TALLAHASSEE – House and Senate bills to provide COVID-19 legal liability protections to Florida health-care providers and facilities contain a number of sticking points, but one attorney tracking the legislation expects lawmakers to iron out their differences soon.
Attorney Chris Nuland, a lobbyist for physician groups, noted that the House bill picked up support last week from more than half of the Democrats on the Health & Human Services Committee, which passed the proposal on a bipartisan 17-3 vote. Supporters say the legislation is needed to shield front-line health workers from COVID-19 lawsuits, provided they took reasonable efforts to comply with public health recommendations during the pandemic.
“There seems to be a consensus that if you try to do the right thing and follow the best advice and rules that were in place at the time, you should be protected,” Nuland said.
But differences remain between the House and Senate proposals. In the House version, COVID-19 lawsuits against health care providers would require an affidavit from a physician affirming the allegations, but the Senate version contains no such barrier to COVID-19 lawsuits, Nuland said.
And the Senate version requires such litigation to show a preponderance of evidence to prove allegations against health-care providers, while the House version calls for “clear and convincing evidence” in order for a plaintiff to prevail, he said.
Other points state lawmakers are debating involve whether it’s necessary to prove gross negligence versus simple negligence, as well as the length of time for when the legal liability protections would be in effect.
But despite the differences in the proposals advanced in the legislature, Nuland expects lawmakers to get a reasonable bill across the finish line during this year’s legislative session.
“These bills are going to get to the floor fairly quickly, I imagine,” he said, “and then the powers that be, the Senate president and the speaker, will resolve them pretty quickly, and I expect the bill will be enacted before the end of the session.”
Critics of the legal liability bills point out the state has not seen many of these types of COVID-19 lawsuits so far during the pandemic, but Nuland said defense attorneys have testified that many such lawsuits, especially malpractice complaints, require a 60-day notice to be filed prior to the complaint reaching the court system.
Some defense attorneys have received scores of these notices, but they don’t show up on case searches, he said.