A Boca Raton firm is seeking class-action status in a lawsuit against the Chinese government, claiming it “covered up” the dangers of coronavirus.
A Boca Raton law firm sought class-action status Thursday for a lawsuit with a novel aim: to hold the People’s Republic of China and some of its government agencies accountable for the deadly coronavirus now sweeping America.
The Chinese government knew that COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, was “dangerous and capable of causing a pandemic, yet slowly acted, proverbially put their head in the sand, and/or covered it up for their own economic self-interest,” reads the complaint by The Berman Law Group.
The lawsuit, which names five plaintiffs from Florida, seeks class-action status for any American injured or affected by the coronavirus.
Two of the five plaintiffs, Lawrence Wood and Stephen Clyne, are from Palm Beach County. Two, Logan Alters and Marta Reyes, are from Miami-Dade County. The fifth is The Pitching Lab, a Boca Raton-based business owned by Clyne.
None of the plaintiffs have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the law firm said.
“No nation, particularly a rich world superpower like China, should be able to get away with what it has done,” said Jeremy Alters, chief strategist at Berman Law Group and father of plaintiff Logan Alters. “It suppressed information from the global medical community that could have averted or minimized the damage that has been done.”
The complaint lists a handful of unsubstantiated rumors about the Chinese government’s role in downplaying the danger of the virus early on, including that China censored doctors who tried to warn the public about the coronavirus, which emerged in December in the province of Wuhan.
The law group employs as consultants former state Sen. Joseph Abruzzo and Frank Biden, brother of presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden.
But Frank Biden is not involved in this lawsuit, both he and the firm, told The Palm Beach Post Friday.
The firm, which initially invited the media to a news conference in their Boca offices and later called it off, declined to comment beyond Alters’ statement and a press release.
Abruzzo, a Democrat who did not respond to a phone call Friday, is quoted in the press release chastising China.
“This could have been contained while Chinese officials instead attempted to put a positive narrative on the unfolding epidemic for China’s own economic self-interest,” he said. “When you read about the rising death tolls, and see the almost complete halt to normal life and travel, remember that China waited seventeen critical days before sharing the COVID-19 genome sequence with other nations.”
Jeremy Alters, once a licensed attorney but disbarred in 2018, is not the attorney on the suit, but he has represented clients in several class-action suits in the past, including a suit against the Chinese government and Chinese drywall manufacturers.They settled that lawsuit for about $1 billion, he said.
信息来源： 1、Metro官网 3月9日消息 文章题目 Former newspaper editor urges people to sue China if a loved one dies from coronavirus https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/09/former-newspaper-editor-urges-people-sue-china-loved-one-dies-coronavirus-12368700/
