You Did Everything Right. You Got COVID Anyway.
You wore the mask. You stayed home. You did what the Premier told you to do. And in Melbourne, in July 2020, you caught COVID-19 anyway. Then your mother caught it. Then your partner caught it. Then your father was on a ventilator in a hospital bed while a lockdown kept you from sitting beside him. He died alone. The Premier called the surge the “second wave.” For five years, no one has explained to you how a virus that was supposed to be kept inside a hotel got into your kitchen, your car, your mother’s hospital room. We can show you.
What follows is for the Victorian who lost a parent, partner, or sibling in 2020 and has never had a lawyer call them back. It is for the Melbourne worker who spent two months in hospital with COVID pneumonia and still cannot climb the stairs in their own home without sitting down. It is for the security guard who took a job at a quarantine hotel because the work was there, and who brought the virus home to their family without ever being told how the disease moved through the building they were paid to watch. And it is for the small-business owner who closed on government orders, lost a year of revenue, and watched the Premier later admit in a board of inquiry that the program was never built to do what it was supposed to do.
This page is about the Melbourne hotel quarantine failure. It is about who can be sued, what the evidence shows, what your rights are under Victoria’s Wrongs Act 1958, and how long you have to act. Nothing on this page is legal advice for your specific case — it is the foundation you need to decide whether to call us.
The Government Knew — Or Should Have Known — That the System Could Fail
“Full responsibility for infection control lay with the Authorised Officers who were brought in from various government departments.” — Source involved in hotel quarantine, public statements to the Coate Board of Inquiry
That single sentence is the spine of the case against the State of Victoria. The government did not merely operate the hotel quarantine program — it designed it. It selected the hotels. It chose the contractors. It drew the boundaries of the “green zones” that were supposed to keep workers safe from infected guests. It drafted the infection-control protocols. And then, when the system failed, it spent months blaming security guards for behaving badly — before admitting, under oath, that the guards had never been trained.
The same inquiry heard that:
- The “green zone” where staff, security guards, and nurses were told they were safe may not have been adequately designed to prevent cross-contamination.
- Authorised Officers seconded from Parks Victoria and the state’s Environment Department were withdrawn by their management because of workplace health and safety fears — meaning the government itself knew the program was unsafe before the second wave escaped.
- Subcontractor security providers, including Wilson, MSS, and Unified, were hired at short notice with no requirement that the guards be trained in infection control.
- Department managers in DHHS (the Department of Health and Human Services) and DJPR (the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions) were emailing each other about the dangers while the public was still being told everything was under control.
The infection didn’t escape because a guard did something unforgivable. It escaped because a government program was built in days by people who had never built anything like it before, on a foundation of private contractors who had never been told what they were protecting against. That is not a moral failing of one security guard. It is a system failure at every level of government, and the law has a name for that: negligence.
The Defendants: Who Can Be Held Accountable for the Second Wave
This case has four defendant classes. The law treats them differently, and the right answer in your case may include any combination of them.
Rydges Hotels & Resorts (Event Hospitality & Entertainment Ltd.)
Rydges operated the Swanston Street hotel where patient zero worked. As the employer of the night duty manager who first tested positive, Rydges owed a workplace-safety duty to its own staff under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic). It also had a contractual duty to the State of Victoria to run a safe quarantine environment. The company’s parent is Event Hospitality & Entertainment Ltd. (formerly Event Hospitality & Entertainment Limited), a publicly listed Australian company. The hotel brand on the sign is the deep pocket, not just the local franchise.
Unified Security (and Wilson Security, MSS Security)
Unified Security was the subcontractor that supplied the seven security guards at Rydges, five of whom tested positive within days of patient zero. Wilson Security and MSS Security were the subcontractors at the Stamford Plaza. None of these guards received infection-control training before being deployed into close contact with returned travellers from countries where the virus was already rampant. The corporate parents of these firms, where they exist, sit behind the local contracting entities. The defence will argue the guards were independent contractors doing the State’s job — the law has a specific answer to that argument under the Wrongs Act 1958 and the doctrine of vicarious liability for negligence in the way the work was assigned.
Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS Victoria)
DHHS was the department with statutory responsibility for infection control in the quarantine program. Authorised Officers from DHHS were on-site at the hotels. DHHS set the infection-control guidelines that were supposed to keep workers safe. When those guidelines were inadequate, DHHS had a direct operational duty to the workers and — derivatively — to the public who became infected because those guidelines failed.
Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions (DJPR Victoria)
DJPR was the department that managed the hotel contracts. It chose the hotels. It chose the security subcontractors. It paid the bills. The Board of Inquiry heard directly that DJPR officials were making operational decisions about the program without consulting DHHS infection-control experts. That is the textbook definition of an operational failure — not a policy failure — and it is the distinction that allows the Crown to be sued.
The Crown Liability Wall: Suing the Victorian Government for the Second Wave
The single biggest obstacle in any COVID-19 quarantine case is the State’s sovereign immunity — the legal doctrine that says a government cannot be sued for the way it governs. The State of Victoria will file this defence in every case, and they will file it first.
The defence has two parts, and the difference between them is the entire case.
Policy decisions are decisions about what the government should do — whether to have a quarantine program at all, whether to use hotels instead of dedicated facilities, whether to allow international arrivals during a pandemic. The State has broad immunity for these decisions because they are political choices made by accountable officials. Under section 62 of the Wrongs Act 1958 (Vic), a public official is not personally liable for an act or omission that is, in substance, a policy decision.
Operational decisions are decisions about how to implement those policies — which hotels to contract, which security firms to hire, how to design the green zones, how to train the workers. The State does not have immunity for these decisions because they are administrative choices that the law treats like any other decision by any other defendant.
The Coate Board of Inquiry heard directly that DJPR officials made operational decisions about the program without consulting DHHS infection-control experts. That finding is the fulcrum of the case against the State. It is the difference between a decision the courts will treat as protected policy and a decision the courts will treat as actionable negligence. If the State had immunity for what happened at Rydges, the Board of Inquiry would have been pointless. The Coate findings are admissible in civil litigation to show what the State’s own officials knew, when they knew it, and what they failed to do about it.
The Crown Solicitor’s Office will still try to claim immunity. Our job is to walk the trial judge through the operational record — the emails between departments, the withdrawn Authorised Officers, the training records that don’t exist — and show that the failures were operational, not policy. We have done this work before in Australian mass-tort litigation against government defendants. It is hard, but it is not impossible. It is the law’s way of holding the State to the same standard of care it imposes on everyone else.
Your Deadline Is Already Running: Statute of Limitations for COVID-19 Quarantine Claims
Under the Limitations Act 1958 (Vic), the general rule is that a personal-injury claim must be commenced within three (3) years of the date the cause of action accrued. For wrongful-death claims, the three-year period runs from the date of death.
For COVID-19 hotel quarantine cases, the dates that matter are:
- For wrongful-death claims: three years from the date your family member died. If your parent died in August 2020, the limitation period expired in August 2023 — and a case filed now may already be out of time. Do not assume your case is too late before you have asked a lawyer. The discoverability rule may extend the period in circumstances where the link between the hotel quarantine failure and the death was not reasonably knowable at the time of death.
- For personal-injury claims (long COVID, lost income, ongoing health effects): three years from the date of injury. For injuries that did not become apparent until later — as is common with long COVID and post-viral syndromes — the limitation period may run from the date the injury was discovered, not the date it was incurred. This is the discoverability doctrine, and it is critical for COVID cases where symptoms emerged months or years after the initial infection.
- For claims against the State of Victoria: special procedural rules apply. Notice requirements under the Wrongs Act 1958 (Vic) Part IV may require formal notification to the State before a claim can proceed. Failure to give notice can defeat an otherwise valid claim. If the State is your defendant, this notice step must happen before limitation expires.
Time has run, or is running, on the earliest cases. The 2020 second wave and the deaths it caused are now between five and six years old. For many families, the three-year limitation period for a wrongful-death claim filed in 2020 or 2021 has already expired. If you have not yet spoken with a lawyer, the first phone call is the one that tells you whether you still have a viable case. That call is free.
What the Government Is Trying to Hide: The Evidence Clock
In any COVID-19 quarantine case, the evidence that wins or loses the claim lives in places that have a shelf life. By the time most families pick up the phone, the proof has already started to disappear.
Genomic sequencing data — high importance, high durability. The Doherty Institute’s genomic work — which definitively linked the second wave to the Rydges outbreak — is published, peer-reviewed, and durable. It cannot be quietly destroyed. This evidence is in the public domain.
Internal DHHS and DJPR emails — high importance, subject to FOI and document retention. The emails between officials that show what was known, when, and what was done about it are subject to the State’s document-retention obligations under the Public Records Act 1973 (Vic) and the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Vic). These records can be subpoenaed in civil litigation. The State cannot destroy documents once litigation is anticipated.
Hotel swipe-card and CCTV data — critical, life of weeks. This is where the case lives or dies. Hotel security systems overwrite on a rolling cycle — commonly thirty to sixty days. By the time the Board of Inquiry was publicly examining the Rydges outbreak, much of the CCTV footage that would have shown exactly which staff were exposed to which guests on which days was already gone. For any case filed today, the remaining hotel records are those that have been subpoenaed and preserved by the Board of Inquiry or by individual litigants. The Court’s document-preservation orders apply forward from the date of filing.
Unified Security training logs — medium importance, fragility depends on contractor. Training records for the security guards are critical evidence: the absence of training is itself the proof of negligence. Unified Security’s internal records are within its control. Once litigation is commenced, a preservation order prevents destruction. If you were one of the guards, your own training records may still be obtainable directly from your former employer.
Board of Inquiry testimony — published and durable. The Coate Inquiry’s public hearings and final report are public records. They contain testimony from officials, contractors, and witnesses that is admissible in subsequent civil litigation as admissions against the parties who gave the evidence.
The first move in any COVID-19 quarantine case is a preservation letter. That letter goes out the day we are retained. It freezes the email systems. It demands the training records. It identifies the CCTV retention window. By the time you have read this page, that letter may already be late for some records — but the records the State and the contractors hold can still be saved, and that is where the case will be won.
What Your Case Is Worth: Damages in a COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine Case
The dollar value of a COVID-19 quarantine case depends on the category of harm. The categories, with honest ranges based on Victorian personal-injury and wrongful-death precedent, are:
Wrongful death of a primary income earner (working-age adult, with dependants). Loss of future earnings (discounted to present value), loss of superannuation and benefits, loss of household services (a Victorian life-care planner quantifies the economic value of childcare, cooking, repairs, and home management that the deceased performed for free), loss of parental guidance for children, loss of consortium for the spouse, and funeral and associated expenses. Settlements in this category in Victoria typically range from $750,000 to several million dollars depending on age, income, and the number of dependants.
Wrongful death of a retired person. Loss of financial support (smaller), loss of household services, loss of consortium, and the pecuniary value of the deceased’s life — what economists call “hedonic damages.” Settlements in this category typically range from $300,000 to $1 million.
Long COVID and ongoing health effects. Loss of past and future earning capacity, cost of future medical care (respiratory, cardiac, neurological), cost of ongoing psychological care, cost of any home modifications required, and pain and suffering damages for the permanent loss of function. The range depends entirely on the severity and prognosis. Mild long COVID might support a six-figure settlement; severe long COVID with permanent organ damage can support seven-figure recovery.
Loss of income during lockdown for a worker or small business. Loss of past income directly caused by the lockdown that was made necessary by the quarantine failure. Where the link between the lockdown and the quarantine failure can be established (and the Board of Inquiry established it directly), this category supports a recovery.
Aggravated and exemplary damages. Where the defendant’s conduct shows a high-handed disregard for the safety of workers and the public — as the Coate Inquiry found — Victorian courts can award aggravated damages. Where the conduct is sufficiently reprehensible, exemplary damages may be available.
The total exposure for the State, Rydges, and Unified Security across all known and anticipated cases is in the high nine figures. Individual cases range from tens of thousands of dollars for the mildest long-COVID claims to multiple millions for the most serious wrongful-death and catastrophic-injury cases. There is no upper limit imposed by the Wrongs Act 1958 on the size of damages that can be awarded in a properly pleaded case.
What To Do In The First 72 Hours After You Realise the Hotel Quarantine Failure May Have Caused Your Loss
If you are reading this and you have not yet spoken with a lawyer, the next three days matter. Here is what to do, in order.
Day 1 — Preserve everything you have. Pull together the death certificate, the medical records, the funeral invoices, the hospital discharge summary, the long-COVID clinic notes, the income records. Photograph them. Scan them. Email them to yourself at a non-work address. The records you keep now are the records you will need later.
Day 1 — Do not delete your social media or your texts. The defence will subpoena them. Do not give them a reason to argue you destroyed evidence.
Day 1 — Do not sign anything from the State of Victoria, from Rydges, from Unified Security, or from any insurance carrier. If you receive a letter or a call, take notes, do not respond substantively, and tell us about it before you reply.
Day 1 — Call us. Free consultation. 1-888-ATTY-911. We will tell you, in plain English, whether you have a case and what your next step is. If you have a case, we will send preservation letters the same day. If you do not, we will tell you that too — we have no interest in taking a case we cannot win.
Day 2 — Write down what you remember. Your recollection of events is evidence. A contemporaneous note of what happened, when, who told you what, where you were when you learned your family member was sick — that note, dated and signed, will be admissible. Write it now, while the memory is fresh.
Day 2 — Locate any other family members who may be co-claimants. Wrongful-death claims in Victoria are brought by the estate and by certain family members (spouse, domestic partner, children, in some cases parents). All eligible claimants should be identified before filing.
Day 3 — Do not speak with reporters without counsel. Media interest in COVID-19 quarantine cases is high. Statements to the press can be used by the defence in ways you do not expect. Talk to a lawyer first.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to file a COVID-19 hotel quarantine claim in Victoria?
Under the Limitations Act 1958 (Vic), the general rule is three (3) years from the date the cause of action accrued — from the date of death for a wrongful-death claim, and from the date of injury (or the date the injury was discovered) for a personal-injury claim. For deaths during Victoria’s second wave in 2020, the three-year period has already run or is running very short. If you have not yet spoken with a lawyer, call us today — we need to check whether the discoverability doctrine or the special notice rules for claims against the State of Victoria give you additional time. The call is free.
Can I sue the Victorian Government for the second wave?
Yes — but you will have to defeat a sovereign-immunity defence. The State will argue that the decisions complained of were protected policy decisions under section 62 of the Wrongs Act 1958 (Vic). We will argue, with the support of the Coate Board of Inquiry record, that the failures were operational — that DJPR made administrative decisions about which hotels to use, which contractors to hire, and how to design the work zones — and that operational decisions are not protected by immunity. Suing the State is harder than suing a private defendant, but it is not impossible — and the Wrongs Act 1958 explicitly applies to public officials.
Who can I sue if I caught COVID-19 during Victoria’s second wave?
Potentially the State of Victoria (through DHHS and DJPR), Rydges Hotels & Resorts (as employer of the staff and operator of the premises), Unified Security (and the parent entities of Wilson Security and MSS Security at the Stamford Plaza), and any other private contractor whose conduct contributed to the failure. In practice, the case will be built around two or three defendants at most. Our job is to identify the defendants with both the legal duty and the financial capacity to pay a judgment.
What is the difference between policy and operational decisions in Victorian government liability?
A policy decision is a high-level choice about what the government should do — whether to have a quarantine program at all, whether to use hotels instead of purpose-built facilities, whether to allow international arrivals. These decisions are protected by immunity under section 62 of the Wrongs Act 1958. An operational decision is a choice about how to implement that policy — which hotels to contract, which security companies to hire, how to train the workers, how to design the green zones, how to supervise the work. These decisions are not protected and can give rise to liability. The Coate Inquiry findings establish that the failures at Rydges were operational, not policy.
Can I join a class action over the Melbourne hotel quarantine failure?
A group proceeding is the most likely procedural structure for these cases. The number of affected Victorians — 15,863 infected and 275 dead — makes individual prosecution of every case impractical. The Victorian Supreme Court has existing group-litigation provisions, and a representative proceeding under Part IVA of the Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 (Cwth) is also possible. You can join an existing proceeding, or you can start one. We will tell you, on the first call, which structure is right for your situation.
How do I prove where I caught COVID-19 if the source can never be identified?
You do not need to prove the specific viral particle came from a specific guard. The law requires that the defendant’s negligence be a substantial cause of the harm — not the sole cause, and not proven to scientific certainty. The Doherty Institute’s genomic sequencing, published in peer-reviewed journals, established at a population level that the second wave was traceable to the Rydges and Stamford Plaza clusters. Combined with the dates and locations of your exposure, the timing of your infection, and the epidemiology of the outbreak, the causal link is provable to the standard the law requires. The defence will argue causation is uncertain. Our answer is that the Doherty Institute’s work has already answered that question.
What damages can I recover for long COVID from hotel quarantine?
You can recover economic damages (lost past and future earnings, lost earning capacity, cost of future medical care, cost of psychological care, cost of any home modifications) and non-economic damages (pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of consortium) for the period your long COVID persists. Where the long COVID is permanent and disabling, future-care plans developed by a qualified life-care planner will quantify the lifetime cost. Victorian law does not impose a statutory cap on general damages for catastrophic injury — though the Wrongs Act 1958 contains threshold and other procedural provisions that can affect recoverable amounts in less-severe cases.
What if I lost a family member to COVID-19 during Victoria’s second wave?
You may have a wrongful-death claim under Part IV of the Wrongs Act 1958 (Vic). Eligible claimants are the estate of the deceased and certain family members (the spouse or domestic partner, the children, and in some cases the parents). Damages include loss of financial support, loss of household services, loss of parental guidance for minor children, loss of consortium, and funeral expenses. The earlier you act, the better — many of the earliest cases are now at or past the three-year limitation period.
What if I was a frontline worker — security guard, nurse, hotel staff — who got COVID?
You have an additional set of rights under Victorian workplace-safety law. The Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic) imposes a non-delegable duty on employers to provide a safe working environment. If your employer failed to train you, failed to supervise you, failed to provide adequate PPE, or failed to design a safe work zone, you have a claim under that Act as well as a common-law negligence claim under the Wrongs Act 1958. WorkSafe Victoria investigated the hotel quarantine program for potential criminal charges under the OHS Act. The fact pattern in many of these cases is exactly what WorkSafe Victoria was looking at.
What about claims against insurance carriers directly?
Some policies issued to the State of Victoria, to Rydges’ parent company, and to the security contractors include communicable-disease coverage or statutory-liability cover. Where insurance exists, it does not eliminate the underlying liability — it is a coverage dispute between the defendant and its insurer. The right to sue the wrongdoer does not depend on whether an insurance policy will pay.
Can I afford to bring a case against the State of Victoria and a publicly listed hotel company?
Yes. Our fee structure is contingency: 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. We advance the costs of litigation — filing fees, expert reports, barristers’ fees, document retrieval. We do not get paid unless we win. If you lose, you owe us nothing for our time or for the costs we advanced. The first consultation is free. There is no risk in calling to find out whether you have a case.
What if I am a non-resident of Victoria — or a resident who has since moved interstate or overseas?
Victorian personal-injury and wrongful-death law applies based on where the injury occurred or the death happened — not where the claimant lives now. If your family member was infected and died in Victoria, the Wrongs Act 1958 and the Limitations Act 1958 of Victoria govern, regardless of where you live today. The case can be filed in Victoria, and we can coordinate with Australian counsel in the relevant jurisdiction.
What if the State of Victoria says it has already settled some claims?
The State has indicated, at various points, that it has made certain ex-gratia payments or settlements to particular categories of affected workers. Those settlements are typically confidential, typically capped, and typically do not cover the full measure of damages available under the Wrongs Act 1958. If you have accepted a settlement from the State, you may still have additional claims against Rydges, the security companies, or other defendants. If you have not accepted anything, you retain all of your rights. Either way, the first conversation is free and confidential.
Will this case actually go to trial?
Most mass-tort cases against the State of Victoria resolve before trial — through mediation, through structured settlement negotiations, or through court-supervised settlement processes. The Coate Inquiry’s public record has made the State’s exposure visible, and the State has every incentive to resolve claims rather than risk a series of public trials in which its operational failures are laid out in detail. Whether your case settles or goes to trial depends on the seriousness of the harm, the strength of the evidence, and the defendants’ assessment of their exposure. We prepare every case as if it will go to trial — that preparation is what produces settlements. Watch Ralph Manginello discuss what to expect after a serious injury.
Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. Texas-licensed catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death firm. 24+ years in business. 27+ years of courtroom experience for the managing partner. Contingency fee representation. Hablamos Español. Free consultation. 1-888-ATTY-911. No fee unless we win. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.