NATIONAL – Recently The Hartford Financial Services Group agreed to a $72.5 million class-action settlement. This settlement will end a dispute over structured settlements in personal injury and workers compensation cases. This settlement will cover 21,600 people nationwide. The lawsuit alleged that The Hartford’s property and casualty companies purchased annuities from its life insurance subsidiary and then deducted as much as…
Last week a federal judge ordered Toyota Motor Corp. to turn over thousands of pages of records to lawyers who have sued the Japanese automaker because of alleged sudden-acceleration problems. US District Judge gave Toyota thirty days to turn over documents that it had previously supplied Congress and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The…
ST. PETERSBURG – According to the St. Petersburg Times, on Wednesday September 30, 2009, US District Judge Virginia Hernandez Covington certified as a class-action a suit filed by four (4) St. Petersburg, Florida, homeowners “against RAYTHEON over chemical contamination spreading beneath their homes.” That means “Raytheon now could face claims for damages from more than…
NATIONAL – 517 plaintiffs are suing “pharmaceutical companies that make certain dyes used for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).” They were “diagnosed with nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF)…after being injected with a contrast-agent made with gadolinium.” While “patients with healthy kidneys simply flush the gadolinium out,” those “with NSF…describe their skin turning wood-like, eventually cracking.” The FDA…
TAMPA – The Florida Department of Health has received more than 450 complaints from homeowners. Several federal agencies, including the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, are investigating. The drywall was used in as many as 100,000 homes across the nation during the housing boom and emits a corrosive gas that damages appliances, gives off a…
Litigation seen as growing over on-call employees who claim restriction of freedom. – The National Law Journal reports, “On-call employees are turning into a growing liability risk for employers, as some are claiming that companies are restricting their freedom too much, and not paying them for it.” Now, “employment lawyers say that such claims are…