Veterans home workers sue over ‘no-mask’ rule during pandemic

The judge said a jury must decide whether the anti-mask rule crossed a line into an intentional wrong. Employees who worked at the New Jersey Veterans Memorial Home at Menlo Park in Edison, N.J., filed a lawsuit in superior court over a masking ban enforced by the nursing facility during a COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. The deaths of more than 100 patients at Menlo Park and another state-run nursing home for veterans were linked to the pandemic. (Ed Murray, NJ Advance Media for NJ.com/TNS) A New Jersey court has cleared health care workers to sue a state-run veterans’ home that banned masks during a fatal COVID-19 outbreak. Forty-two employees or their family members have filed a complaint in Middlesex County Superior Court, alleging that management at the nursing home in Menlo Park, N.J., barred workers from using critical personal safety equipment in 2020 and threatened them with discipline when they questioned the policy or disobeyed.

Judge Glenn C. Slavin said a jury must decide whether the anti-mask rule crossed a line into an intentional wrong. A trial date is set for Sept. 21. The state of New Jersey has already paid more than $52 million to settle lawsuits brought by the families of 200 residents who died during a COVID-19 outbreak at state veterans’ homes in Menlo Park, Paramus and