COVID-19 litigation tracker identifies vulnerable industries

Analytics firm Praedicat has announced the initial results from their newly-launched litigation tracker platform, which monitors US courts for casualty-relevant COVID-19 litigation by complaint. With more than 200 complaints already filed in US courts alleging corporate defendants are responsible for introducing and spreading SARS-CoV-2 in the United States, Praedicat’s litigation tracker enables (re)insurers to respond to this fast-moving litigation event.

As of 13 July, 217 complaints have been filed with 55% involving allegations of personal injury or threat of personal injury among cruise ship passengers and nursing home residents and employees. 

The tracker allows users to identify industries most vulnerable to COVID-19 litigation, with significant clusters of complaints in hospitals, meat packing facilities, restaurants, and warehouses.

The tracker is also capturing shareholder actions alleging corporate officers breached their fiduciary duty during the pandemic. The litigation tracker reports on casualty-relevant litigation related to COVID-19 brought in all 50 US states and US federal courts. Coverage disputes and actions related to prisons and detention facilities are not included.

David Loughran, head of Product and chief economist at Praedicat said: “Our litigation tracking service has provided the first picture of the scale of the emerging legal action related to the fast-changing pandemic. Already, we are seeing that nursing home complaints are accelerating while cruise line complaints are leveling off. The initial feedback we have had from clients is that the data has been extremely useful to help them manage their potential exposure to novel causes of action.”

The long-term plan for the litigation tracker is to capture other emerging casualty-relevant litigation in its earliest stages so that clients can know which of the hundreds of sources of potential litigation monitored by Praedicat have resulted in actual litigation events and then track how those litigation events unfold over time.