Lawsuits related to the pandemic are already one of the main areas in which the Spanish legal profession operates. According to the latest internal barometer of the profession, one in three lawyers you are taking a case related to covid-19 or have one on the table to process in the coming months. According to the latest data from the Council of Spanish Lawyers, at the end of 2019, there are a total of 154,296 lawyers registered, so around 51,432 of them are working on causes related to the coronavirus.
The recent study, prepared by Metroscopia, indicates that 25% of the lawyers consulted have indicated that they have already processed claims related to the health crisis, while another 25% have assured that they will do so in the coming months.
With an economy that has contracted in 2020 by 11% and an alarming figure of unemployment because of the pandemic, That stands at 3.98 million, 724,532 during the past year, labor claims are the main issue right now for labor law firms. Without official data yet, the lawyers consulted by Public affirm that they have “doubled” their clientele in recent months.
In Barcelona, the lawyer Luis Fernandez Pallarés has seen his level of work increased “spectacularly”. The number of claims by people who have been laid off from their jobs has skyrocketed. “If before I had a layoff every week or every two weeks, now I have two or three a day. “ He says that the trials for dismissals carried out during the first wave of the pandemic, between March and June, are currently being held. The layoffs have not stopped, although they have been contained by the ERTES. At the end of November 2020 there were 746,900 people in this situation.
“If before I had a layoff every week, now I have two or three every day,” says a lawyer
The volume of work is so great that “I have to pass cases to other lawyers of the cooperative of which I am part,” he explains. Fernandez Pallarés, for whom the economic blow from the pandemic is going to be long enough and has caught Spain with a “Labor reform of the Popular Party, which makes it very cheap to fire. “” Employers skip the rule that says it is forbidden to fire because of the coronavirus. Most judges are ruling that they are unfair dismissals, rather than saying they are null. So the employer pays the 33 days per year worked and that’s it, it pays for him. “
According to this labor lawyer from Barcelona, in the first wave the first laid off were temporary workers. “Now they are laying off those who have more seniority and the third wave of layoffs will be when the ERTES end, probably starting next summer.”
Hoteliers and merchants, on the warpath
The Spanish hospitality industry has recently begun to file the first lawsuits due to the economic effects it has suffered due to the closures decreed in some communities at the times of greatest incidence of the pandemic. For example, hospitality platform ‘Everyone’s hospitality’ has presented this Thursday before the Ministry of Industry 50 lawsuits for damages for the closures ordered due to the covid. These are the first of the more than a thousand that announce that they will present, and with them they begin the procedure that will take them to a class action lawsuit before the Supreme Court against the Government and against the Autonomous Communities.
The Cremades & Calvo Sotelo law firm directs the legal strategy of this platform of hoteliers from all over Spain. The office explains that the first lawsuits have been filed with Industry “because the hotel industry is an essential part of the country’s economic, cultural and social fabric and an element of international competitiveness.” The firm emphasizes that the lawsuits can be accumulated in a single procedure “to be resolved in a single sentence.”
These innkeepers value the damages for the 2020 closings at 65% of the average turnover of each establishment in previous years, although they warn in their claims that the damages suffered by each one differ according to the type of premises, the autonomous community or the neighborhood in which it is located due to the disparate criteria of closures and capacity allowed.
Deaths of the elderly in nursing homes
The deaths from covid in nursing homes total almost 25,000 In what we have been a pandemic, almost a year, according to data from the State Attorney General’s Office. This is one of the issues that generates the most consultations with lawyers. What can be done to purge responsibilities against residences for the death of a family member? The answer is not clear because, at the moment, the Justice is investigating few cases.
The Patient Ombudsman association received during the first wave about 600 complaints due to death of elderly people in residences. “Now complaints continue to arrive, not with the virulence of the first wave – says Carmen Flores, president of the association – but now as they send the elderly to the hospital when they can no longer do anything, they continue to die and their families they consult “. The legal services of the entity are handling a good number of cases, despite the fact that the Prosecutor’s Office opposes seeing crime in many of the deaths of the elderly in nursing homes. “We have filed just over a hundred actions for patrimonial liability against the Ministry of Health. If criminal proceedings fail, it is a way of guaranteeing the action of Justice “, explains Carlos Sardinero, lawyer for the Patient Defender association.
Since March 2020, the Prosecutor’s Office has opened 441 criminal proceedings for deaths of the elderly in residences throughout Spain, of which only 209 survive at the moment, which continue to be instructed. More than half of them, 112, refer to residences in Madrid, both public and private.
In the community of Madrid, the Tide of Residences, created two years ago to promote a Residency Law in the region, it has brought to court the cases of a hundred elderly deceased in these centers, through collaborating lawyers.
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