Challenges for Government, Business and Health Care Sectors

Concurrent Session Block 2: 2:30 – 3:30 p.m. ET Wednesday, September 16

Presentations

Government Authority: Mass Movement, Business and Property Control Measures
Government powers to impose physical distancing comprise an important strategy to mitigating the spread of COVID-19. This session will examine the efforts of government to limit mass movement and large gatherings, close businesses and school, and restrict non-essential personal, recreational, and commercial activities. Government legal authority to impose these restrictions to stop the transmission of an infectious disease with no effective treatment or vaccine is generally quite broad. However, government orders that restrict movement or activity must consider the effects on constitutional rights and the economic, social, and health impacts that restrictions impose.

• Lance Gable, JD, MPH, Associate Professor of Law, Wayne State University Law School

Liability Protections for Businesses and Medical Professionals
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, claims will be brought by consumers (predominantly nursing home residents) alleging that businesses failed to protect them, patients treated at the height of the pandemic when emergency departments were overrun, and consumers who contract the virus during re-opening. The session will examine the liability of businesses and medical professionals for acts and omissions involving COVID-19 mitigation, treatment, and re-opening and will provide an analysis of the federal and state liability shields, those that were in existence before COVID-19, those introduced more recently, and calls for more and broader shields.

• Nicolas P. Terry, LLM, Hall Render Professor of Law and Executive Director of the William S. and Christine S. Hall Center for Law and Health, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law