A McDonald's in Chicago. (Photo: Google Maps)

McDonald's abruptly avoided a high-profile court fight on Friday in a case brought by employees who sued the fast-food restaurant chain for failing to protect them against exposure to the coronavirus.

Friday's hearing, held via Zoom and broadcast on YouTube, comes in the latest case in which workers have hauled their employers into court over COVID-19 pandemic protections. Five employees at four McDonald's locations in Chicago filed the lawsuit on May 19 alleging public nuisance and negligence.

Cook County Circuit Court Judge Eve Reilly had planned to hear testimony on Friday from witnesses to determine whether to grant an injunction in the class action, which alleged the restaurant chain failed to supply enough masks and hand sanitizer to employees, or inform them when co-workers got COVID-19, at four of its Chicago locations.

Minutes into Friday's hearing, the judge requested the lawyers attempt to reach a "potential agreement" in a breakout room, held via Zoom but closed to the public. After about an hour, the judge said she would not go forward with the injunction hearing.

"The parties believe that potentially this could be worked out," she said.

McDonald's lawyers in the case were Daniel Lombard and Jonathan Bunge, at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, who did not respond to a request for comment about the hearing. Plaintiffs lawyer David Rosenthal of James & Hoffman in Washington, D.C., declined to comment. In an interview on Thursday, he said the class action is limited to employees at the four Chicago locations, but the problems are systemic at McDonald's.

"We've heard there are a lot of issues at McDonald's all around the country," he said. "So, there definitely seems to be a lot of incidences of unsafe practices around the country."

The case alleged that McDonald's managers at the four locations in Chicago did not follow guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the restaurant chain's own statements and guides addressing its actions in light of COVID-19. Plaintiffs claim their managers had restricted supplies of gloves and hand sanitizer, forced them to wear dirty masks, or none at all, and did not impose social distancing requirements. They also allegedly failed to inform employees about co-workers who tested positive for COVID-19. One plaintiff claimed she tested positive for COVID-19 on April 22.

The lawsuit says the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, despite receiving complaints, had not conducted inspections of the restaurants. In a brief supporting an injunction, the plaintiffs submitted a declaration from Peter Orris, the chief of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Illinois, who found that fast food restaurants posed "significant risks with respect to COVID-19."

McDonald's attorneys had opposed the injunction and moved to dismiss the lawsuit in court filings on Thursday. Citing the testimony of an expert, William Lang, who spent more than a decade as a White House physician, they insisted the four Chicago locations had provided adequate safety measures. Further, despite five confirmed cases of COVID-19 at those locations, plaintiffs failed to provide evidence the employees were at risk of contracting the virus from working at McDonald's, they wrote.

They also took issue with the plaintiffs, who also include four people who live with the McDonald's employees, noting that the employee claiming to have COVID-19 admitted that doctors never tested her for the virus and that another came to work for only three days in the last two months.

McDonald's also raised an increasingly common defense: that the courts did not have primary jurisdiction to hear the matter. In court papers, its lawyers wrote that the court should defer to OSHA, the Illinois Department of Health, or county or city public health agencies, to prevent inconsistent safety requirements during a rapidly evolving pandemic.

"This is nothing less than an attempt to force upon the judiciary the responsibility for managing the public health response to COVID-19," its lawyers wrote in a motion to dismiss. "If plaintiff's lawsuit is entertained, it will unleash a flood of similar litigation as any person who believes COVID-19 should be handled differently than what public health authorities allow will file suit against their employer or any business with which they may have some tangential contact."

They cited some of the first court decisions to address similar lawsuits brought by workers seeking protections from COVID-19. On March 31, a judge in Anchorage rejected a temporary restraining order sought by the Alaska State Employees Association, and, on May 5, a federal judge in Missouri tossed a public nuisance case against Smithfield Foods.

"What those courts have said, and what the cases say, is that this issue is one that is uniquely within the purview of the state agencies," Lombard said at the start of Friday's hearing.

In their injunction brief, the McDonald's plaintiffs attempted to distinguish the Smithfield Foods case, in which OSHA was investigating the plant and President Donald Trump had issued an executive order to keep meat processing facilities open.

In the McDonald's case, the Restaurant Law Center, the advocacy arm of the National Restaurant Association, and the Illinois Restaurant Association, filed a proposed amicus brief in the case on Thursday, reiterating the role of public health authorities over the courts.

"Exposing restaurants to lawsuits seeking these kinds of injunctions simply makes no sense," wrote the groups' attorney, Sarah Brew, of Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath in Minneapolis. "There is no evidence that these agencies are asleep at the wheel. Rather, they have acted quickly, decisively, and have done a laudable job working to seek voluntary compliance from the restaurant community."