ECBAWM, along with Public Citizen Litigation Group, represents eleven law professors with expertise in civil procedure and federal courts in an amici curiae brief filed in Derrick Palmer, et. al v. Amazon, Inc, et al in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

In Palmer v. Amazon, the plaintiffs allege that defendants Amazon.com, Inc. and Amazon.com Services, LLC (collectively, “Amazon”) failed to comply with New York State health and safety requirements during a deadly pandemic. The lower court granted Amazon’s motion to dismiss, ruling that “pursuant to the doctrine of primary jurisdiction,” the plaintiffs were required to seek relief through the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and not the courts.

The law professors, who hail from New York University School of Law, City University of New York School of Law, University of Texas School of Law, George Washington University Law School, New York Law School, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Wake Forest University, University of Alabama School of Law, and Georgetown University Law Center, filed their brief in support of defendants’ appeal of the decision to dismiss.

The district court erred in dismissing “state-law claims arising from the defendants’ allegedly unsafe working conditions,” by relying “on an expansive conception of primary jurisdiction that finds no warrant in the precedent of the Supreme Court or in this Court,” the professors explained in the brief. The professors request that the Second Circuit reverse the lower court’s decision with respect to the application of the primary jurisdiction doctrine.

ECBAWM partner Debbie Greenberger represents the amici curiae law professors.