NJBIA continues to urge policymakers to rescind a law signed by Gov. Phil Murphy in 2020 which creates a legal presumption that an essential workers’ contraction of COVID-19 during a declared public health emergency is work related.
NJBIA Chief Government Affairs Officer Chrissy Buteas told NJ101.5 News’ David Matthau this week that, under the law, it’s up to an employer to prove otherwise if an employee files a workers’ compensation claim or a lawsuit.
“There’s going to be needless litigation on the employer community, which will then drive up insurance rates, and as we all know, New Jersey is not the most inexpensive place to do business,” Buteas told Matthau.
While there are only about three weeks left in Gov. Murphy’s latest health emergency declaration, many law firms have been, and continue, to solicit essential workers to claim they got COVID at work.
Buteas said that after two years of the virus, which can clearly be caught by anyone, anywhere at any time, “it’s really not appropriate to have that presumption on the employer community with everybody out and about right now.”
To read the full story, click here.
