabrina Beldner was quoted in a May 29, 2020, Washington Post article on the difficulty of proving, for the purpose of a worker’s compensation claim, whether one contracted COVID-19 at work.
As noted in the article — titled “What happens if you get coronavirus at work? Experts say it might be hard to prove” — employees in California may have more room to file COVID-19 workers’ comp claims, although there are questions surrounding a May 6 executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom. In the order, Newsom outlined the requirements an employee must satisfy when making a COVID-19-related worker’s compensation claim.
According to Beldner, a partner in McGuireWoods’ Century City office who represents employers, California has not clearly laid out what’s needed to disprove workers’ compensation claims.
“For employers, they’d want to show no one else who’s been in the work environment actually was positive,” she said.