Legionella & Infectious Disease

The firm represents hotels, resorts, property owners and managers, condominium and homeowners associations, pool and spa contractors, maintenance companies, and other businesses in claims involving Legionnaires’ disease, Legionella exposure, and other alleged infectious-disease exposures.

J. Marcos Martinez, Senior Partner in the firm’s Miami office, serves as Chair of the Legionella & Infectious Disease Defense Practice Group. Marcos has defended major hotel chains in state and federal litigation involving alleged Legionnaires’ disease outbreaks and coordinates the firm’s strategic approach to environmental investigation, governmental records, specialized experts, medical causation, and alternative-source exposure analysis.

Claims involving Legionella present unique challenges because the identification of the bacteria—or even a confirmed diagnosis of Legionnaires’ disease—does not necessarily establish where, when, or how an individual was exposed. Successful defense therefore requires an early investigation focused not simply on whether Legionella was detected, but on whether reliable scientific and epidemiological evidence actually connects the claimant’s illness to the defendant’s property or operations.

Our Legionella & Infectious Disease Defense Group combines premises-liability defense with medical causation, epidemiology, microbiology, environmental investigation, water-management practices, and expert testimony.

Early Investigation and Rapid Response

Legionella claims can develop quickly following a reported illness, positive environmental sample, governmental investigation, or alleged outbreak. Evidence may change or disappear as water systems are flushed, disinfected, repaired, tested, or placed back into normal operation.

Our attorneys work with clients and appropriate consultants to promptly identify and preserve potentially important evidence, including:

• water-management plans and maintenance records;
• temperature and disinfectant records;
• pool and spa maintenance and chemical logs;
• plumbing and building-system records;
• prior environmental testing;
• remediation and treatment records;
• contractor and vendor records;
• guest, resident, maintenance, and service histories;
• governmental and public-health records; and
• potentially relevant electronic communications and electronically stored information.

Where appropriate, we coordinate the early involvement of microbiologists, epidemiologists, infectious-disease physicians, environmental consultants, engineers, water-management professionals, and other specialized experts.

Challenging Exposure and Causation

A central issue in many Legionella cases is source attribution.

Legionella is an environmental bacterium capable of existing in numerous natural and man-made water systems. A claimant may have encountered multiple potential sources during the relevant incubation and exposure period.

Our defense strategy therefore includes developing a detailed exposure timeline covering the claimant’s movements and potential water exposures before the onset of illness.

Depending upon the facts of the case, the investigation may include hotels and other lodging, residences, hospitals and medical facilities, workplaces, pools and spas, cooling towers, fountains, showers and plumbing systems, and other potential aerosolized-water exposures.

The presence of Legionella at a property does not, standing alone, establish that the property caused a particular infection. We scrutinize whether the claimant can scientifically connect the alleged exposure to the diagnosed illness and whether microbiological, epidemiological, temporal, and environmental evidence supports that conclusion.

Alternative-Source Investigation

We do not limit the investigation to the location identified in the complaint.

Our attorneys develop evidence concerning the claimant’s activities and travel during the medically relevant period and evaluate alternative potential sources of exposure. This can include obtaining medical records, travel and lodging information, employment records, credit-card and transaction records where appropriate, witness testimony, and governmental or public-health information.

Where the evidence permits, alternative-source analysis can undermine an assumption that a diagnosed infection necessarily originated at the insured’s property.

Medical and Epidemiological Causation

Legionnaires’ disease litigation frequently involves substantial underlying medical issues. Age, smoking history, immune status, pulmonary disease, hospitalization, medications, and other conditions may affect susceptibility, disease severity, prognosis, and claimed damages.

Our attorneys work with appropriate medical and scientific experts to evaluate:

Diagnosis. Whether the medical evidence reliably establishes Legionnaires’ disease or another alleged infectious disease.

Timing. Whether the alleged exposure and onset of symptoms are consistent with the medically accepted incubation period.

Source attribution. Whether sufficient evidence connects the claimant’s infection to the defendant’s premises or operations.

Microbiological evidence. Whether clinical and environmental testing supports—or fails to support—a common source.

Epidemiology. Whether the evidence reflects an actual outbreak or cluster and whether the epidemiological evidence supports the claimed source.

Alternative causation. Whether other exposures, medical conditions, or intervening events provide competing explanations for the claimant’s illness or damages.

Hotels, Resorts and Hospitality Properties

We represent hotels and hospitality businesses facing claims involving guestrooms, showers, hot-water systems, pools, spas, fountains, cooling systems, and other building water systems.

These matters may involve substantial business and reputational concerns in addition to litigation exposure. We therefore work with clients to coordinate the defense while addressing governmental investigations, environmental testing, remediation evidence, document preservation, and potential claims involving multiple guests.

When multiple alleged cases arise from the same property, we evaluate whether the evidence actually supports characterization of the incidents as a common-source outbreak rather than assuming that multiple illnesses establish common causation.

Condominium and Property-Owner Defense

Condominium associations and property owners can face claims involving common plumbing systems, pools and spas, cooling towers, fountains, and other shared water systems.

Our attorneys examine contractual responsibilities and the respective roles of associations, property managers, maintenance companies, plumbing contractors, pool contractors, water-treatment vendors, and other entities.

This frequently permits us to identify important allocation, contractual-indemnity, additional-insured, tender, and comparative-fault issues early in the litigation.

Pool and Spa Contractor Defense

Pool and spa contractors may become targets following an alleged Legionella exposure even when their contractual responsibilities were limited.

We analyze the contractor’s actual scope of work, maintenance obligations, chemical-treatment responsibilities, testing procedures, service records, and the responsibilities retained by the property owner or assigned to other vendors.

The distinction between ownership of the premises, control of the water system, and the contractor’s actual contractual scope can be critical to establishing the appropriate allocation of responsibility.

Government and Public-Health Investigations

Legionella matters frequently involve records or investigations from state and local health departments and other governmental agencies.

Our attorneys seek the complete investigative record rather than relying solely upon conclusions contained in summaries or reports. Depending upon the matter, this can include laboratory information, sampling locations, testing methodologies, communications, inspection materials, epidemiological information, timelines, and information concerning other potential exposure locations.

We evaluate governmental findings independently and, where appropriate, challenge attempts to transform public-health precautionary conclusions into proof of legal causation.

Expert and Daubert Strategy

Legionella litigation can become expert-driven litigation.

Our attorneys scrutinize the methodology underlying opinions concerning source attribution, epidemiology, microbiology, environmental sampling, incubation periods, water-system management, and medical causation.

Where appropriate, we pursue Daubert and other evidentiary challenges to opinions that improperly infer individual causation from environmental detection, temporal association, incomplete epidemiological evidence, or methodologies that do not reliably connect the claimant’s infection to the defendant.

Damages and High-Exposure Claims

Severe Legionnaires’ disease can result in hospitalization, respiratory complications, long-term impairment, or death. We therefore evaluate damages and medical causation independently from liability.

Our defense includes analysis of preexisting conditions, subsequent medical events, claimed permanency, life-care projections, future medical expenses, economic-loss claims, and wrongful-death damages.

For catastrophic cases, the firm’s litigation and trial teams can develop the case from initial investigation through expert discovery, dispositive motions, mediation, and trial.

A Defense Built Around Science and Causation

The existence of an illness does not establish its source. The detection of a microorganism does not establish individual causation. And the occurrence of an illness following a hotel stay, condominium residence, pool visit, or other property exposure does not by itself establish negligence.

Our approach is to reconstruct the evidence from the beginning:

What organism caused the illness? Where could exposure have occurred? When could exposure have occurred? What does the microbiological evidence establish? What does the epidemiology establish? Who controlled the relevant system? What obligations did each defendant actually undertake? And can the plaintiff reliably prove that this defendant caused this infection?

Those questions form the foundation of our Legionella and infectious-disease defense strategy.