Covid Briefing: November 2021

This year’s 1 Chancery Lane Autumn Bumper Briefing takes as its theme – what else? – Covid-19 and its consequences. Some two years after the virus was first identified, and just over eighteen months since the first lockdown began, the courts are starting to deal with cases arising out of the pandemic and the measures taken to contain it. Practitioners at 1 Chancery Lane are uniquely well placed to tackle these claims; our practice groups have considerable experience in dealing with the issues generated by norovirus claims, whether it be in the context of employers’ liability, travel law, clinical negligence or property disputes. Covid-19, of course, presents a challenge on a different scale to anything any of us has seen before, but deploying our experience and looking to the future we have drawn together a briefing we hope you will find useful in considering claims involving the virus in a number of settings.

First we consider the evidential challenges faced by potential Claimants in these cases. Then we go on to examine particular categories of claim: musculo-skeletal injuries in home workers, stress claims, and those claims arising out of hazardous occupations. We look at claims founded on Regulations 12 to 14 of the Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018 and on the Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Act 2010, and we consider healthcare claims following the pandemic and the impact of Long Covid. The property team provides an overview of allocation of risk in commercial leases and of residential possession claims, and an insolvency update.

Not all of these articles will be of relevance to all readers, but we hope that there is something for everyone within the following pages, and that even if not of direct application to your area of practice, you will find them of interest in these unprecedented times.

Read the Covid Briefing in full here.