Sunshine Sentinel

The COVID-19 liability protection bill has successfully moved out of the Florida Senate Judiciary Committee and is pending approval with the Commerce and Tourism Committee.

“Next week is predominantly appropriations week, and we’re only going to have appropriations committee meetings,” Sen. Jeff Brandes (R-St. Petersburg), who chairs both committees, said. “The next opportunity for it to be heard is following next week.” 

Brandes introduced the bill.

If approved, SB 72 would require clear and convincing evidence or gross negligence in lawsuits filed against businesses where customers allegedly were infected with the coronavirus on site, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

The Florida COVID-19 dashboard reports 1,698,570 coronavirus cases statewide, resulting in 26,254 fatalities, as of Feb. 3.

 Although coronavirus vaccine doses are being distributed nationwide, Brandes said the bill is written retroactively.

“Because from March 2020 until the vaccine was developed and even now that we do have a vaccine, it's not just COVID; you have variants of COVID,” Brandes told the Sunshine Sentinel. “The virus has mutated and so there could be different variants that the vaccine will not cover and there's still liability exposure from everything that occurred from March 2020 because only 2% of the population has any access to a vaccine.” 

Florida is currently administering COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna to adults 65 and older, health care workers, long-term care residents and staff, according to a statement online.

As previously reported by Law360, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 7-4 in favor of the legislation, and Brandes expects the same opposition to emerge at the Commerce and Tourism Committee.

"It’s largely lawyers representing plaintiffs who would file these lawsuits where we're seeing most of the pushback,” Brandes said in an interview. “We had one or two private citizens speak against it at the Senate Judiciary Committee. The vast majority of the opposition against COVID liability are attorneys.”

In the House, State Rep. Lawrence McClure (R-Plant City) introduced HB 7, which is identical to SB 72. Both HB 7 and SB 72 exclude coverage for hospitals, medical clinics and health care companies.

“There needs to be some protection for those physicians who were put in an incredibly difficult position of making judgment calls based on the health needs of their patient or who made decisions to comply with the governor's order that were directly related to COVID,” Brandes said. 

Brandes added that he introduced a health care version of SB 72 on Feb. 3.

“They are filed separately because there is obviously some additional complexity that goes into the medical side of COVID liability protection,” he said. “Our intent in the Senate is to merge and run them as one piece of legislation by the time it gets to the floor.”