The Scope of Protection Provided to Health Care Providers by the Alabama COVID-19 Immunity Act

For health care providers, COVID-19 ushered in concern: Concern about the well-being of patients; concern about the safety of frontline health workers; and concern about health care providers’ exposure to Covid-related lawsuits. To calm medical providers’ fears about the threat of civil liability for the care provided during the pandemic, Alabama passed the Alabama COVID-19 Immunity Act (“ACIA”). The ACIA’s goal was simple: provide a shield to hospitals, doctors, nurses (and others) from lawsuits arising out of the COVID-19 “health emergency.”[i] To that end, the Alabama Legislature declared that the ACIA would provide immunity to a health care provider for any COVID-19-related incident occurring between March 13, 2020 and December 31, 2021—the beginning and end of the pandemic according to Alabama’s executive and legislative branches.[ii] At first blush, one might presume the Act only provided immunity to health care providers for a Covid patient’s unfortunate outcome, or for a provider’s failure to limit a person’s exposure to the virus.[iii] But a recent Alabama Supreme Court decision, Ex parte Triad of Alabama, LLC, d/b/a Flowers Hospital[iv] suggests that the “Covid Immunity defense” can be asserted by health care providers in any case where Coronavirus had some relationship with the cause of a claimant’s injury—even where the claim has little to do with the provision of medical services.

In Ex parte Triad of Alabama, LLC d/b/a Flowers Hospital, a hospital began offering monoclonal-antibody-infusion therapy to Covid patients in August 2021 to combat patients’ symptoms.[v] To reduce the risk of exposing other patients and visitors to Covid, the hospital designated one of its entrances as the “Infusion entry,” which would only be utilized by Covid patients receiving antibody therapy.[vi] The plaintiff, a Covid-positive patient, visited the hospital to receive antibody infusion therapy for a few hours.[vii] Following her session, she exited through the Infusion entry and caught her foot on the edge of a concrete ramp, causing her to fall and suffer an injury.[viii] The plaintiff sued the hospital, claiming that the concrete ramp was in an unreasonably dangerous condition and amounted to a premises defect.[ix] In response, the hospital asserted the Covid Immunity defense afforded to care providers under the ACIA.[x] The plaintiff moved to strike the hospital’s Covid Immunity defense, claiming that the ACIA did not apply because (1) the plaintiff’s claim dealt with a duty to maintain a safe premises and therefore were not “health emergency claims” and (2) the plaintiff was not receiving medical services at the time of her fall.[xi] The trial court granted the plaintiff’s motion, finding that the ACIA did not apply given the circumstances of the plaintiff’s injury.[xii]

The Supreme Court of Alabama disagreed with the trial court’s interpretation of the ACIA. The Court found that the plain language of the ACIA—which says that civil immunity is available to health care providers for “any claim that arises from or is related to Coronavirus”—imposed no limitation on the “chain of causation or on the relation between a claim and Coronavirus.”[xiii] Since the plaintiff had been injured by a part of the hospital’s premises that at that time was reserved for Covid patients, the Court concluded that the plaintiff had suffered an injury in connection with COVID-19 and directed the trial court to reinstate the Covid Immunity defense that the hospital had initially asserted.[xiv]

The Supreme Court’s opinion in Ex parte Triad, LLC signals that the ACIA may offer broad protection to health care providers for events that have only a tangential relationship with COVID-19. And what is more: the Court has yet to even interpret what might be the broadest provision of the ACIA, which provides immunity to health providers in cases where Covid “negatively affected” the care a patient received.[xv] So, in any case where a health care provider has been sued for an incident that occurred between March 13, 2020 and December 31, 2021, it is worth raising the Covid Immunity defense—even if at first glance, immunity under the ACIA seems like a longshot.[xvi]

Authored by Owen Mattox

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[i] Ala. Code §§ 6-5-790, 6-5-792, 6-5-793.

[ii] The ACIA was meant to apply to incidents occurring between the day Governor Kay Ivey issued a State of Emergency in response to COVID-19 and the conclusion of the pandemic. See Ala. Code §§ 6-5-795, 6-5-799; State of Emergency: Coronavirus (COVID-19) – Office of the Governor of Alabama

[iii] See Ala. Code §§ 6-5-793(a)(2), 6-5-791(a)(13)(a-b).

[iv] Ex parte Triad of Alabama, LLC d/b/a Flowers Hospital can be read here.

[v] SC-2023-0395 at p. 2 (Ala. Sup. Ct. Jan. 25, 2024).

[vi] Id. at p. 3.

[vii] Id.

[viii] Id.

[ix] Id. at pp. 3-4.

[x] Id. at p. 3.

[xi] Id. at pp. 3-4.

[xii] Id. at p. 4.

[xiii] Id. at pp. 14-15.

[xiv] See id. at pp. 13, 17.

[xv] Ala. Code § 6-5-793(a)(2).

[xvi] Although negligence and medical malpractice actions generally must be filed within two years of the date an incident occurred, that rule may be excused in a variety of situations, like where a plaintiff could not reasonably discover that he or she had a cause of action against a health care provider until more than two years after the incident occurred. See, e.g., Ala. Code § 6-5-482(a) (generally referred to by courts as the “discovery rule”).