Amazon Warehouse Workers Partially Revive Covid-19 Safety Case

Workers at Amazon.com Inc.’s JFK8 Staten Island fulfillment center may pursue coronavirus-related workplace safety allegations after the Second Circuit partially revived their case Tuesday.

The lower court threw out some worker claims and said they should have taken their complaints to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration instead of federal court. But the issues on appeal are “of a legal, not factual, nature,” so they don’t need “the kind of highly factual inquiry that would typically be aided by OSHA’s expertise,” the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said.

• The workers partially premised their claims on a since-rescinded New York pandemic plan, but the allegations aren’t moot because the state guidance wasn’t their sole basis, Judge William J. Nardini said.
• But the workers’ public nuisance claims fail because they didn’t “plead a harm that is different in kind” from that the rest of the community beyond Amazon’s warehouse faced, the opinion said.
• New York’s workers’ compensation statute is about monetary relief and doesn’t bar warehouse workers from seeking injunctive relief under state labor law, Nardini said.

Judge Dennis Jacobs joined Nardini’s opinion. Judge Denny Chin dissented in part and would have allowed the public nuisance claim to move forward as well.

Public Justice PC, Towards Justice, and Terrell Marshall Law Group PLLC represent the workers. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP represents Amazon.

The case is Palmer v. Amazon.com Inc., 2d Cir., No. 20-03989, affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded 10/18/22.