January 6th, 2009 A recent study conducted by the Conservation Alabama Foundation (CAF) has found that four of Alabama's largest cities contain highly polluted air, including high levels of benzene. Among the cities revealed to have hazardous air quality were: Birmi...
December 30th, 2008 California Labor Commissioner, Angela Bradstreet filed a lawsuit with the Superior Court of California, County of San Diego, Dec. 23, against Einstein Industries Inc. According to the lawsuit, the San Diego-based online healthcare and legal marketing comp...
December 29th, 2008 Five former employees of a Pittsburgh nursing home facility, Kane Regional Center’s Glen Hazel, were recently arrested for abusing an elderly patient. The five individuals were all charged with nursing home abuse and neglect. According to reports, ...
December 23rd, 2008 Last week the largest toymaker in the world agreed to pay a $12 million settlement to 39 U.S. states for shipping Chinese made toys containing unsafe amounts of lead. Discovery of Lead Tainted Toys The settlement comes as the result of a 15-month inves...
December 12th, 2008 Texas couple Jan and James Callihan filed a lawsuit against six petrochemical companies, claiming the products the defendants produce and distribute exposed James to unsafe levels of benzene. They allege this exposure is what caused James to develop acut...
December 10th, 2008 Texas woman Lois Robinson has filed an asbestos lawsuit against 33 corporations on behalf of her deceased husband, Warren Robinson. Lois claims that his asbestos-related disease and subsequent death was wrongfully caused by repeated and prolonged asbes...
December 3rd, 2008 A personal injury attorney in Illinois has filed a lawsuit against Virgil Calvert Nursing and Rehabilitation Center on behalf of a former resident, claiming she developed decubitus ulcers as a result of nursing home abuse and neglect. According to the la...
December 1st, 2008 A former inmate at the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Center in Idaho was awarded $3.6 million for injuries that were sustained to her infant during the birthing process at the center. Jaime Lysager claimed that because she was denied proper health ...
November 24th, 2008 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will begin a huge asbestos removal task at the 7.5-acre Big Tex site near San Antonio, Texas, where more than 100,000 tons of asbestos-tainted vermiculite were processed. The vermiculite was from the infamou...
November 24th, 2008 Norfolk Railway Company asked a judge to dismiss a Federal Employer’s Liability Act (FELA) claim brought against them, Nov. 6. Norfolk alleges the FELA claim is defective. Former Railroad Worker Injured on Job Former railroad worker, Anthony Cava...
November 20th, 2008 A child living in Pennsylvania was awarded $20.5 million in a medial malpractice lawsuit. The jury found that medical mistakes during the birthing process resulted in his cerebral palsy. Lawsuit Blames Cerebral Palsy on Doctor Mistakes According to the...
November 14th, 2008 The Oneida County Office Building in Utica, New York is the location of a recent asbestos scare, and the United Public Service Employees Union that represents the workers there has requested further testing for asbestos in the building. Asbestos-Contai...
November 13th, 2008 A Federal Employer’s Liability Act (FELA) trial should be underway this month as Madison County Circuit Judge Daniel Stack begins to select a panel of 12 jurors. Charles Moore filed the FELA lawsuit eight years ago against three defendant corporatio...
November 10th, 2008 Bright Steps Forward, a non-profit organization designed to raise money to send children with disabilities to Therapies 4 Kids clinics, announced its support for a new form of treatment for children living with cerebral palsy. New Oxygen-Based Cerebral P...
November 6th, 2008 A Couple living in Tennessee filed an asbestos lawsuit against 111 defendant corporations, claiming they are liable for the husband’s development of mesothelioma. Charles and Elizabeth Summey filed the lawsuit Oct. 29 following Charles’ diagn...
October 31st, 2008 Earth Research Laboratories, a Peekskill, New York-based company holding itself out as a licensed asbestos-testing firm is now under investigation by the State of New York. The owner of Earth Research Laboratories, Dominic Perruccio, was charged Oct. 27 ...
October 30th, 2008 Emily Wereschagin filed a civil lawsuit against The United Cerebral Palsy Association (UCP) and others for the wrongful death of her five-year-old daughter. Anyah Glossinger, a blind five-year-old girl with autism, died during her participation in a swim...
October 16th, 2008 A man living in New York faces 55 years in federal prison after being indicted for violating the federal Clean Air law. This is second time Paul Mancuso was indicted for illegal asbestos removal. In addition to illegal asbestos removal, Mancuso faces cha...
October 15th, 2008 Three-term Houston Mayor Bill White has recently found a creative way to try to force certain industries into making changes that would reduce their excessive benzene emissions – by interfering with the renewal of their operating permits. In Octo...
October 14th, 2008 A former caregiver was arrested Oct. 2 following a nearly year-long investigation of the death of an 80-year old resident of a senior living facility in Calabasas. Cesar Ulloa is also suspected of abusing three other elderly residents of the home. The in...
October 10th, 2008 A French newspaper, Liberation, recently reported that a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France complained that his Apple Mac Pro laptop emitted fumes that may contain benzene. The researcher, who wished to remain anonym...
October 1st, 2008 A man attempted to commit suicide in an UK courthouse after being convicted of assaulting an elderly woman at a nursing home where he worked. After hearing that he faced jail time and was found guilty, Thomas McKenna, 36, jumped over a 3-foot glass railin...
September 30th, 2008 A Florida woman received a $100,000 settlement after being fired from York County Pleasant Acres Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Mary Ann Gruzs claims she was wrongfully terminated from her job after speaking out about possible asbestos exposure. Laws...
September 26th, 2008 A woman living in Illinois filed an asbestos lawsuit on behalf of her husband who died of lung cancer. Lorena Gilmore claims her husband, Franklin Gilmore, was wrongfully exposed to the toxic carcinogen while working for the 74 defendant corporations. ...
September 19th, 2008 On Sept. 19, the mother of a Woodstock, Illinois nursing home resident filed a wrongful death suit on behalf of her son who allegedly died from a lethal dose of morphine. The former owners of the Woodstock Residence facility and two nurses were named as ...
September 18th, 2008 According to a recent study performed in Britain, antibiotics can increase the incidence of cerebral palsy in newborns if they are administered to mothers during a "typical" or non-premature labor. In fact, this study found that nearly three ti...
September 12th, 2008 Doug Satterfield is continuing a lawsuit against Alcoa, Inc., originally filed by his daughter, for wrongful third-party exposure to asbestos. The lawsuit claims that Amanda, Satterfield’s daughter, developed mesothelioma after being exposed to toxi...
August 28th, 2008 Four men won a race discrimination lawsuit against a Toyota dealership in Gladstone, Oregon. The verdict for $19 million was handed down by a federal jury this week. In 2006, Kent Paul, Marcus Arnold, Carlos Barfield and Jahaeel Hardy filed a lawsuit ag...
August 26th, 2008 A lawsuit was recently filed by a former signal maintainer for Norfolk Southern Railway against his employer. The suit claims the company failed to provide the plaintiff with a safe place to work. Worker Injured on Railway Timothy Gasper was rep...
August 21st, 2008 An Oregon family was awarded $48,000 for damages suffered as a result of mistaken cremation. The family of Pamela Grant, who died in February 2007 from a heart condition, filed a lawsuit against Holman Funeral Home and Oregon Crematory, claiming that Gra...
August 18th, 2008 Residents in Wildwood, which is a residential area outside of St. Louis, are concerned about the ongoing benzene problems. Some residents believe a local parcel of fields and woods should be developed while others believe the benzene problems lurking ...
August 12th, 2008 According to recent reports, dozens of nursing homes in Wisconsin have been cited for failing to properly care for their residents since 2005. The negligence at these homes was slowly discovered after more and more people were found with bruises, pres...
July 21st, 2008 A lawsuit was recently filed against Norfolk Southern Railway by a former employer who believes they violated the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA). The man states in his suit that his employer didn’t provide him with a safe working en...
July 15th, 2008 A San Jose woman was killed Saturday in a SUV rollover accident that happened in Colorado. The accident reportedly also claimed the life of a friend who was following the woman driving the SUV. Crash Details Verna File, 65, had driven from Calif...
June 27th, 2008 An environmental watchdog group in New Jersey recently issued a warning regarding excessive amounts of lead in artificial turf. The warning has reportedly been issued to some of the largest manufacturers and sellers of artificial turf throughout the c...
June 20th, 2008 An air monitor is reportedly set up to detect the level of harmful emissions being released from Citgo’s refinery. However, health officials are now questioning the accuracy of the monitor since the level changes depending on the direction of th...
June 16th, 2008 The daughter of a woman who recently died while living at the Loveland Good Samaritan Society has filed a wrongful death suit against the home for her mother's death. The victim was reportedly a resident at the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Soci...
June 13th, 2008 A disabled Arkansas woman will receive $250,000 from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for damages related to her 2003 termination from one of the company's Aberdeen stores, according to an announcement by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Not Willing...
May 12th, 2008 Officials in Tennessee have halted admissions at two nursing homes after finding various violations involving administration and patient security, among other things, a state press release said. Hillcrest West in Knoxville One of the facilities cited by...
April 21st, 2008 A Montana woman was recently awarded $5.3 million in a bad-faith insurance case involving Fireman’s Fund Insurance Co. The verdict is the largest of it’s kind in state history. Samantha Chilcote, a 32-year-old ecologist, suffered permanent br...
April 14th, 2008 A black woman who was fired from Union Pacific railroad after nearly eight years of employment has filed a lawsuit claiming the company discriminated against her because of her gender, race and physical disability. Kimberly Norman worked as a train dispa...
April 7th, 2008 A new area of law is emerging as animals increasingly gain legal standing as plaintiffs, beneficiaries, defendants, and trustees. In 2007, Leona Helmsley left her Maltese $12 million of her estate. Helmsley is not alone in her pet affection, however. Mo...
April 2nd, 2008 A lawsuit has been filed against an Albany supermarket chain over a data security breach that exposed over 4 million credit and debit card users. The lawsuit is seeking class action status. Three Month Breach Hannaford Bros. Co. said it has received ab...
March 18th, 2008 A San Francisco jury recently awarded $20 million in damages to a woman, who was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2006, and her husband. Joan and Daniel Mahoney sued asbestos manufacturer Georgia Pacific Corp. after she received the mesothelioma diagnosis...
March 17th, 2008 The number of Americans filing for bankruptcy is growing, even as changes in the law have made it more difficult and more expensive for people to file. According to Automated Access to Court Electronic Records, the number of bankruptcy filings as of Feb...
March 5th, 2008 The maker of the popular herbal supplement Airborne has agreed to settle a class action consumer fraud lawsuit for $23 million, according to the nonprofit advocacy group the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Deceptive Marketing Practices Airbo...
February 25th, 2008 A judge ordered the medical insurer Health Net Inc. to pay more than $9 million in damages to a woman after cutting off her coverage while she was being treated for breast cancer. Treatment Stopped Patsy Bates, a 52-year-old mother of two, had started ...
February 22nd, 2008 Testing in more than 500 FEMA trailers showed unhealthy levels of formaldehyde, a toxic chemical that could cause serious health effects such as respiratory problems and cancer. FEMA spent more than $850 million on 25,000 trailers and manufactured homes...
February 15th, 2008 The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently released a list of the nation’s 131 worst nursing homes in response to pressure from Democratic lawmakers to make the names of poor ranking facilities public. In November, the government relea...
February 14th, 2008 Stryker Corporation has recalled two Trident hip implant products because of manufacturing problems at the company’s Cork, Ireland plant. The recalled products include Trident PSL and Hemispherical Acetabular Cups. According to the voluntary recal...
February 7th, 2008 An Ohio woman was recently awarded $175K in a federal whistleblower case against her former employer, who was found guilty of fraud against the government. Fraud Against the Government Antoinette Menapace worked as a medical billing coder for Premier Me...
January 24th, 2008 Dannon Co. is being targeted in a proposed class action lawsuit over claims it misled the public about the health benefits of its “probiotic” yogurts. Company Boasts Benefits, Charges More According to the consumer fraud lawsuit, Dannon mou...
January 17th, 2008 A Denver man is suing Kroger Company and two of its divisions, claiming that he developed a rare lung illness linked to the artificial butter flavoring in microwave popcorn. “Popcorn Lung” Wayne Watson was diagnosed with bronchiolitis oblite...
January 11th, 2008 Sears, Roebuck & Co. is facing a consumer fraud lawsuit claiming that one of its websites compromised private customer information. The suit seeks class-action status and millions in damages. According to the complaint, the retailer’s Manage My Home webs...
January 7th, 2008 Two women have filed a lawsuit against American Airlines, claiming they were held aboard the plane for more than nine hours against their will. Seeking Class ActionKathleen Hanni and Catherine Ray want to obtain class-action status for their lawsuit. If ...
December 20th, 2007 The family of an Illinois man who died from asbestos-related mesothelioma was awarded $2.6 million in damages on Wednesday. The jury deliberated for only about four hours before delivering the multimillion-dollar verdict. John Watkins worked at Union Asb...
December 11th, 2007 Hundreds of thousands of Americans are currently awaiting resolution to their Social Security disability claims, and many of them are losing their homes, declaring bankruptcy, and even dying in the meantime. The Backlog The Social Security Administratio...
November 28th, 2007 After Hurricane Katrina left hundreds of thousands in Louisiana homeless, many turned to their insurance companies to cover their losses from the disaster. However, many homeowners found that whether or not they were backed by FEMA, they were still at ris...
November 13th, 2007 New tests show that FEMA trailers distributed to residents who lost their homes during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita contain excessive levels of formaldehyde, a toxic gas that can cause cancer and a number of other serious health effects. Of approximately...
November 6th, 2007 Four new lawsuits were recently filed in a New Jersey Superior Court against the now defunct Mercer Rubber Company. Plaintiffs in the cases claim that toxic waste from one of the company's sites caused their cancer or the cancer of their deceased loved on...
October 18th, 2007 The family of a boy who suffers from severe cerebral palsy because of injuries sustained during birth was recently awarded $26.5 million in damages by a Massachusetts jury. The award is one of the biggest medical malpractice verdicts in the state's histor...
September 19th, 2007 A $57 settlement reached in May between Sprint Nextel Corp. and former employees who claimed they were fired because of their age was deemed fair and reasonable by a federal judge last week. Forced Rankings The approval brings to conclusion a complex, ...
September 17th, 2007 A Virginia Supreme Court judge upheld a multimillion-dollar jury verdict in the asbestos case of a former Newport News shipyard employee who died of mesothelioma, a fatal asbestos-related cancer, in 2005. Garland F. “Buddy” Jones Jr. worked around asbes...
September 7th, 2007 A recent immigration ruling could create a serious logjam of millions of social security disability and retirement claims, according to Social Security Administration (SSA) officials. “No-Match” Letters David A. Rust, the agency’s act...
September 4th, 2007 A company that manufactures marine parts and valves for use on Navy and Coast Guard vessels recently resolved a qui tam claim for $7.5 million, according to a statement by the U.S. Department of Justice. “The settlement demonstrates our commitment to fe...
August 30th, 2007 Toys "R" Us, Inc. has recalled some 27,000 "Imaginarium" brand wooden coloring cases because of excessive lead in the ink on the outer packaging and in some of the black watercolor paint that is part of the product's art kit. The cases...
August 27th, 2007 New York state investigators have been using hidden video cameras to investigate allegations of neglect and abuse at nursing homes in the state, and the cameras are revealing significant instances of such criminal behavior on the part of staff and caregiv...
August 22nd, 2007 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) consider blood levels of lead under 10 micrograms per deciliter (mcg/dl) in children as being below the "level of concern," but many scientists criticize this standard as too lax. Medical evidence shows...
August 13th, 2007 Daniel Boulud, a native of France who is considered one of the finest chefs in the United States, has settled the employment discrimination lawsuit brought by eight employees in one of his New York restaurants. The suit charged that Asian and Hispanic emp...
August 6th, 2007 Nike will pay $7.6 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed in 2003 over claims of racial discrimination at the company's Niketown store in Chicago. According to the suit, racial slurs were used by managers to refer to black workers and customers....
August 2nd, 2007 Dora, Elmo, Big Bird, and Other Toys Made in China A worldwide recall of nearly one million plastic toys made by a Chinese vendor for Fisher-Price was announced today. The toys, sold between April and August of this year, may have paint that contains uns...
July 31st, 2007 Hundreds of thousands of workers across the country are awaiting hearings to appeal denied social security disability claims. The average wait for a hearing is 17 months, although in some parts of the country people must wait as long as 31. “People have...
July 30th, 2007 In 2006, the population of people over the age of 65 totaled more than 37 million and that number is expected to soar to 71.5 million by the year 2030, according to the Administration on Aging. As our population of aging increases, experts estimate that a...
July 25th, 2007 The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently ordered the Department of Veterans Affairs to pay retroactive benefits to Vietnam War veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange. The VA had fought for 16 years against paying benefits retroactively to veteran...
July 20th, 2007 A U.S. House hearing yesterday revealed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) refused to acknowledge dangerous levels of the chemical formaldehyde in some of the 120,000 housing trailers it provided to people who were evacuated from Hurrican...
July 19th, 2007 When the World Trade Center was destroyed by terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, about 10,000 "first responders" such as police, firefighters and rescue workers were on the scene immediately. Their exposure to toxic materials such as asbest...
July 18th, 2007 Over the past 30 years, the production of animals such as cows, pigs, and chickens for human consumption has become increasingly concentrated on factory farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). The people who live near factory ...
July 17th, 2007 The Attorney General of the state of 07. Instructions on how to determine whether an individual is eligible for restitution from this settlement and how to get paid the restitution are available from the Texas attorney general's office. Nationwide Settl...
July 10th, 2007 A program designed to accelerate the Social Security disability benefits process may soon become available across the United States. The Social Security Administration (SSA) announced today that it will publish a proposed extension of its new Quick Disabi...
July 6th, 2007 Thousands of immigrants in the United States are being defrauded by unscrupulous con artists, fraudsters operating from travel agencies, notaries, and individuals claiming to be immigration attorneys, with a surge of such scams reported since the recent t...
July 2nd, 2007 A Congressional report released today says that a third of the 17,000 nursing homes in the United States have been cited for abuse, and the number of nursing homes cited for abuse in 2000 was twice as high as the number in 1996. The percentage of nursing ...
June 19th, 2007 Extra funding to reduce the worse-than-ever disability claim backlog in the Social Security Administration (SSA) is the subject of a bipartisan push in the U.S. Senate. A June 15 letter was sent by a group of 43 of the nation's 100 senators to the Appropr...
June 13th, 2007 The Chubinski family of Illinois reached a settlement in their suit against Manorcare at South Holland Nursing Home regarding the death of their elderly family member. Suit Begins Because of Elderly Abuse Lottie Chubinski, 86, was brought to the nursin...
May 31st, 2007 The city of Milwaukee is suing a company that was the largest manufacturer of lead pigment in paint for $85 million to compensate the city for the millions of dollars it has spent on lead abatement. A trial against NL Industries Inc., formerly known as Na...
April 30th, 2007 A Cumberland County jury recently awarded more than $2 million in damages to the parents of a boy who alleged their son's brain damage and cerebral palsy was caused by medical neglect. Gerard and Linda Boullianne filed a medical malpractice lawsuit agai...
April 26th, 2007 The federal government's oversight of nursing homes and long-term care facilities in the U.S. in inadequate, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an investigative branch of congress. The report reveals that many U.S. ...
April 20th, 2007 An elderly man who claims a nursing home employee repeatedly punched and assaulted him has filed a personal injury lawsuit against the facility claiming they failed to protect him against the alleged abuse. According to plaintiff Earl Gates, the Evergre...
March 30th, 2007 An elderly victim of nursing home abuse has filed a lawsuit against a nursing home claiming it was negligent in the hiring and supervising of a janitor with a history of sexual abuse. Violet Tilloston's suit against South County Nursing and Rehabilitati...
March 21st, 2007 Several lawsuits have recently been filed in West Virginia's Kanawha Circuit Court over exposure to asbestos. Insufficient Training and Equipment Claimed Charles Kinder's suit names as defendants 59 corporations, including Ohio Valley Insulating Compa...
February 27th, 2007 A woman has won a $60 million jury verdict in a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the insurance company that formerly employed her. Kelly Grant filed the lawsuit against Progressive Insurance Company over what she claims happened to her during her e...
February 26th, 2007 An 83-year-old woman who had to have her leg amputated because of infections she acquired at a nursing home has filed a lawsuit against the home's operators. The Lawsuit The suit claims that the home failed to feed Barbara Brison on 88 different occas...
January 29th, 2007 An elderly former nursing home resident has filed a lawsuit over the alleged abuse and neglect she experienced during her two-month stay. In the lawsuit, Rose Capriotti claims that during the time she was staying at the Prairie Manor Nursing & Rehab...
December 22nd, 2006 Truckers and motorists nationwide have filed a class action lawsuit against 17 big oil companies and other oil retailers, accusing them of engaging in deceptive practices against consumers According to the consumer fraud suit, filed in San Francisco U.S...
August 4th, 2006 The Environmental Protection Agency has completed its mandatory 10-year review of all pesticides used in the United States and is recommending limits on pesticide use based on their adverse health effects. Certain pesticide ingredients have long been su...
August 1st, 2006 The children of an Oregon couple killed in an aviation accident last year have filed a lawsuit against the pilot''s estate seeking more than $2 million in damages. Art and Jean Pogrell, 68 and 64-years-old respectively, died on May 24, 2005 when their p...
July 27th, 2006 A class action consumer fraud lawsuit against a number of major credit and debit card companies, including Visa and MasterCard, was tentatively settled yesterday for $336 million. The lawsuit claimed that the companies took advantage of unwitting consum...
July 25th, 2006 A California court of appeals ordered Ford Motor Company to pay a jury award of $82.6 million to a woman left paralyzed after a rollover accident in 2002. In June 2004, Benetta Buell-Wilson and her husband were awarded $369 million, including $246 milli...
July 18th, 2006 The city of Tempe, Arizona, announced on Friday that it has reached a settlement with nine former Public Works employees who won a racial discrimination case against the municipality last year. On June 30, 2005, a jury awarded the employees $2.4 million...
July 17th, 2006 The co-pilot of an airplane that crashed nearly two years ago in Montrose, West Virginia, has filed a negligence lawsuit against the manufacturer of the aircraft, its owner, and the charter company. Eric Sloan Wicksell is one of three survivors of a fat...
July 7th, 2006 A Louisiana jury awarded $5 million to the widow of a former contract worker at ExxonMobil’s Baton Rouge plant who died of mesothelioma – a rare cancer caused by asbestos exposure. James Terrance worked as a contractor at the company’s ...
July 5th, 2006 A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, shows that the insecticide DDT causes mental and physical impairments in babies whose mothers were exposed to the banned chemical. Researchers examined 360 pregnant women...
June 29th, 2006 A new study has shown that long-term, low-dose exposure to pesticides increases the risk for developing Parkinson''s disease by 70 percent. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health examined lifestyle data provided by 143,000 participants of th...
June 27th, 2006 Transcripts of cockpit conversations of a Southwest Airlines plane that crashed in December killing a 6-year-old boy went public yesterday at a hearing conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board. Investigators are hoping that the cockpit conv...
June 13th, 2006 A lawsuit brought by a former welder who claims that he suffers tremors from exposure to welding fumes has raised a serious and intriguing question: Do welding fumes cause neurological diseases like Parkinson''s? Ernest G. Solis, a 57-year-old Corpus Ch...
June 12th, 2006 A Dally county jury awarded $13.5 million to the family of a man who died from exposure to asbestos as a child. Timothy Shawn Bostic was diagnosed with mesothelioma – a rare form of cancer caused by asbestos exposure – in 2003. He died later that year a...
June 7th, 2006 The Institute of Medicine released a report yesterday revealing evidence that links asbestos to cancer of the voice box, or larynx. Asbestos, a fibrous mineral formerly used for insulation, has long been linked to various other cancers, including lung c...
June 2nd, 2006 An Oklahoma jury awarded a couple nearly $13 million dollars in a class action lawsuit against State Farm Fire & Casualty Company for intentionally denying or underpaying claims. Donald and Bridget Watkins were among a number of families whose homes we...
April 27th, 2006 A Florida state jury awarded more than $25 million to the family of a pilot killed in a midair collision after finding an air-traffic control operations company liable for the crash. Steve Ross, the pilot of a Cessna plane heading north to Boca Raton fr...
April 20th, 2006 On Wednesday, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued new rules designed to deal with more understated forms of racial discrimination in the workplace, which has been an ongoing problem in the United States. The new guidelines do not mod...
March 23rd, 2006 Today, the National Academy of Sciences reported that fluoride in drinking water can cause severe damage to the teeth and bones. The study also indicates that federal standards fail to protect Americans from these serious risks. The deliberate addition ...
March 20th, 2006 In Ruth v A.O. Smith Corp., a welder sued two welding rod manufacturers, alleging their product was hazardous and they failed to adequately warn employees of the potential dangers of manganese fumes. At 32 years of age, Ruth was diagnosed with manganism...
March 20th, 2006 The Court of Appeals in New York, ruled in February that undocumented workers in the state are entitled to compensation including future lost wages for injuries suffered on the job, as are citizens of the United States or immigrants with work permits. T...
March 1st, 2006 Recent reports indicate the presence of two ingredients found in popular children''s drinks that mix together to form the cancer-causing chemical benzene. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) sent a request to the Food and Drug Administration yesterday a...
February 28th, 2006 After more than a decade of indecision, The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced yesterday the new limits on workplace exposures to the deadly metal, hexavalent chromium, causing much controversy among consumer activists and...
February 27th, 2006 The chromium industry reportedly withheld important research information, which supports a lower federal workplace exposure level for the deadly metal, hexavalent chromium. After dodging the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration''s (OSHA) a...
February 24th, 2006 Paint manufacturers Sherwin-Williams Co., NL Industries Inc. and Millennium Holdings LLC continue to see their stocks drop after they were found liable in a Rhode Island court for poisoning kids and creating a public nuisance. Spokesman for the Rhode Is...
February 22nd, 2006 The Food and Drug Administration re-opened an investigation into benzene contaminated soft drinks when recent tests identified levels of benzene in some soft drinks were up to five times the legal limit for drinking water. Benzene, a poisonous chemical ...
February 15th, 2006 The $140 billion industry-funded asbestos trust fund bill was temporarily defeated on Tuesday with a 58 to 41 vote by the Senate Judiciary committee. The bill''s strong proponents—namely the industry and big business interests—believe this defeat is jus...
February 10th, 2006 The residents of Laurel Garden housing subdivision in Hazelton, Pennsylvania are concerned about their safety following the leak of at least 50,000 gallons of gasoline from the underground storage tanks of four eastern Pennsylvania gas stations. The fum...
January 31st, 2006 USG Corp., the world''s largest wallboard manufacturer, has reached a settlement regarding asbestos claims made against their company. The company has agreed to allocate a $900 million cash fund for those injured in an asbestos related incident, in additi...
January 20th, 2006 The Jennifer Matthew Nursing Home will be officially closed in 90 days due to mounting evidence of serious negligence and abuse towards the residents. Families of residents complied with requests to add security cameras throughout the nursing home to inve...
January 18th, 2006 A study performed by French scientists has inferred an evident link between exposure to pesticides and childhood acute leukemia. While there were previous concerns regarding the link between pesticide exposure and leukemia, the study sought to examine chi...
January 11th, 2006 Employees of a German bank in New York City have filed a sex discrimination lawsuit seeking about $1.4 billion in damages. The suit accuses Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein Securities LLC of knowingly engaging in sexual discrimination in its...
January 4th, 2006 The US Federal Department of Labor has announced that a full investigation into the Sago Mine disaster has already begun, including inquiries regarding the misstatements by some officials about the fates of the trapped miners. Some officials announced tha...
January 3rd, 2006 While the nation waits to hear about the fate of some 13 coalminers trapped in a West Virginia mine some 260 feet underground, serious allegations about the safety of the mine have been uncovered. The Sago Mine had 208 federal safety violation citations i...
December 16th, 2005 Details are emerging about the December 8, 2005 Southwest Airlines crash at Midway Airport in Chicago that point to several factors as a cause of the tragic accident that left one 6-year-old boy dead and several others wounded. National Transportation S...
December 12th, 2005 Ronald Stearney Jr., the attorney for the parents of a 6-year-old boy who was killed after a plane ran off the runway and into his parent''s car, is asking the general public for their assistance in the ongoing investigation. Stearney is compiling witness...
December 7th, 2005 HealthGrades, a company devoted to tracking nursing home quality, said in its latest report that U.S. nursing homes are not showing much improvement in the way residents are being treated. According to the Colorado based company, problems causing harm ...
December 6th, 2005 A Federal Employers'' Liability Act (FELA) suit has been filed in the U.S. District Court in East St. Louis, Illinois alleging Illinois Central Railroad (ICR) failed to provide Anthony Lynch of Clinton, Ill. with a safe place to work. The FELA suit was ...
November 28th, 2005 Among the many checkups required during prenatal care, pregnant women should also be adding dental care to the list. According to researchers at the University of Chile in Santiago, after studying 870 pregnant women with gingivitis who were at low risk ...
November 14th, 2005 The US Department of Justice says that it seeks to sue Southern Illinois University over three graduate fellowships for minorities. The US government says that the fellowships violate Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. School officials h...
November 4th, 2005 Thousands of South Korean patients applied to take part in research with a worldwide stem cell center that hopes to cure diseases like paralysis and damaged spinal cords with its cloning technology. The more than 2,600 applicants are volunteering skin ce...
October 25th, 2005 There are reports that India is considering breaking drug maker Roche’s patent on the influenza drug Tamiflu in order to ensure that the country and others are stocked against what officials worry could turn into an avian flu epidemic. The World Trade Or...
October 24th, 2005 Four Denver area janitors have filed a federal lawsuit against the Durango School District in an unlawful firing based on racial discrimination. The four, ex-employees of Escalante Middle School, claim that they lost their jobs due to racial, rather tha...
October 21st, 2005 Three St. Louis, Missouri nursing homes, two of their executives, and their management company have settled in a lawsuit and have agreed to pay out $1.25 million in an abuse and Medicaid/Medicare related fraud case. The US government, in federal court,...
October 20th, 2005 Michael Jermain Bolling, 20, a nursing home caretaker in Berlin, Maryland has been charged with second-degree sexual offense, third-degree sexual offense, unnatural perverted sex practice and vulnerable adult abuse this past Tuesday. Mr. Bolling, a re...
October 20th, 2005 The 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled illegal immigrants injured on the job are entitled to workers’ compensation benefits regardless of their legal status. In a case involving coffee roaster Farmer Bros. Co., which had tried to deny workers’ compens...
October 20th, 2005 Wal-Mart, currently dealing with the biggest class-action lawsuit in US history, has agreed to pay out a $25 million fund going toward women and minority owned business ventures. The payment is widely regarded as a reaction by the world’s largest retaile...
October 18th, 2005 An Illinois woman is suing Petco for selling a very sick cat. The woman, Courtney Anderson, got a cat from an Oak Lawn, IL Petco store when a clerk informed her that they were giving cats away because they had too many. She took a female cat she named...
October 17th, 2005 Serono Laboratories, the Swiss drug maker, has agreed to pay the US Justice Department $704 million in the third largest health care fraud settlement in US history. The drug manufacturer also admitted to wrongdoing in its repeated offers of trips and oth...
October 5th, 2005 Three dieters who failed to lose weight when they underwent TV personality Dr. Phil’s diet “Shape Up!” are now suing the popular star. Dr. Phil’s diet plan has been discontinued. The three dieters are hoping to expand their lawsuit from a fraud clai...
October 3rd, 2005 In the first national study of its kind, findings by sociologists from Rice University and University of California Irvine suggest racial discrimination is a major cause of poor health for American blacks. The study was published in the September issue...
October 3rd, 2005 In 2003, the Wall Street Journal reported on a carefully crafted experiment in which college students posed as job applicants at 350 employers, and the results indicated racial discrimination is still very present in the U.S. The two college stude...
October 3rd, 2005 A civil suit has been filed by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against a Vermont Pizza Hut franchisee. The suit alleges that the recent firing of a 13-year store veteran with Down syndrome was unwarranted. The lawsuit follows the firing a...
September 30th, 2005 The Supreme Court of Iowa ruled that participants in a 1939 study are free to sue the University of Iowa, even though the study in question was held 66 years ago. The study was part of a controversial stuttering experiment conducted by then graduate stud...
September 29th, 2005 NHL Players Association has settled with former Buffalo Sabres hockey star Rob Ray for $70,000 in back lockout stipends. No teams in the NHL played during the 2004-5 season due to a strike by the organization. As part of the strike, players were receivi...
September 29th, 2005 Equity/Fort Lewis Communities LLC, a private housing provider for the US military has agreed to demands in a discrimination lawsuit. The suit was filed by seven families and the equal rights group Parents Against Disability Discrimination. The lawsuit s...
September 23rd, 2005 Gay-rights activists and their lawyers are suing the state of Oregon over a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. The amendment, added last year, nullified about 3,000 same sex marriages that took place in April of 2005 after the state bega...
September 22nd, 2005 Swiss biotech company Serono recently admitted wrongdoing and will pay about $700 million dollars to the US. The company was under investigation for fraud relating to its AIDS drug Serostim. Serostim is a hormone used to prevent the physical decay o...
July 26th, 2005 A nationwide report has found that pesticide use in or near U.S. schools have sickened more than 2,500 children and school employees over a five-year period. Even though most of the illnesses were mild, the number of people adversely affected by the pe...
June 6th, 2005 The Supreme Court ruled in a narrow 5-4 decision in a victory for disabled rights advocates that international cruise lines sailing in U.S. waters must provide better access for passengers in wheelchairs, expanding the scope of a landmark federal disabili...
April 8th, 2005 Enron Corp. has tentatively agreed to settle ERISA lawsuits over employee pension fund claims. Enron is the energy trader whose 2001 collapse resulted in corporate governance and accounting changes. Under the proposed agreement, Enron would allow a ...
April 3rd, 2005 Many people have heard of the small town of Libby, Montana, but their rise from obscurity has been anything but enjoyable. Within the valley of 10,000 at least 200 people have died breathing asbestos and federal health authorities say another 2,000 or ...
March 20th, 2005 There are many misconceptions regarding workplace injuries and what is covered by workers’ compensation. Compensation systems are set up to provide workers with wage reimbursement and medical benefits to ward off lawsuits filed against employers, and...
March 19th, 2005 The use of vinyl has become one of the most commonly used forms of siding in new construction in the U.S. Its popularity has been in response to its low maintenance, affordability, resistance to fading and the wide array of color choices, but it might b...
March 18th, 2005 Plastics that contain the No. 3 symbol are made from polyvinyl chloride. Used for hundreds of everyday consumer products, polyvinyl chloride is the most toxic plastic in production, use and disposal by far. In an alarming new report, the Center for Hea...
March 18th, 2005 A suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, charging Krispy Kreme executives “failed to manage prudently and loyally” the assets of the retirement plans “by continuing to offer the plans’ assets in the company’...
March 17th, 2005 Conseco Inc., a Carmel, Indiana based insurer, has agreed to pay $10 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed by employees alleging violations of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) for stock losses related to the company’s 2002 ban...
March 16th, 2005 Two Wauconda Township, IL families have sued the owners of a landfill after trace amounts of a toxic, carcinogenic chemical was found in their well water. Lake County Health Department tests discovered 1 ½ years ago that trace amounts of vinyl chlor...
March 15th, 2005 The 2000 Firestone/Bridgestone debacle, that resulted in a recall of 6.5 million tires after more than 200 people were killed and hundred injured, gave a little indication of what information about possible safety defects was available, but this informati...
March 9th, 2005 In 1995, utility workers were digging in the AMCO Chemical site across the street from a children’s playground in the Oakland, CA neighborhood. Trails of vinyl chloride and other toxic chemicals were discovered in the soil at the AMCO property and in sh...
March 3rd, 2005 A new study conducted by researchers at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Xavier University of Louisiana and SUNY ESF has discovered a possible new primary cause for lead poisoning in children living in cities. In the past, lead ...
March 3rd, 2005 The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the manufacturer of 2.8 million charms, Hirschberg Schutz & Co. Inc., have announced the products sold in craft stores in recent years under the name “Charming Thoughts” is being recalled because of le...
February 16th, 2005 The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced the paint on the buttons of about 6,700 denim jumper sets contain excessive lead levels, posing a lead poisoning hazard to children. HIS International is recalling the 6,700 denim jumper set...
February 16th, 2005 A lead poisoning bill has advanced through the Indiana Senate receiving bipartisan support with a vote of 48-0. The legislation is intended to ensure more Indiana children are protected from the dangers of lead poisoning, which can include learning d...
February 11th, 2005 The federal Environmental Protection Agency directed a renewed cleanup of the former Superfund site for the past year in response to residents’ concerns that hazardous materials were still presenting health risks. The site is where Ford dumped lead-b...
February 10th, 2005 Public Citizen consumer group’s President Joan Claybrook issued a statement in response to the Senate’s passing of class action legislation. According to Claybrook, the U.S. Senate has now given banks, credit card companies, insurers, HMOs, drug manufa...
February 10th, 2005 The American Sleep Apnea Association says that more than 12 million Americans suffer from sleep apnea, with conservative estimates that 10 million remain undiagnosed. Sleep apnea is dangerous because it can be deadly if left untreated. Allowing sl...
February 9th, 2005 Asbestos is naturally occurring with six different types of magnesium silicates that exist as bundles of tiny fibers. The vermiculite mine W.R. Grace & Co. in Libby, Montana makes it one of the most heavily contaminated towns. The kind of asbestos tha...
February 3rd, 2005 The FDA has granted approval to a medication for people with advanced forms of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PH). Iloprost is to be marketed as Ventavis, designed as an inhaled solution for people diagnosed with being in stage II or IV pulmonary hyp...
February 2nd, 2005 A Senate panel will hear testimony today on how silicosis would affect the proposed national asbestos injury trust fund. Silica is another toxic substance that American business groups are worried could lead to the next asbestos. The fears of po...
February 1st, 2005 A group of asbestos defendant companies and insurers declared its opposition to a Senate proposal curbing asbestos claims in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter. The letter dated January 28 warned that industry groups workin...
January 29th, 2005 In recent years, the use of Viagra has been discovered by scientists to help treat pulmonary hypertension. In animal studies, Viagra is able to keep the heart from overworking and relaxes smooth muscle in the lung blood vessels. Viagra’s maker, Pfiz...
January 27th, 2005 Elder abuse cases do not just involve physical abuse or neglect but also financial exploitation. An estimated five million U.S. seniors are victims of monetary exploitation, physical abuse or neglect every year, excluding the 84 percent of elder abuse ...
December 24th, 2004 News Year''s celebrations are often accompanied by firecrackers to ring in the new year, but lighting up the skies may be creating toxic effects. Firecrackers consist mainly of fine toxic dusts that can easily enter the lungs and result in especiall...
December 15th, 2004 A study of more than 30,000 women has shown older women who combine two popular blood pressure drugs, diuretics with calcium channel blockers – among the most frequently prescribed drugs for high blood pressure- may be raising their risk of death. Th...
December 15th, 2004 Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned and first fell ill in September. According to new tests, they reveal Yushchenko had more than 6,000 times higher than normal level of dioxin in the blood. The level of dioxin in his body is...
December 15th, 2004 Perchlorate has been found in an estimated four percent of U.S. water systems as of 2003, creating a major controversy over what should be done. Though perchlorate occurs naturally, the majority of the drinking water contamination has been linked to roc...
December 15th, 2004 A Florida clinic bought unapproved toxin from a California laboratory, according to federal documents, which was intended for anti-wrinkle injections. The shots left four people paralyzed with botulism. The suspended clinic doctor, Bach McComb, who ...
December 14th, 2004 After following a report from Parliament''s health select committee released in October, New Zealand''s government has apologized to Vietnam veterans for their exposure to Agent Orange and other defoliants from more than 30 years ago. The October re...
December 6th, 2004 Swiss engineering firm ABB was surprised when a U.S. court rejected the group''s proposal to settle what could be potentially disastrous asbestos claims. This marks a major setback for the company, and ABB has cancelled an offer to exchange two of its ...
December 3rd, 2004 Researchers are now saying that even small amounts of exposure to the chemical benzene can have dangerous health effects. Scientists have known that workers exposed to high doses of benzene have an increased risk of developing leukemia, but up until this ...
November 18th, 2004 According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the backyard burn barrel, a regular fixture in rural life, is now the largest quantifiable source of dioxin emissions in the country. The burning, according to Arkansas'' Western River Valley Solid W...
November 9th, 2004 When people hear about nursing home abuse it is common to think of the abuse as being physical. In addition to physical abuse, elders also suffer emotional abuse and sexual abuse. Any type of non-consensual sexual contact with an older person is considere...
November 9th, 2004 Marsh & McLennan Cos. has announced it will cut about 3,000 jobs, roughly five percent of its worldwide staff. The job cuts are in response to expected declines in revenue, according to Marsh. After New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed an Octobe...
November 3rd, 2004 During the winter months, many people will start trying to heat up their homes. Wood burning stoves has become a more popular way of providing heat, but there are ways of preventing creosote buildup by burning a hot fire for 15 to 30 minutes. In addition...
November 3rd, 2004 Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a rare disorder that strikes mostly women in the prime of their lives. The disorder elevates the blood pressure in the artery between the heart and lungs and usually proves to be fatally within three years of the o...
October 28th, 2004 Since minority and low-income children are more likely to live in pre-1978 housing containing lead-based paint, they are disproportionately affected by lead poisoning. Even at low levels, lead exposure has been shown to affect a child''s ability to le...
October 25th, 2004 In 2003, St. Louis officials vowed to eliminate lead poisoning in children by 2010 after finding more than 30 percent of St. Louis children tested in 2000 had elevated levels of lead in their blood. Seven times the national average, St. Louis children...
October 21st, 2004 After a two year old boy began to bubble at the mouth and fall into fits of a seizure, the boy was discovered to have severe lead poisoning from peeling paint in their Wayne County, Michigan apartment. Just over a year after the boy nearly died, the W...
October 20th, 2004 Corporate Airlines Flight 5966, an affiliate of American Airlines, was on a regular route from St. Louis to Kirksville, Mo. when it crashed just short of the airport, killing at least eight people aboard. Just two known survivors with only broken bone...
October 19th, 2004 A new drug, the first doctors claim is proven to treat patients with mesothelioma, is now available in Australia. Though a cure for mesothelioma is yet to be found, the new drug can offer some pain and symptom relief. Called pemetrexed, the mesotheliom...
October 19th, 2004 The EPA will begin cleanup of the W.R. Grace plant next week to remove a dangerous from of asbestos called vermiculite that has been present in the area for decades. The cleanup is expected to last at least a month. Asbestos contamination has been i...
October 14th, 2004 Federal prosecutors, environmental officials and state regulators are investigating several water utilities across the country to see if criminal or environmental laws have been broken misrepresenting the lead levels in the drinking water. The U.S. at...
October 5th, 2004 The Labor Department''s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has forged hundreds of agreements with companies and business associations to improve their safety records while rulemaking has been drastically shortened. OMB Watch, a nonpr...
October 4th, 2004 Ohio became the first state to require medical criteria be met before an asbestos lawsuit can be filed. Taking effect September 2, the asbestos ruling requires a plaintiff provide medical evidenc e proving asbestos exposure was a substantial factor for hi...
October 4th, 2004 Public Citizen has issued a report finding American businesses file four times as many lawsuits as individuals represented by trial attorneys and are penalized by judges more often for pursuing frivolous litigation. The survey of case filings in two sta...
October 3rd, 2004 According to an Oklahoma based disability and elder rights advocacy group, 39 registered se x offenders live in Ohio nursing homes. Employee background checks have been mandated by Ohio since 1998, but evidence shows not all checks will weed out sexual ab...
September 26th, 2004 Intermodal transportation has been a part of the distribution landscape since the 1950s. After the interstate highway system was built, the railroad industry believed the interstate gave truckers an unfair advantage by giving them a right of way supported...
September 25th, 2004 A man diagnosed with asbestosis filed the first asbestos lawsuit in 1966, but the dangers of asbestos were not fully recognized until the late 1970s. Asbestos was widely used, with the mineral''s sturdy, fire-resistant, pliable fibers found in industries ...
September 22nd, 2004 The national census of fatal occupational injuries in 2003 report was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. Included in the report was a total of 5,559 fatal work injuries recorded in the U.S. in 2003, a slight increase fr...
September 18th, 2004 The program director for the Nursing Home Ombudsman Agency of the Bluegrass said that about one in every 100 complaints received involves sexual abuse. Representing more than 5,000 residents of Kentucky nursing homes in 17 counties, this number may be jus...
August 31st, 2004 The first Congress attempt to mandate a standard for SUV rollover protection was in the mid-1980s right after SUVs began to grow in popularity. The auto industry has been able to block any SUV rollover standard thus far, though pressure for congressional...
August 29th, 2004 Pressure treated wood using arsenic, an effective poison for hundreds of years, was used in deck construction for many years but is no longer sold for residential use. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned most uses of arsenic as a pesticide in...
August 19th, 2004 According to new preliminary research, a connection between benzene emissions from gas stations and auto repair shops may quadruple the risk of leukemia in children. Though the study''s authors caution against over interpreting the results there is a clea...
August 12th, 2004 Up to an estimated seven million people have their identities stolen every year and new scams are constantly surfacing and ripping people off. One of the latest online scams is known as "phishing" and its incidence is rising dramatically. Users will recei...
July 30th, 2004 OTC, prescription or herbal supplements can cause secondary hypertension The August 2004 issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter discusses secondary hypertension, a less common high blood pressure that can occur and leave suddenly. People are surpri...
July 28th, 2004 A pediatric neurologist at the School of Medicine and director of the Cerebral Palsy Center at St. Louis Children''s Hospital has started a comprehensive care plan for cerebral palsy patients involving sports, physical fitness and strength training. The g...
July 27th, 2004 Half of all Americans that are currently 65 years or older will be admitted to a nursing home at least once. With the largest population of Americans being baby boomers, the number of nursing home occupants is only expected to increase. Of the nation''s 1...
July 22nd, 2004 Since the late 1960s, the number of asbestos deaths in the U.S. has continued to climb in numbers and is expected to keep increasing through the next decade, according to the government. Though government regulations in the 1970s reduced the use of asbes...
July 17th, 2004 Boeing Co. has agreed to pay up to $72.5 million to settle a sexual discrimination lawsuit representing 29,000 current and former female employees at its Seattle area facilities. Four years after the sexual discrimination class action lawsuit was filed, ...
July 15th, 2004 Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has proposed to create a $140 billion industry financed fund to pay victims exposed to asbestos. Frist originally brought the asbestos bill to the Senate floor in April and was denied because his proposed $124 billion fun...
July 13th, 2004 Morgan Stanley has agreed to settle a sexual discrimination case for $54 million instead of facing trial. The second largest settlement that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has reached with a company it has sued and the first major settlem...
June 23rd, 2004 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has reported toxic chemical pollution from factories, power plants, and other industrial facilities rose in 2002 for the first time in five years. According to an environmental group, the EPA estimates of a f...
June 23rd, 2004 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that for the first time in five years toxic chemical pollution from factories, power plants, and other industrial facilities increased in 2002. According to an environmental group, the EPA has drasti...
June 22nd, 2004 p>As many as 1.6 million current and former female employees of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. may be represented by the class action lawsuit that was certified by a federal judge for sex discrimination. The largest private civil rights case in U.S. history, the su...
June 7th, 2004 A San Diego County jury awarded $369 million to a woman left paralyzed when her Ford Explorer rolled over, marking one of the largest personal-injury awards ever against an automaker. Benetta Buell-Wilson was awarded $246 million in punitive damages...
June 2nd, 2004 A $12 million lawsuit filed yesterday against Home Depot alleges racial and gender discrimination and harassment at the home-improvement chain. Six black women who worked in human resources at various Home Depot stores, mainly on Long Island and...
May 24th, 2004 According to EPA estimates, increase in pollution will result in $1.7 billion toll in higher public health costs, amounting to 230 deaths a year, 720 admissions to hospitals and emergency rooms, 18,000 asthma attacks, and 20,000 respiratory symptoms among...
May 14th, 2004 A drug usually prescribed for arthritis has shown a marked effect on the asbestos-related cancer malignant mesothelioma in lab and animal experiments, according to a report from Italy. The COX-2 inhibitor Celebrex has been shown to stop mesothelioma...
May 11th, 2004 Many Americans carry toxic pesticides in their bodies at rates above government assessed "acceptable" levels, says a report released today by Pesticide Action Network North America (PAN). The report is the first publicly available analysis of pesticide-...
May 5th, 2004 The New York State Senate and Assembly have introduced the first Worker''s Compensation reform bills in over a decade that would increase benefits for injured workers. If the bill passes, it will improve benefits for thousands of UFT members who are most...
April 30th, 2004 By 2030, baby boomers will become the retiree majority. With the nursing home abuse problems occurring today, the future has a lot of uncertainties about their long-term care. The crisis that is expected to come will be interesting because baby boomers ar...
April 20th, 2004 Workers at a plant that manufactured building insulation were unknowingly exposed to asbestos, and various agencies are now trying to determine if the exposure has damaged their health. From 1950 until it closed in 1988, W.R. Grace Co. plant in St. ...
April 16th, 2004 People with diagnosed asbestos-related diseases often suffer greatly in the time leading up to their deaths. Incurable diseases like mesothelioma can make it almost impossible to breathe, complicating even the simplest tasks. In the past few decades, asbe...
April 8th, 2004 An undercover insurance fraud sting at auto body shops resulted in the arrests of 32 people last week, including 11 shop owners in Sacramento, Yolo and San Joaquin counties. Two prominent Sacramento County shops were involved: Senator Ford in the Fl...
April 5th, 2004 Last week, Texas resident Alana Bowman reached a cash settlement with the manufacturer of a once popular diet pill. Bowman, 57, claims she contracted primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH) as the result of taking Pondimin, a diet drug linked to Fen-Phen, f...
April 2nd, 2004 A recent study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that the number of U.S. workers killed in pick up truck accidents nearly doubled in the decade between 1992 and 2002. Contrary to findings that show work-related car accidents on ...
March 23rd, 2004 "Illinois Nursing Home Fined $20,000 for Tormenting Residents" The state of Illinois fined a nursing home $20,000 after learning that elderly patients had been tormented by employees who used fake blood, imitated barking dogs, and failed to stop a p...
March 22nd, 2004 California''s state environmental officials have submitted a study proposal to the EPA that calls for 150 people, mostly students, to wear portable air monitors and keep detailed activity diaries in an attempt to measure daily exposure to naturally occurr...
March 22nd, 2004 The widow of a former shipyard worker who died of asbestos-related mesothelioma was awarded $10.4 million in damages on Wednesday by a Newport News jury. Wanda Jones filed the wrongful death lawsuit against three manufacturing companies after her husban...
March 11th, 2004 Public Citizen invited the Chamber of Commerce President to a debate after calling Chamber of Commerce advertisements inaccurate and misleading. The consumer group finds the methodology for calculating the cost of lawsuits to be flawed and questions why t...
March 8th, 2004 Tests for lead contamination conducted by the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority (WASA) found that EPA testing may have some serious flaws. The severity of lead contamination in the water in the District of Columbia implies that other cities may have undi...
February 27th, 2004 Every year, thousands of American children are diagnosed with cerebral palsy, although in most cases the cause remains unknown. A recent study conducted by a Chicago gynecologist has yielded evidence that cerebral palsy is caused by a preventable infectio...
February 23rd, 2004 In 2002, a jury awarded $625,000 to a railroad employee who contracted asthma from inhaling diesel fumes while working as a locomotive engineer. The trial against Norfolk Southern Corp. was considered the first case of its kind in the country. There had n...
February 10th, 2004 "Mental Facility Investigated for Alleged Sexual Abuses" Several Oklahoma state agencies have announced that they are investigating allegations ranging from assault to rape at the Hugo Health and Rehabilitation Center. The latest alleged v...
February 9th, 2004 Babies and children with certain types of cerebral palsy can learn to use their neglected arms through an intensive form of therapy originally intended for adult stroke victims, a new study has found. Constraint-induced movement therapy requires pl...
February 4th, 2004 "State Requires Nursing Homes to Create Solutions to Violent Situations" More than 1,000 nursing home residents in Massachusetts are attacked by other residents, according to statistics collected by the state. In response to a recent study of Ma...
February 2nd, 2004 Over a thousand workers at Yucca Mountain were exposed to toxic dusts for several years in the 1990s, before the Energy Department installed effective health protections. A number of workers have since reported medical problems that they believe resulted ...
January 30th, 2004 A recently published study reports that the levels of iron, manganese, and chromium within the New York City subway system are more than 100 times higher than on the city''s streets. The particles are released into the air by the grinding of subway ca...
January 23rd, 2004 The Air Force recently conducted a study that found an increased risk of prostate cancer and melanoma in Air Force veterans of the Vietnam War who were exposed to the chemical defoliant Agent Orange. The study found a cancer incidence that was 1.46 to 2.3...
January 20th, 2004 Low-tar cigarettes do not carry a lower risk of lung cancer than other types of cigarettes, according to the results of the first study to compare lung cancer among those who smoke ultra-light, mild, and medium filtered cigarettes. The results of the ...
January 19th, 2004 Twelve employees of a nursing home in Northern San Diego County were arrested for elder abuse and neglect on January 8, according to local news reports. The indictment, issued by the Attorney General''s Office, addresses a complaint involving the tr...
January 15th, 2004 A recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) survey of 15 large brokerages shows that 13 of them appeared to give preferential treatment to fund companies from whom they received financial compensation. Techniques ranged from featuring the funds ...
January 13th, 2004 The importance of monitoring daily manganese intake is essential in reducing the risk of suffering dangerous effects. Since manganese is contained in many supplements and medications, consumers should be aware of how much manganese they are ingesting. The...
January 13th, 2004 A Wisconsin nursing home was cited with 11 federal deficiencies and placing residents in immediate jeopardy and providing substandard care, in addition to the two state citations it received. The fine against the nursing home was recommended by the st...
November 28th, 2003 A Mississippi nursing home resident has been awarded $800,000 in compensatory damages after the nursing home was accused of nursing home abuse and nursing home neglect. The Mississippi nursing home was shut down last month and ...