A Massachusetts state trooper who was shocked with a Taser during a training demonstration has filed a lawsuit against the Arizona-based company. In the lawsuit, the trooper claims the shock bent a surgical screw in his leg causing pain, suffering and a reduction in pay. The lawsuit seeks $1 million in damages.
Many World Trade Center responders who worked at Ground Zero in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks still suffer from lung ailments years later, researchers report. According to a study conducted by Mount Sinai Medical Center, more than 24 percent of 3,000 responders tracked showed signs of abnormal lung function between 2004 and 2007. The study appears in the journal Chest, published by the American College of Chest Physicians.
A 2008 study suggesting a link between the industrial chemical trichloroethylene, also called TCE, and Parkinson’s disease might have been enough for 53-year-old Ed Abney to finally receive worker’s compensation benefits. However, it was not. Abney’s case highlights a widening conflict between science and law that prevents many workers from receiving payments for workplace-related injuries.
The family of a New York man who was trampled to death the day after Thanksgiving by a stampede of bargain hunting Wal-Mart shoppers has filed a wrongful death lawsuit.
The family also filed notice that Nassau County, on Long Island, and its police department will be sued.
The lawsuit against Wal-Mart and the Long Island mall where it is located was filed Wednesday in state Supreme Court in the Bronx on behalf of Elsie Damour Phillipe. Phillipe is the sister of victim Jdimytai Damour (DHMEE’-tree Di-MOHR’), and is the court-appointed administrator of his estate.
Damour, a temporary worker hired for the holiday season, was crushed to death when some 2,000 customers stormed into the Valley Stream store.
None of the defendants in the lawsuit immediately responded to requests for comment.
A California judge has approved a $48 million award to a Union Pacific worker who was left paraplegic in an on-the-job accident. The plaintiff sought damages against Union Pacific under the Federal Employers Liability Act. A spokesman for Union Pacific said the company would seek judicial review of the judgment.
Lawyers for The federal government and a private laboratory argued, in a lawsuit over the anthrax death of a supermarket tabloid photo editor, that thave no duty under state law (Florida) to protect the public from lethal materials.
Oral arguments on the issue came at the request of a federal appeals court trying to decide whether the lawsuit should go to trial.
Robert Stevens died Oct. 5, 2001, after being exposed to anthrax. It was in an envelope mailed to the offices of American Media Inc.. His wife, Maureen Stevens, sued the government and Battelle Memorial Institute, a research company in Columbus, Ohio, alleging they were a source of the anthrax strain that killed her husband.
Investigators have been unable to determine who sent the anthrax or how it was obtained.
Justice Department attorneys argued that there is no way their clients could foresee the material would be used as a terror weapon because it had never happened before.
The facilities use anthrax to develop countermeasures and drugs to protect against or treat it, the lawyers said.
Since Stevens’ death, four other people have died – two workers in a Washington, D.C., postal facility that received mail containing the bacteria and two women in Connecticut and New York City whose source of exposure has not been determined.
Stevens’ lawyer argued such high-risk materials are an exception to the special relationship rule and that its potential misuse should have been obvious.
The Supreme Court did not indicate when it would rule.
California’s Insurance Commissioner recommended Tuesday that insurers slash the rates they charge businesses for workers’ compensation coverage by 14.2%, topping the 8% cut proposed by the largest insurer.
The Commissioner also warned insurance companies that he would send in auditors to make sure they don’t delay or deny needed medical care for injured workers, citing complaints from advocates for injured workers.
In calling for the rate reduction, the Commissioner cited "historic, record-low" insurance company payouts. Although it’s only a recommendation, insurers have generally gone along with the rate cuts proposed by the insurance commissioner.
Things could be different this time, however.
The government-controlled State Compensation Insurance Fund, the California market leader, has filed for a much smaller reduction of 8% for its 230,000 customers. A fund spokesman declined to discuss the filing.
The Insurance Commissioner credited the 2003-04 workers’ compensation changes with helping employers cut their insurance payments by as much as 65%. But he voiced concern that insurers could be improperly using review procedures to block needed care.
At issue is a change in treatment protocols for injured workers known as utilization reviews.
The workers’ comp overhaul gave employers the right to send workers to company-contracted clinics for immediate care and longer-term treatment, including surgeries. Those treatment plans, however, can be second-guessed by specialized doctors.
Employers argue that the reviews, often by out-of-state doctors who never see the patient, use objective standards that lead to lower treatment costs. But advocates for injured workers — and some of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s own regulators — counter that the reviews have sometimes been used to deny needed care.
Indeed, a survey released by the California Division of Workers’ Compensation in March showed that 22% of injured workers said they were dissatisfied or highly dissatisfied with their care. In the same survey, 65% of medical providers said they believed that care for injured workers had declined since 2004.
In a setback for employees who sue over job bias, the Supreme Court just ruled that they cannot rely on evidence from years past that shows they were unfairly paid less than their co-workers, even if this past discrimination continues to depress their salaries today.
Instead, employees must point to a "discrete act of discrimination" by their employer in the 180 days before they filed suit, the court held by a 5-4 vote.
By enforcing strict deadlines, the decision narrows the scope of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids discrimination against employees because of their race, sex, religion or national origin.
It will also apply to the laws that bar discrimination against employees based on their age or disability.
Corporate lawyers called it a major victory for employers because it shields them from defending against discrimination claims from the past.
The ruling threw out a pay discrimination claim brought by a woman who for nearly 20 years was the lone female supervisor at a Goodyear tire plant in Gadsden, Ala. The woman had sued the company in 1999 and showed she was being paid 15% to 40% less than the men who held the same job.
A jury sided with her and awarded her back pay of $224,000 and nearly $3.3 million in punitive damages.
But the company appealed, arguing she filed her claim too late, and it won a reversal from a U.S. appeals court in Atlanta.
In this recent ruling, the Supreme Court agreed with the company and said her suit should have been thrown out at the start because it relied on evidence of discrimination in the 1980s, not on unfair pay decisions in 1998 or 1999.
The woman could not show that, because of her gender, she was denied a pay raise in those years. She did maintain, however, that her salary was unfairly low because of earlier discrimination.
That kind of old evidence does not suffice, said Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., speaking for the majority.
Employees cannot rely on the "adverse effects resulting from past discrimination," he said.
Alito said Congress set "quite short deadlines" when it passed the anti-discrimination law. They reflect "a strong preference for the prompt resolution" of disputes involving the workplace, he said.
"Ultimately, experience teaches that strict adherence to the procedural requirements … is the best guarantee of evenhanded administration of justice," Alito said.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas agreed.
The liberal dissenters, led by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said the decision ignored "the realities of the workplace."
Most employees do not know what their co-workers earn, she said. And by the time they learn they have been shortchanged, it may be too late to sue, she said.
She urged Congress to "correct this court’s parsimonious reading" of the law.
Women’s rights group denounced the ruling and said it severely weakened the nation’s civil rights law. It "essentially says tough luck to employees who don’t immediately challenge their employers’ discriminatory acts," said Marcia Greenberger of the National Women’s Law Center.
The National Federation of Independent Business welcomed the ruling, saying it will spare small-business owners the burdensome task of defending themselves against an alleged discrimination claim that occurred years in the past.
Under landmark legal settlements reached in 2004 and 2005 between state regulators and UnumProvident Corp., one of the country’s largest disability insurers, the company was required to reopen hundreds of thousands of disability insurance claims that it had rejected.
But as Unum prepares to close the books on the claims-reopening process this year, the company says it will have reviewed fewer than 10% of the 290,000 claims eligible for a second chance, including 25,000 in California.
The company, now called Unum Group, said few cases were reviewed because most worker claimants chose not to reopen their cases, apparently accepting the company’s initial rejection.
But consumer advocates say workers’ belief that the claims-resolution process remains unfair has kept them from seeking a review. The accords, which involved regulators from California and several other states, were supposed to reform that process but have largely failed to do so, the advocates say.
As a result, legitimate claims from many policyholders with serious work-related injuries continue to be rejected, subjecting families to financial hardships and forcing some of those hurt to go back to work against the advice of their doctors, critics say.
Disability insurance is held by more than 50 million U.S. workers and represents a crucial safety net for middle-class families. Offered as a benefit by many employers, it usually replaces half or more of a worker’s income should he or she become disabled and unable to work.
Consumer advocates and many workers have long contended that, among other things, insurers use biased medical exams that deem someone fit to work even against the advice of treating physicians. And federal law doesn’t help, they say. In most cases, insurers are given wide latitude in determining whether to pay claims.
The settlements required Unum to change its medical review process by giving treating physicians’ opinions more weight, for example.
But the agreements failed to rein in the considerable power Unum and other insurers wield in handling claims, consumer advocates say.
Although state regulators hoped the settlements with Unum would entice other insurers to fall in line, there is no indication they did. When California insurance regulators tried to expand a key provision of the Unum settlement to other insurers, the industry sued and blocked the move.
Unum, which insures more than a quarter of the nation’s disability policies, says it is a changed company.
He said Unum paid the vast majority of disability claims, more than 90%, without incident.
But critics point out that even a small percentage of denied claims, especially if involving long-term benefits to highly paid executive-level workers, can save Unum millions of dollars.
Although agreeing with state regulators to change its medical review process, for example, Unum continued to defend its practices in courtrooms against individual claimants who had sued. In one case, Unum insisted that a man who had quintuple bypass surgery was fit to go back to his job at a stock brokerage firm, even though his doctors said the stress might kill him. In another, the company refused benefits to a man who had had multiple heart attacks.
In California, the company did agree to a third-party independent review of unresolved cases involving previously denied claims, but it refused to be bound by its findings.
Years of cost-cutting and lack of investment left British Petroleum’s (BP) Texas City refinery vulnerable to the catastrophic fire that killed 15 workers two years ago, said the Chemical Safety Board (CSB), America’s leading chemical accident investigator.
In a damning report into BP’s safety culture, the CSB found that: budget pressures impaired safety performance; internal audits and studies revealed serious safety problems at Texas City, including lack of maintenance and training; the audits were shown to executives in London, including John Manzoni, the board director in charge of refining.
The CSB’s lengthy report into the Texas City fire found that organisational and cultural deficiencies at all levels of BP’s hierarchy were responsible for America’s biggest industrial disaster since 1990.
The report also criticised OSHA for insufficient oversight of Texas City. The CSB called for “comprehensive inspections” and urged OSHA to adopt a new standard requiring companies engaged in major organisational change, such as mergers or reorganisations, to conduct a process safety review.
Citing internal BP documents, including safety audits, e-mails and surveys commissioned by BP, the CSB concluded that a cut of 25 per cent in fixed spending ordered by BP’s chief executive, after the takeover of Amoco, played a role in leaving Texas City “vulnerable to a catastrophe”.
The fire in March 2005 was caused by a release of flammable vapour during the start-up of an isomerisation unit. A follow-up study, conducted later in 2002, found that “the current integrity and reliability issues at [Texas City] are clearly linked to the reduction in maintenance spending over the last decade”.
