Property Casualty 360 – Class action filed against China over COVID-19 outbreak
March 18, 2020
In a sign of some of the unprecedented liability questions arising from the COVID-19 outbreak, one plaintiffs attorney took his gripes to court, filing a nationwide class-action lawsuit against the People’s Republic of China for causing the global pandemic.
In a lawsuit filed in early March, attorney Matthew Moore, of Boca Raton, Florida’s The Berman Law Group, alleged China’s failure to report and contain the virus more quickly, or disclose the actual number of cases, created “essentially a giant Petri dish” in the region near Wuhan, sparking the global COVID-19 outbreak. The case alleges claims of negligence, emotional distress, public nuisance, and strict liability for “conducting ultra-hazardous activity.”