The next hot button issue in the second round of stimulus legislation isn’t about payroll or unemployment checks. Instead, the parameters of proposed liability protections for businesses have taken center stage in the latest draft of the bill currently under review at the White House.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) have proposed rules to broadly shield businesses who make “good faith” efforts to protect their employees from contracting the coronavirus. As written, the proposed standard would extend through 2024 and apply retroactively to when the coronavirus first began to circulate in December 2019.
Advocates of the liability protections believe these safeguards will enable businesses to operate without the risk of an employee or customer claiming they contracted COVID-19 on the premises and taking legal action. Detractors of the liability legislation say that widespread immunity from lawsuits would unfairly place the burden of proof on an employee or customer to definitively show that they contracted the virus within a particular business or workplace, an onerous task given the current lag times between taking a coronavirus test and receiving the results.
Read the full profile on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/advisor/2020/07/28/businesses-want-liability-protection-in-the-next-stimulus-bill-heres-why/#f3bfd263820f
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