Construction Law Blog

On November 4, 2021, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) released its highly anticipated emergency temporary standard (ETS) which requires large employers to implement certain vaccination or testing policies and other measures to protect employees from the spread of COVID-19. OSHA contemporaneously issued helpful FAQs.    

We are beginning to see courts issue rulings on when the COVID-19 pandemic excuses a party from performance. Two trends have emerged in the federal decisions that we summarize in this post. Ultimately, it appears that parties cannot use COVID-19 to excuse obligations that were in their control, but they can expect a thorough and critical analysis of their position.

Hirschler construction lawyer Kelly Bundy’s article on impossibility, impracticability and frustration of purpose in the age of COVID-19 has been published as part of the ABA Construction Law Forum’s “Under Construction” series.

Under new OSHA guidance most employers no longer need to make work-relatedness determinations for employee cases of COVID-19 in the absence of objective evidence of work-relatedness and can focus on increased sanitization and other practices to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

On March 30, 2020, Governor Ralph Northam issued Executive Order Number 55, titled “Temporary Stay at Home Order Due to Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19).”

States across the county have enacted Stay at Home Orders, each with varying degrees of restriction. The Virginia Stay at Home order is one of the least-restrictive Stay at Home Orders in the region. 

As cases of COVID-19 multiply across the country, with new restrictions being handed down from all levels of government on a daily and hourly basis, companies large and small face a variety of challenges in keeping their employees safe while at the same time maintaining business operations. While seeking good employment law counsel is critical as questions arise, below are ten tips for addressing personnel issues in your workplace. 

As states and localities update their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic on a daily basis, some states have issued “stay at home” orders, or orders closing all “non-essential” businesses. This blog post provides readers with key takeaways on the applicability of these orders to construction.

On March 18, 2020, the President signed into law the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (“FFCRA”). This new legislation contains a number of components designed to address the current COVID-19 pandemic, but two aspects of the FFCRA related to emergency sick leave and emergency family and medical leave will be of immediate concern to many employers. Below are answers to key questions for private employers about the FFCRA leave requirements. For specific applications of these new requirements to your workforce, when in doubt, consult experienced counsel.

In the ever-changing environment of the COVID-19 pandemic, OSHA is offering new guidance for employers relating to workplace safety and reporting requirements. This post provides readers with key takeaways from the new guidance.