Coronavirus Archives

Judges lift trial COVID-19 restrictions in effort to reduce backlog

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Nueces County judges removed COVID-19 restrictions that have been in place since 2020, on Tuesday.

The Nueces County Board of Judges voted to lift restrictions it adopted that limit where juries can be chosen, and how many jury trials can be held in the courthouse at a time. The board kept an order that allows judges to hold hearings over Zoom.

Nueces County Jail currently is at 100 percent capacity and 281 inmates have been held for more than 100 days, awaiting trial. Of those 281 inmates, 88 are charged with murder, said 117th District Court Judge Sandra Watts.

The board of judges also received approval for a grant for $900,000, which will help cover the cost of a visiting judge and two prosecutors. The visiting judge will preside over an auxiliary court two weeks out of every month for the next two years. The court is expected to be functional Aug. 1.

Board of Judges Presiding Judge Carlos Valdez said they are looking to focus on prisoners who have been in jail for more than 100 days, initially.

In previous meetings, the board of judges has said it needs three more district-court judges, but hiring those three judges and the staff they need would bankrupt the county.

Watts placed the item on the agenda for consideration and told judges that she believed it was time to go back to normal.

“I think we’ll still encourage people to wear masks if they want to,” Watts said. “The problem with the docketing and the scheduling is: the seventh floor goes on Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays. So it’s very stilted. So, sometimes it didn’t flow to allow us to do as many cases as we could.”

Nueces County Judge Barbara Canales told district court judges that, while things do have to get back to normal, it was important to “not throw caution to the wind.”

Watts told judges she believes the courts can go back to doing more jury trials by removing the restrictions.

As the courts prepare to hold more jury trials, Nueces County First Assistant District Attorney Angelica Hernandez told the board her office is down several prosecutors, and may be losing another three in the next three weeks.

“I understand we are separate entities and the judges, you have to do what you think is right in regard to your dockets, but I just need you to understand — I know, Judge Stith, you only have one prosecutor,” Hernandez said. “We will endeavor to do our best, as we always do, and we understand you have to take everything on a case-by-case basis, but we literally may be 16 prosecutors down in the next three weeks.”

Hernandez told judges that the issue is a nationwide one, with some of the DA’s office prosecutors moving out-of-state to take jobs. Another issue, she said, is that defense firms can pay more.

319th District Court Judge David Stith said the issue isn’t just about hiring attorneys, but hiring prosecutors with experience.

“You have prosecutors going up into felony court that you’re expecting to try an agg(ravated) assault or, God forbid, a sexual assault of a child, or a murder, that are unfamiliar with the rules of evidence, that are unfamiliar with how you get in a piece of evidence,” Stith said. “That affects everybody. That’s going to be a ‘not guilty’ — that person’s going to go back out on the street.”

Hernandez agreed with Stith, saying it is a DA’s office problem.

“We have tried to not do a trial-by-fire with prosecutors,” Hernandez said. “We are at that point now. We will have brand new prosecutors — cover your ears defense attorneys — brand new prosecutors that are going to be trying agg assault, DWs, they’re going to be trying murder cases that have never even tried a misdemeanor. That is where we are.”

Canales said that the Nueces County Commissioner’s Court is working to address pay at the DA’s office. Last week the court voted to increase the pay of an open position.

3 Lina Hidalgo staffers indicted in connection with $11 million Harris County COVID vaccine outreach contract

Hidalgo has not been indicted, and has denied any wrongdoing.

Two current and one former senior staffers for Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo were indicted Monday for what investigators say was an attempt to steer a roughly $11 million COVID-19 vaccine outreach contract to a preferred vendor.

Chief of staff Alex Triantaphyllis, former senior policy director Wallis Nader and former senior adviser Aaron Dunn were all indicted on charges of records tampering and misuse of official information, according to records filed with the Harris County District Clerk. All three have been accused of communicating with a vendor, Elevate Strategies, to tailor an ostensibly competitive bid process to the company’s strengths.

The contract was eventually pulled.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo has not been indicted, and has denied any wrongdoing.

Texas Rangers raided the Harris County Administration Building last month, seizing phones and computers for the three county employees. According to recently unsealed warrants, messages from Triantaphyllis, Nader and Dunn appear to show the three coordinating with Elevate founder Felicity Pereyra to tweak the language of a request for proposal in a way that best favored Pereyra’s company. In particular, Nader and Triantaphyllis are shown exchanging a Google document back and forth before sending the document to Hidalgo herself for review.

Warrants released last week show Texas Rangers sought access to Google accounts associated with Hidalgo, the three indicted staff members and others in her office in an attempt to find out who had access to those documents, when they had access and what changes they made.

The warrants allege Triantaphyllis shared a document called “Vaccine-related community engagement scope” with the Elevate founder. Investigators say the document is the same one ultimately used for the final Request for Proposal.

According to court documents, Hidalgo’s staff started to consider Elevate in January of 2021. The company had previously helped with U.S. Census outreach, and Hidalgo’s team felt the vendor was the right fit for a contract to advertise, door-knock and oversee communication with undervaccinated communities in an attempt to raise vaccination rates in the county.

The selection process included a uniform scoring matrix, in which Dunn, Nader and Triantaphyllis were among the five people tasked with scoring the proposals. The University of Texas Health Science Center came in first with a score of 46.8%, with Elevate coming in second with 40.4%, the warrants show.

But despite scoring lower and coming in with a more expensive proposal than UT Health, Elevate was nonetheless awarded the $11 million contract with a 4-1 vote in Commissioners Court last June. Republican Commissioner Jack Cagle was the lone dissenting vote.

That contract was later criticized by Cagle and others who accused Democrats on the court of favoring a partisan organization. Pereyra previously worked for the Democratic National Convention and the Hilary Clinton campaigns, and was deputy campaign manager for Democratic Commissioner Adrian Garcia’s unsuccessful 2015 Houston mayoral run.

Representatives for Hidalgo did not immediately comment on the indictments Monday.

Democratic Commissioner Rodney Ellis, one of the “yes” votes on Elevate, defended Hidalgo in a statement. He pointed to recent media reports about documents her lawyers say provide an alternate explanation for at least some of the communications. Houston Public Media has not reviewed those documents.

“During her time in office, Judge Hidalgo has gone out of her way to hold herself and her staff to the highest ethical standards,” Ellis said. “From recent press reports we have seen, there are still too many unanswered questions about the facts of the Elevate contract investigation for us to pass judgment. These public servants have earned the benefit of the doubt until the system plays out and the facts prevail.”

The county judge has publicly defended choosing Elevate, arguing that the company’s work on the Census project made it a better fit for the vaccination outreach. A staff report detailed in the warrants argued that previous community outreach projects from UT Health “have not been shown to be successful.”

Text messages between the staff members go a step further, according to court documents.

“This vaccine outreach is getting ridiculous,” Triantaphyllis allegedly texted on April 20, 2021. “We need to slam the door shut on UT and move on.”

Zoom customer objects to settlement, $21 million in fees for class action lawyers

SAN JOSE, Calif. (Legal Newsline) – A business that uses Zoom says a nearly final $85 million settlement is unnecessary and only benefits lawyers who stand to make more than $21 million.

Better World Properties of Houston filed an objection to the settlement on March 1, arguing to San Jose, Calif., federal judge Lucy Koh that it is unlikely any Zoom customers were actually harmed by privacy concerns that arose during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“While we are aware of anecdotal stories related to perceived security lapses and assumed mishandling of data by Zoom, our relevant and considerable experience suggests to us that these concerns are exaggerated and unlikely to have caused harm that Zoom should be financially responsible for,” BWP owner Michael Knight wrote.

“As a regular Zoom user, we learned early on that this was not a platform on which to conduct sensitive business, that user-controlled settings were the primary determinant of accessibility, and that common-sense measures were the best way to increase security.

“We too have plenty of stories about strange things that have happened through Zoom, but at no time did we ever experience any financial loss that could remotely be attributable to Zoom.”

Attorneys at Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy and Ahdoot & Wolfson on Jan. 28 filed for final approval of their $85 million settlement with the company that includes $21.25 million in lawyer fees. The settlement refunds customers at least $25 or up to 15% of the money they paid for subscriptions while the company allegedly had privacy concerns.

Despite Zoom’s argument that numerous class actions were filed “under a scattershot array of loosely related factual and legal theories, largely drawn from sensationalist news reports,” the company chose to settle.

Those lawsuits alleged Zoom was negligent in treatment of its users’ information and violated laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act.

They said Zoom shared the user’s personal information, including the type of device and software the user has as well as their network carrier and location, with third parties such as Facebook. The lawsuits also claimed Zoom misrepresented its encryption protocols and failed to prevent unwanted users from crashing meetings (called “Zoombombing”).

But the plaintiffs didn’t allege they were harmed by the sharing of any data, Zoom says, nor did they allege they ever relied upon any specific Zoom representations about encryption.

Those filing objections like Better World Properties, which provides apartment management services, will have to bowl over Judge Koh with their arguments. She has already granted preliminary approval of the settlement.

BWP paid for three Zoom Meetings Pro licenses but says any settlement should be limited to a refund paid by the few customers actively complaining. The current settlement will “ultimately serve only to enrich the plaintiff’s attorneys,” Knight wrote.

“The pittance of a refund customers like us stand to receive is entirely unwarranted and unjustified compared to the harm such settlements cause to American business,” he added.

“In the absence of criminal conduct or willful acts of deceit designed to increase profits while knowingly harming the public, we do not believe the settlement contemplated is justified.”

Conservatives for Abusive Lawsuits

Get ready for a surge in Covid-related employment lawsuits, driven in part by conservative state lawmakers who are introducing bills to expand liability against employers that require vaccines.

If these measures pass, employers will face a sued-if-you-do, sued-if-you-don’t situation. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration requires large businesses to mandate employee vaccinations and imposes hefty fines for failure to comply. Even if the Supreme Court strikes down the OSHA rule, employers are at risk for liability claims, particularly when employees work in high-risk environments, unless they adopt adequate safety measures.

These bills would also undermine state workers-compensation systems, the traditional mechanism for compensating employees injured on the job, and conflict with the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act of 2005, which provides immunity to private employers and others that administer vaccination programs.

Conservative lawmakers traditionally oppose such liability-expanding initiatives, but in this case they’re leading the charge. Such bills have been introduced in Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Oklahoma. It’s regrettable to see past proponents of civil-justice reform take such a turn. America is already litigious enough.

Since 2020, about two-thirds of states have appropriately recognized that the uncertainty of a once-in-a-century pandemic required the enactment of legislation to protect businesses, healthcare providers and others from meritless lawsuits by raising the standard for liability or providing a defense to those that comply with applicable public-health guidance. But some of these protections will expire if legislatures don’t extend them.

Lawmakers should prioritize passing and extending balanced proposals that protect the public while deterring senseless lawsuits. Laws providing new avenues to sue reverse needed reforms and hurt the important progress that has been made.

U.S. employers already are subjected to Covid-related personal-injury, employment, contract and other lawsuits and claims. Legislation that relaxes the need to prove causation or authorizes statutory minimum damages, regardless of whether a plaintiff experienced an injury, is dangerous and would lead only to unnecessary and abusive lawsuits.

Coronavirus crippled Calif. small businesses. Lawsuit reform can’t come fast enough.

As a small business owner in Bakersfield, I know firsthand how desperate the California small business community is to catch a break during the COVID-19 pandemic. This pandemic has already gone on longer than anyone expected, but instead of receiving help from our state leaders in Sacramento, we are left to suffer needlessly with no end in sight.

While COVID-19 has made the current business climate more difficult than any I have seen in my lifetime, there is a little-known factor that has made life far tougher than it should be for small businesses during these challenging times—lawsuit abuse. California is already known for its backwards court system, and COVID-19 is making matters worse. Meanwhile, state lawmakers continue to turn their backs and allow the consequences of ignoring the need for tort reform—business closures, accelerating unemployment, and even higher prices—to run amuck.

California has a serious problem on its hands. It is common knowledge that businesses have been leaving the state en masse, searching for other states that will have their backs and prevent unfair lawsuits from closing their doors. So how can we stop the bleeding? How can we reverse course and keep our status as home to more small businesses than anywhere else in the country?

First, we must accurately diagnose the problem. Most our state’s legal woes come in the form of open-ended liability, loopholes, or vague statutory language that allow trial lawyers to exploit the court system and score massive paydays. To make matters worse, the lack of significant COVID-19 liability protections for small businesses has forced many mom-and-pop shops into meritless settlements with trial lawyers looking to take advantage of the global pandemic.

Here are just a few examples.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was designed to protect Californians with legitimate disabilities, but it is now being used by trial lawyers to sue small businesses who struggle to keep up with the expensive and ever-changing ADA guidelines.

Without the resources to put up a fight in court, often even when they are in the right, small businesses are forced to settle with attorneys. If they aren’t put out of businesses, these companies are instead forced to lay off employees or raise prices on consumers just to pad the pockets of greedy lawyers. And the proof is in the numbers. In 2020, California saw more ADA claims than any other state. How does this serve the disabled?

Similarly, California’s “Sue Your Boss Law,” also called the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), allows any employee to sue their employer on behalf of themselves, colleagues, or the whole state. You can see where this might become problematic.

PAGA is a lawsuit free-for-all with no limit, and trial lawyers know it.

They routinely exploit employees to sue employers over minor violations and often compile massive class action lawsuits that bloat their own paychecks, while sending workers home with pennies.

And just like ADA loopholes, small businesses are backed into a corner, even when lawsuits have no merit. Many are forced to settle and pass along the financial consequences to customers or the rest of their workforce.

Last and possibly worst on the list is our state’s COVID-19 lawsuit problem. The same lawyers pouncing on every other legal loophole in the state aren’t letting small businesses off the hook during a global pandemic.

Instead, since lawmakers haven’t passed any significant liability protections against COVID-19-related lawsuits, trial lawyers are exploiting businesses left and right for minor violations, even when new data and public health restrictions are changing daily.

Further, many COVID-19 claims are simply unprovable, leaving businesses with limited resources to face the tough decision to settle out of court or fight a legal battle that could bankrupt them for good, even if they win. For most, paying the hostage ransom outside of court is generally the safest bet. In what world is this fair?

Lawsuit abuse in California is amplifying nearly every consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic and other underlying economic woes, such as the labor shortage and rising inflation. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the small business community can’t afford to defend ourselves from trial lawyers exploiting us unchecked. Until lawmakers address California’s lawsuit abuse problem, businesses will continue to shut down or leave the state, and workers will face an even tougher uphill battle than they already have. Tort reform’s time in the sun has come, and the Golden State must act now.

Opposition grows as Texas Republicans try to upend vaccine mandates

Republicans in the Texas Legislature face an uphill battle as they try to pass a bill exempting most of the state’s workforce from vaccine requirements enacted by their employers.

For one, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott asked them to take up the matter just this week, following up on an executive order he issued Monday. Now there are just six days left in the current special session.

On top of that, the legislation has been denounced by both Democrats, who view the vaccine rules as necessary for public health reasons, and some Republicans, who disagree with government interference in business decisions.

In another sign of trouble, Texans for Lawsuit Reform, an influential and well-funded group whose PAC tends to support conservatives, on Wednesday came out against one of the bills ordered up by Abbott, House Bill 155, which the Texas House State Affairs Committee considered Wednesday.

The bill would require employers to allow employees to receive an exemption from a vaccine requirement based on their acquired immunity after contracting COVID-19; because of a medical condition; or for “reasons of conscience, including a religious belief.”

The lawsuit reform group said in a statement that the bill would put employers in an “untenable position” and would expose them to “substantial liability” because it conflicts with federal guidance from the Biden administration requiring large companies to mandate vaccines. The group also has concerns about a provision that allows employees to sue employers who violate the law and recover court fees.

“When you begin to add more and more exceptions to the employment-at-will doctrine, it creates more and more litigation,” said Lee Parsley, general counsel for the group. “That’s what we’ve seen over the years: The exceptions to the doctrine have created litigation and richer lawyers.”

Glenn Hamer, president of Texas Association of Business, gave similar testimony at Wednesday’s hearing.

“Our big-time concern is the cause of action,” Hamer said. “That, in our view, needs to change.”

Abbott caught Texas by surprise with his executive order, issued after 5 p.m. on Monday. It was just two months ago that the governor declared in an executive order that he would bar local and state officials from requiring vaccines but would not meddle in private business decisions.

The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress, who is a physician, said that while he is vaccinated, he believes it’s a personal decision.

“Unfortunately, with respect to the COVID pandemic, we’ve gotten away I think from that foundational medical principle of patient autonomy, and we were sort of trampling all over it,” Oliverson said. “Americans in general do not like being compelled and told what they must do, especially when they believe it violates or intrudes upon their specific rights as an individual.”

Neither Oliverson nor committee chair Rep. Chris Paddie expected the panel to rush the legislation through to passage.

“Maybe we get there, maybe we don’t, but that’s not going to trump — no pun intended — any sense of political expediency here to try to satisfy the politics versus good policy,” Paddie said.

At the end of a seven-hour hearing, Oliverson said he would revisit the legal liability provision, as well as clarify the definition of “reasons of conscience” and consult with health groups about carve-outs for places of work involving vulnerable, immunocompromised Texans. He planned to bring back a revised bill Thursday.

The Texas Senate State Affairs Committee will consider a similar but more sweeping bill on Thursday that would prohibit government entities, school districts and public and private institutions of higher education from requiring COVID-19 vaccines, in addition to forcing private employers to accept medical and conscience exemptions.

Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, raised concerns about putting businesses in a “difficult situation” if Texas adopts a new law that contradicts federal requirements.

“I’m just really struggling with this fact that we’re sitting here talking about what we may do, but at the same time, that’s not going to get our employers out from what the federal government is telling them to do, and that’s going to be a long drawn-out legal fight,” he said.

Among those who testified in favor of the bill was Regan DeMarines, legislative director for Texans for Vaccine Choice. DeMarines said Texans are suffering from having to choose between “their health and their livelihood” to keep their jobs.

“Every medical product has risk, and where there’s risk there must always be choice,” DeMarines said. “We hope that we can give citizens of Texas the ability to seek life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness without strings of a forced medical intervention attached to that freedom.”

Rep. Eddie Lucio III, D-Brownsville, who is a lawyer and also a franchise owner of Orangetheory Fitness clubs in the Rio Grande Valley, said his main concern is the bill’s effect on small businesses.

“Right now, every business — and you know my experience with small business — is struggling,” Lucio III said. “We don’t need to be eliminating anything in the toolbox to run their business to give them an opportunity to succeed and survive this very hard time.”

Dr. John Zerwas, a former Republican state representative and special adviser to Abbott, though he registered as neutral on the bill, said he agreed with Lucio’s evaluation.

“I think it’s the business of small business to determine what’s best for their clients or their customers and for the livelihood of the business that they’re in,” Zerwas said.

Zerwas also asked that lawmakers keep intact an existing law that requires hospitals to set policies that require employees and others in the facilities receive immunizations for certain “vaccine preventable diseases,” as determined by the CDC.

Rep. Richard Peña Raymond, D-Laredo, asked Zerwas if he believed more Texans would have died if the state had depended on herd immunity alone instead of making a concerted effort to get as many vaccinated as possible.

“Absolutely,” Zerwas said.

Opinion: Tort reform is needed for small business COVID recovery

By Christopher Schweickert

Half of our country’s workforce is employed in small business. Unlike large corporations, some of which grew during the COVID-19 shutdowns, small businesses are particularly vulnerable. About one-quarter of them closed during the pandemic.

Here in California, over one-third closed. Their owners and employees are still working to pick up the pieces. Our lawmakers have offered Paycheck Protection Program loans and loosened certain regulations to help them make it through the pandemic, but there’s still a big gap — protection against unwarranted litigation.

This need is not new. Small businesses have been threatened by frivolous lawsuits for years, particularly in California. You can sue a small business over anything you want. It costs just $400 to file. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In America, everyone should have their day in court.

But easy access also means easy abuse. Each year the American Tort Reform Foundation looks across the nation to identify the states where lawsuit abuse is most prevalent. Our litigious environment has landed California on one of the top 10 spots on their Judicial Hellholes list for several years. In 2020, we earned the No. 3 spot. According to the report, almost 60% of Californians “believe that lawmakers are not doing enough to combat lawsuit abuse.”

Whether it’s an employee suing their employer over a technical recordkeeping nitpick or a trial lawyer bringing a frivolous Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuit against a small business over one video on their website without captions, California’s courtrooms are plagued with unwarranted lawsuits. These lawsuits sap the life out of the small businesses who are unfortunate enough to be the latest targets.

Fighting off a lawsuit is expensive. Big corporations can afford big teams of lawyers, but defense costs can cripple a small business. And when this happens, employees lose their jobs, business owners lose their source of income and the community loses a local institution.

And yet, lawmakers continue inventing more ways for trial lawyers to make money at the expense of hardworking, honest citizens who are simply trying to run a safe and upstanding business. We’re losing some of our neighbors to the hope of a better life in Texas, Arizona, Washington and elsewhere. In 2020, for the first time in 170 years since it was founded in 1850, California lost net population — down by 182,000.

Now add COVID-19 lawsuits, the latest tool in the trial attorneys’ toolbox. Teams of lawyers across the state have been gearing up to bring COVID-19-related lawsuits against California’s small businesses. It’s usually impossible to know exactly where someone catches the coronavirus, but that won’t stop claims that someone got it from a coworker or their server at the restaurant or their client at the office — and that it’s the owner’s fault.

Protecting the long-term health of small businesses is going to take more than payroll loans or pledges to “shop local.” California lawmakers need to take action to ensure the survival of the small-business community across the state.

Curbing COVID-19 lawsuit abuse will balance a deck tilted in favor of large corporations. By protecting small businesses from abusive lawsuits, we can calm a business environment paralyzed by fear, protect job creators from the ravages of litigation, stimulate our state economy and reduce income inequality.

As state lawmakers plan for rebuilding our communities and economy post-COVID, I urge them to consider how tort reform is part of the solution.

Christopher Schweickert is a Pleasant Hill attorney representing small business owners and trust/estate clients.

Gov. Abbott signs Pandemic Liability Protection Act, bill takes effect immediately

By David Yates

AUSTIN – On Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Pandemic Liability Protection Act into law. The Act went into effect immediately because Senate Bill 6 was passed by both chambers by supermajorities.

Authored by Sen. Kelly Hancock, SB 6 provides COVID-19 liability protections for health care providers, businesses, non-profits, religious institutions and schools that follow safety protocols.

Sen. Hancock has openly stated that the bill will not protect “bad actors.”

Texas now joins three-dozen other states that have granted healthcare workers and facilities limited liability protections when battling the COVID-19 outbreak.

Jon Opelt, executive director of the Texas Alliance for Patient Access, says that had the bill not become law, a surge in COVID-related lawsuits would have been expected.

“The Pandemic liability bill does not protect bad actors who are grossly negligent, engage in willful misconduct or are consciously indifferent to their patient’s welfare and safety,” Opelt said. “Instead, it protects all those who put their safety at risk when working in a healthcare setting if they make a good faith effort to provide appropriate medical care.”

Opelt says SB 6 does not preclude a COVID patient or their aggrieved family from filing a lawsuit.

“However, the bill aims to curtail misguided and unwarranted COVID-related lawsuits that stem from alleged misdiagnosis, improper treatment, inadequate staffing, and insufficient safety supplies,” Opelt said. “If the healthcare provider or facility has acted in good faith, they should have liability protection.”

Johnson & Johnson’s Talc Lawsuits Are Fueling Skepticism of Its COVID Vaccine

By Jack Dutton

Concern over previous Johnson & Johnson lawsuits is helping drive vaccine alarmism and skepticism, Newsweek analysis has found. Since Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine was approved on February 27 for emergency use it has been critiqued for its perceived shortcomings in efficacy.

More than one in four people who do not intend to get vaccinated cited concerns about drug companies, according to a February 26 CBS/YouGov poll. But brand hesitancy has also reached those who do wish to be vaccinated.

Hundreds of social media posts have linked the vaccine with allegations the company’s talc could cause cancer. Those who spoke to Newsweek said they wanted to be inoculated but would refuse the Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine if offered, specifically because of the talc lawsuits, of which there have been more than 15,000.

Most of the suits allege that the company failed to warn customers that its talcum powder contained tiny amounts of asbestos, a cancer-causing material.

The drug-maker would not comment on its vaccine being linked to the suits, but said it adheres to the “highest bioethical standards and guidelines.”

The company has always defended its products. Several juries have reached verdicts against Johnson & Johnson, awarding $4.7 billion in damages to 22 women in 2018. But the company has prevailed in other cases and is appealing most it has lost.

Scientists say there is no reason to link the vaccine to earlier allegations against the company, and medical experts are urging people to take any available vaccine to help end the pandemic.

However, Kandice Ford from Louisville, Kentucky, told Newsweek she wouldn’t have the vaccine, mainly because of the controversy around the talcum powder.

Asked why, she said: “It is mainly because of the talc/asbestos lawsuits. I don’t trust them to be able to produce a safe vaccine. It also feels kind of rushed. We knew Moderna and Pfizer were working on vaccines for months and it seems like they [Johnson & Johnson] just popped up out of blue.

“Also the efficacy only being 66 percent raises concern for me as far as efficacy. I do want to be vaccinated. I would prefer Moderna over Pfizer. I am concerned about not having a choice. If I’m offered the J&J vaccine, I would refuse it.”

Like the other candidates, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine’s efficacy varies depending on how severe the COVID-19 is. The overall efficacy of a single shot was found to be 66.1 percent, but it has 85.4 percent efficacy against severe illness. Although requiring two shots, the Moderna and Pfizer candidates had overall efficacies of 94.1 and 95 percent, respectively.

In 1995, John Granic’s mother died of ovarian cancer. He said she used J&J talcum powder. Granic, from Ontario, Canada, said that he is skeptical about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine because of a 2018 investigation by Reuters saying the company had known about the existence of a carcinogen in its talc for years without raising the alarm.

“If that’s true then they had plenty of time to warn people, and I believe it to be true since J&J lost the class-action lawsuit,” he said.

“To this day I have no idea if [the] J&J my mother used contributed to her ovarian cancer or not at all and what the actual cause was. But even if she was still alive today, I would still be saying when a company keeps quiet for a good 20 years or so instead of warning people, [it] is a company I would NOT trust. I keep wondering what, if anything, are they hiding from the public now related to their vaccine?”

“As of now I have no plans to get the vaccine. I had not planned on getting it. And no I am not an anti-vaxxer. I have received vaccines before—when I was in school long ago—and had no issues whatsoever,” he added.

“If I change my mind it will be either Pfizer or AstraZeneca and definitely not J&J. Mostly just because Pfizer and AstraZeneca seem more trustworthy to me, and yes I have heard negative stories about them as well but I believe those two are a much better option than J&J.”

Others, who did not wish to be named in this report, raised similar concerns. When contacted by Newsweek, Johnson & Johnson did not comment on people who were skeptical about taking its COVID-19 vaccine over concerns about the company.

Commenting on the safety of its talc, a spokesperson said: “Johnson & Johnson understands the U.S. talc litigation has caused confusion and concern about the safety of talc powder and is committed to ensuring the facts about talc are understood. Johnson’s Baby Powder has been a trusted product for more than 100 years, and decades of independent scientific evaluations have repeatedly confirmed that Johnson’s Baby Powder does not cause cancer.

“We deeply sympathize with anyone suffering from cancer, which is why the facts are so important. We remain confident that our talc is safe, asbestos free, and does not cause cancer.”

Health experts are advising people that the vaccine is safe and has been developed in a thorough and transparent manner.

Susan R. Bailey, president of the American Medical Association, told Newsweek: “Each of the authorized COVID-19 vaccines has undergone rigorous, transparent development, testing and authorization, and all three vaccines are highly effective at preventing hospitalization and death from COVID-19.

“The newest vaccine—a single-shot variety with logistical advantages, including increased ability to store and administer at physician practices, over previously authorized vaccines—moves us closer to reducing the incidence of death and severe illness from COVID-19 by offering a third safe, effective vaccine that can be used across the country. When it’s your turn to get vaccinated, we urge you to take the first vaccine available to you.”

Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, pointed out that in America much of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was not being made in-house.

On March 2, the Biden administration announced a new partnership between pharmaceutical giant Merck and Johnson & Johnson, where the latter would help roll out the vaccine across America.

Asked whether people were right to be concerned about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine because of allegations around the company’s previous safety record, Hotez said: “Merck & Company is going to wider-produce a lot of the J&J vaccines in the U.S., so that [previous talc allegation] is not even a valid reason.

“It is a good vaccine. It wouldn’t surprise if downstream it winds up becoming a two-dose vaccine in the future. I think the level of antibodies are higher and might be more durable as a two-dose vaccine and they might do a booster with one of the variants of concern such as the South African one.”

Newsweek, in partnership with NewsGuard, is dedicated to providing accurate and verifiable vaccine and health information. With NewsGuard’s HealthGuard browser extension, users can verify if a website is a trustworthy source of health information. Visit the Newsweek VaxFacts website to learn more and to download the HealthGuard browser extension.

Crisis within a crisis: Record-breaking winter storm within the pandemic means civil legal aid must be considered essential

By Nathan L. Hecht

As we approach the first anniversary of pandemic-induced lockdowns, hundreds of thousands of Texans are still grappling with job loss, eviction, or domestic violence stemming from the stay-at-home orders, among other issues. Now, we have just endured one of the worst winter storms on record—plunging millions of Texans into frigid temperatures and darkness due to a days-long loss of power, along with loss of clean water.

The pandemic caused many in our communities to seek out civil legal assistance for the very first time to obtain benefits, home and safety. The added stresses of the winter storm effects mean even more Texans will need help as we work to recover from the costliest natural disaster in our state’s history.

Civil legal aid is an essential resource that ensures all Texans have equal access to the justice system. While legal aid providers are working tirelessly to provide these invaluable services, the need for assistance grows as the economic and health effects from COVID-19 continue and will increase on the heels of the winter storm.

Since March 2020, more than four million Texans filed jobless claims. From 2019 to 2020, TexasLawHelp.org, a statewide legal aid website that provides free legal information, saw an almost 1,500% increase in website traffic for unemployment help. Additionally, the web traffic for eviction help jumped by 185%, and the site saw an increase of 230% for people facing foreclosure.

The increased need for civil legal help became so great that the Texas Supreme Court helped create the Texas Eviction Diversion Program to assist tenants and landlords struggling with paying or collecting rent due to COVID-19. Yet the problem remains. Many Texans are still struggling as they try to decide what bills they are able to pay this month, and what ones they will have to let go past due. To compound the issue, Texans are now facing a crisis within a crisis as they are experiencing food and water insecurity and property loss from the winter storm—on top of the economic hardships inflected upon them by the pandemic.

Civil legal aid remains essential for Texans facing obstacles beyond unemployment, evictions, and damaged or destroyed property. Veterans who are denied their rightful benefits, elderly who have been refused access to proper medical care, and families that are continually on the verge of homelessness, all depend on the irreplaceable work of the legal aid programs.

To keep these essential organizations and programs running, more funding is critical, especially as a primary source of legal funding—the Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts (IOLTA) program—declined significantly in 2020. In March 2020, just as COVID-19 began to wreak havoc on Texans, interest rates were cut unexpectedly, resulting in a 50% reduction in funds—or about $750,000 per month—in just 13 days.

Legal aid providers are a lifeline for so many Texans in good times, and much more so during a pandemic followed by a natural disaster. While the funding we have received has been critical in doing our job, the need remains as the wave of economic emergencies from the pandemic has yet to subside, and the fallout will be felt for years to come. It is because of this most unprecedented time in our history, the Texas Supreme Court is requesting additional funding because of the dire need for assistance.

All Texans deserve access to basic civil legal services. Helping Texans obtain assistance with civil legal needs is a bipartisan, good government issue. Families deserve help when facing eviction, veterans deserve access to benefits, children and mothers deserve safety from abusive situations, and Texans deserve assistance when their homes have been damaged due to a major disaster. On behalf of the Texas Supreme Court and our civil legal aid providers, I thank those who recognize and prioritize this right and ask that you remain committed in ensuring access to justice for all.

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Nathan Hecht is chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court and a U.S. Navy veteran.