Business As Usual
Louisville, Kentucky is a big city with a small-town attitude, comprised of cliques with two degrees of separation and fourteen beefs between them, all dating back to the city-county merger, or maybe before running water.
So when I saw that a local restaurant, Varanese, had filed a lawsuit claiming damages arising from the coronavirus pandemic, naming Commonwealth officials as defendants along with their own insurance company, I was initially suspicious of their motives. Executive Chef and Owner, John Varanese, has been loud about his opposition to raising the minimum wage in the past and used some dehumanizing language to make his points. It wasn’t a big leap to think he’d go after the government for forcing him to care for the safety of others for a while.
I was somewhat relieved to see that he is only trying to get his insurance company to pay his claim for loss of business revenue due to an order from a civil authority. The “civil authority” here is the order requiring businesses to temporarily shutter unless they were essential. According to the complaint and accompanying documents, the insurance policy seems to cover exactly such an event. They denied his claim for coverage, like insurance companies love to do. For him to get the insurance to pay any of it, he had to initiate a lawsuit for damages. This lawsuit will likely bring about some kind of settlement similar to (but probably less than) what the insurance would have paid had they just fulfilled their end of the bargain and paid the claim.
I’m interested to see how Commonwealth officials respond. It’s difficult to imagine they would do anything but agree with Varanese. The complaint even plainly states that Varanese just wants to negotiate a fair payment for their losses. But if they didn’t name the Commonwealth actors as defendants, then they can’t invoke the governmental order which stopped Varanese from generating revenue at their sit-down restaurant. Every mediocre law student knows that without causation, you don’t have shit.
Otherwise, the story is not terribly interesting. It’s an example of the courts at work for people who have resources to pursue justice in a disinterested, objective manner. The collateral impact on human lives is not considered, nor does it need to be. Everyone is expected to continue as usual and work within the law, without being concerned that they are suffering potentially fatal losses to their livelihood.
Those fatal losses are financial losses. They are dollars. Not people. If the state doesn’t force businesses to avoid causing human fatalities, then plenty of people will continue on, business as usual. Plenty of people in the position to effect positive change in their communities will shrug and risk lives anyway. After all, how much is a dishwasher’s life worth? Varanese didn’t think it was worth enough to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour back in 2014, why would he be so worried about doing his part for his community to avoid spreading COVID -19 over a plate of brussel sprouts? The implication is that the black or brown person’s life who makes a living as a dishwasher isn’t worth very much. How much of that insurance claim, if they even get any, goes back to the workers doing the very difficult work of operating a restaurant?
The government was acting to reduce the death count from a global pandemic, which is plainly the right thing to do. It sure does read as crass (at best) to file this lawsuit as civil rights uprisings continue across the country in response to state-sanctioned murders of innocent Black people, like Breonna Taylor and David McAtee, here in Louisville, and George Floyd in Minneapolis, and thousands of others throughout our country’s history. Racism is so deeply rooted in our country that it fertilizes the very soil those Kentucky proud, farm fresh vegetables grow in and that Varanese overcharges you for. This is the system which allows businesses to chase down their insurance for allegedly wrongfully denied claims, while not affording others any recourse to harms visited upon them by the same, supposedly color-blind, system.
Other small businesses are feeding people for free, or adjusting by pivoting to new opportunities. To name a few: a neighborhood bar became a general store, a local jeweler re-tooled and began selling crystal-infused hand sanitizers, distilleries started cranking out alcohol for sanitizing solutions, and restaurants are now able to sell carryout margaritas. (Many thanks to the underappreciated government lawyer who made that happen.)
Others still are trying to read the room and see their white -privileged place in the fabric of violent-yet-polite white supremacy. Meanwhile, the Frankfort Avenue turducken fancier likely has a legitimate complaint for business losses against the insurance company. If it feels unimportant in the midst of the revolution of 2020, that’s because it is. The business marketplace will change, and hopefully the social landscape along with it.
