I received an email from a lawyer friend in Houston: She was flipping through her college books and found Daniel Defoe’s novel, “Journal of the Plague Years,” published in 1722, concerning the London plague of 1665. She had underlined the following passage, “The Inns of Court were all shut up; nor were very many of the lawyers in the Temple, or Lincoln’s Inn, or Gray’s Inn, to be seen there. Everybody was at peace: there was no occasion for lawyers… they were generally gone into the country.” Fast forward to a May 1 article from the Washington Post, titled, “Nearly 800 Lawsuits and Counting,” by Shayna Jacobs, which tells a far different story. The cases include consumer litigation, insurance issues, and of course employment law.

Let’s start with the first lawsuit under the recently enacted (April 1), “Families First Coronavirus Response Act” (FFCRA). It prohibits retaliating (among other circumstances) against employees who seek to work from home in order to care for a child who is homebound because school is closed. The law applies to employers with fewer than 500 employees and contains an exemption, in certain circumstances, for employers with under 50 employees.