As
America Reopens, Trial Lawyers Salivate at Endless Coronavirus Lawsuit
Possibilities
Trial lawyers are licking their chops as the United
States reopens more than two months after locking down due to the Chinese
coronavirus pandemic.
John Houghtaling, one such trial lawyer representing part of a
group of celebrity chefs suing insurance giants over the pandemic, described
the forthcoming fight in a quote to the Washington Post as
what he said is “going to be the most expensive legal battle in history.” He
then predicted:
The insurance companies are
going to win some of those, and they’re going to lose some of those. But in the
meantime, the businesses are going to fail. People are going to be out of work.
Houghtaling is a managing partner at Gauthier Murphy &
Houghtaling LLC, a firm in the New Orleans suburb Metairie, Louisiana.
Houghtaling is testifying before the
Democrat-led House Small Business Committee on Thursday afternoon, where
lawmakers will discuss the liability issues as Congress considers potentially
granting a liability shield to companies nationwide upon reopening—something
many Republicans consider imperative to successfully return to normal as a
society.
An outsized battle looms in
Washington, as trade associations for trial lawyers push their own vision of
open-ended lawsuits while groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce come down on
the side of restricting litigation over coronavirus. The brewing fight in
Congress, too, could become a hinge-point on whether there is a fourth major
coronavirus relief package that could pass and be signed into law in the coming
weeks and if there is one what it looks like. A source familiar with the fight
told Breitbart News this will be a “billion dollar fight,” as powerful forces
on each side—trial lawyers versus businesses—move in on lawmakers from every
direction.
The issue that confronts
lawmakers is how to limit the scope of litigation over coronavirus while also
not giving away too much to the business community.
President Donald Trump said at
a roundtable with restaurant executives earlier this week he hopes to strike
the right balance, to “protect workers and businesses alike with curbs on
frivolous litigation—frivolous litigation—a thing I know something about.” He
added:
There’s a lot of frivolous
litigation. So we don’t want someone going and sitting in your restaurant
Tilman [Fertitta] and then suing you for $10 million because something
happened.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell has said a liability shield for businesses from the kind of endless
litigation that trial lawyers enrich themselves on is a must-have in any fourth
phase coronavirus relief package. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has indicated that
she is seeking to help out struggling state and local governments, and
McConnell could pin a liability shield to that—forcing this issue to be
addressed. McConnell has deputized Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) with addressing the
matter, and sources with knowledge of the matter told Breitbart News the fight
will surely intensify as the calendar changes from May to June.
Houghtaling is representing Thomas Keller, the celebrity chef
who the Washington Post’s Tim Carman
described as “the mastermind behind the three-star Michelin restaurants Per Se
in New York and the French Laundry in California.” Keller is one of many
restauranteurs nationwide suing their insurance companies because the insurance
companies are not paying them for the shutdowns caused by COVID-19.
“The owners are pressing carriers to honor business-interruption
policies during an outbreak that has wreaked so much financial havoc that it could
bankrupt insurance companies and put at risk claims not related to covid-19,”
Carman wrote in the Post.
In these particular kinds of
cases, what these trial lawyers like Houghtaling and the others representing
these various restaurants are looking for is for insurance companies to honor
business interruption policies or to cover their clients like they would in a
natural disaster even if the policies do not explicitly cover pandemics. But
this is just the tip of the iceberg for trial lawyers as the reopening battle
moves forward coast to coast—cases that could be forthcoming include against
states for various policies they implemented like New York Gov.
Andrew Cuomo’s decision to
force COVID-19 patients into nursing homes or against companies in the case of
a worker who returns to the workplace contracting the virus. That’s not to
mention consumer-led suits against any business where people think they may
have gotten the virus, and so much more.
According to Politico, the American Association for Justice—a
national collective of trial lawyers—released polling on
the issue that forecast many potential lines of litigation that the attorneys
may see coming.
“The trial lawyers hired Hart
Research Associates, a Democratic polling firm, which surveyed more than 1,200
voters online last week,” Politico’s Theodoric Meyer wrote earlier in May. “The
pollsters told voters that companies want to prevent workers and consumers who
contract coronavirus from suing them ‘even if they could demonstrate that the
company engaged in unsafe practices.’ Sixty-four percent of respondents said
they opposed giving companies such immunity, while 36 percent supported it.”
The Chamber of Commerce, which
is squarely on the other side of the fight, released its own polling according
to Politico showing the exact opposite.
“A poll conducted days earlier
by the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies for the Chamber’s Institute
for Legal Reform found the opposite among 800 voters surveyed by phone,”
Politico’s Meyer wrote. “Asked whether ‘Congress should protect many businesses
and types of companies from lawsuits related to the coronavirus,’ 61 percent of
voters agreed and 27 percent said no.”
But no matter who is paying out
and who is receiving payments as a result of litigation, and no matter who wins
and who loses lawsuits, the one group that always comes out on top is the trial
lawyers. That “most expensive legal battle in history” that Houghtaling
describes has but one absolute winner: the trial lawyers who bring the cases.
Houghtaling is a curious choice
for Democrats in the House as a witness to push this line protecting endless
litigation, as his political donation history aligns closely with top Democrats
in Congress. Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports show that Houghtaling
donated $10,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC)—the
formal Democrat Party arm charged with electing Democrats to the House—in 2014.
Those FEC records show that he also made a $5,128 in-kind contribution to the
DCCC for hosting the fundraising event at which he gave the $10,000. For
instance, in 2000 he donated $1,000 to Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton’s U.S.
Senate campaign in New York. Later, in 2016, he gave $2,700—the maximum
allowable by law—to Clinton’s presidential campaign.
In fact, from 1998 until 2015,
Houghtaling gave almost exclusively to Democrats.
But in 2014, Houghtaling founded an energy company called
American Ethane Company, LLC. The company, which has ties to Russia and
according to filings with the Louisiana Secretary
of State even has a mailing address in Moscow, seems to have
altered Houghtaling’s donation history. He started giving to Republicans,
including former U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany—a GOP House member who ran for U.S.
Senate—and other Republicans throughout the South in particular in Louisiana
like Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and House GOP whip
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA).
The establishment media has actually ripped Houghtaling’s energy
company in its efforts to paint President Trump as close with Russia. In July
2018, the Guardian for instance ran this headline: “Former
Putin adviser has secret investment in US energy firm praised by Trump.”
In the piece, the Guardian’s
Luke Harding details how Vladimir Putin’s former chief of staff has a stake in
Houghtaling’s company:
Vladimir Putin’s former chief
of staff has a secret investment in an American energy company hailed by Donald
Trump as creating jobs for American workers. Alexander Voloshin – who served as
Boris Yeltsin’s chief of staff before working for Putin between 2000 and 2003 –
has an undisclosed stake in American Ethane, a Houston-based firm that recently
signed a multibillion dollar export deal with China. Voloshin is part of a
consortium of Russian investors in American Ethane that at one point included
the oligarch and billionaire Roman Abramovich.
There are plenty of other ties between American Ethane and
Russia, but the company also has ties to the Chinese. According to the firm’s own website, it has made a number
of deals with Chinese companies and has a Shanghai office.
But all of that aside, why the
Democrats would brush all of these previous concerns about Russia aside to hype
a trial lawyer like this amid the coronavirus pandemic and as the country seeks
to reopen are curious—and could foreshadow that bigger battle many are talking
about behind the scenes that’s about to burst out into the open.
| ||
The threat of lawyers planning aggressive coronavirus class-action suits is putting off businesses from reopening even when it is safe to do so, according to the Heritage Foundation, which is calling for liability protection.
The latest report by its National Coronavirus Recovery Commission warned that next month could bring a tipping point for the economy as businesses fight for survival. Without urgent action to encourage consumer demand and to ensure workers can return, the result could be an economic depression regardless of whether or not COVID-19 can be suppressed, it said. Paul Winfree, Heritage Foundation fellow and former White House economic adviser, said businesses were “hemorrhaging liquidity” and that reform of the federal Paycheck Protection Program and liability protection are urgently needed. |
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