Workers' Compensation: Search results for lead paint

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Sunday, September 8, 2013

Fla. appeals court says $33M in damages to smoker’s widow not excessive

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

A Florida appeals court this week denied a tobacco company’s request for a new trial in a lawsuit brought against the company by the widow of a former smoker.

Rothenberg

Also Wednesday, Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal upheld a $33 million award to the widow, Dorothy Alexander, saying the damages were not excessive.

After a three-week trial, the jury found in favor of Alexander on her claims against Lorillard Tobacco Company for strict liability, fraudulent concealment, conspiracy to commit fraud by concealment and negligence, but found Alexander’s husband, Coleman, 20 percent comparatively liable.

The jury awarded Alexander $20 million in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages.

Lorillard filed multiple post-trial motions, including motions seeking remittitur of the compensatory and punitive damages awards.

The Miami-Dade County Circuit Court denied all of Lorillard’s post-trial motions except the motion for remittitur of the compensatory damages award and remitted the compensatory damages award to $10 million.

After computation of comparative fault, Alexander was awarded $8 million in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages, which the trial court declined to remit.

Lorillard appealed.

On appeal, the tobacco company basically reiterated its post-trial claims of error. Additionally, it claimed that it is entitled to a new trial on compensatory damages rather than the...

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How the Paint Industry Escapes Responsibility for Lead Poisoning (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Asbestos Bankruptcy: Judge denies motion to keep Garlock trial open (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Why Is Obama Caving on Tobacco? (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Sides rest in Calif. lead paint trial (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Coal Industry: The Next Target for a Major Lawsuit (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Lead paint manufacturers facing California challenge (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Lead Paint Makers Could Face The Same Fate As Big Tobacco (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)

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Thursday, August 22, 2013

UW study finds link between lead paint, discipline problems

Lead paint continues to cause problems in the workplace and in homes throught the nation. Today's post was shared by FairWarning and comes from www.jsonline.com

A new study that analyzed medical and discipline data from Milwaukee Public Schools found young children who are exposed to lead are nearly three times more likely to be suspended from school by the fourth grade.

Lead — commonly found in paint in older homes and rental properties — may be more responsible for school discipline problems than previously realized, according to the study's author, Michael Amato, a doctoral candidate in the psychology department and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Lead has been cited as a contributor to the academic achievement gap between black and white children because the powerful neurotoxin is more likely to be found in low-income housing. High levels of lead in the bloodstream may make children more likely to behave impulsively and may shorten their attention spans, according to previous research.

Lead paint manufacturers facing California challenge

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.dailynews.com

In April, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention raised to 535,000 its estimate of the number of American children with potentially dangerous levels of lead in their blood.

But for U.S. communities combating the lead hazards, there might never be any money from the group some say is most responsible for creating the problem: The companies that made lead pigment used in the old, flaking paint still coating millions of dwellings.

The industry could be on the verge of defeating the last major legal assault by municipalities and states seeking damages to fund lead removal. Apart from one settlement, the industry has successfully defended roughly 50 lawsuits by states, cities, counties and school districts over the last 24 years.

Now, in a bench trial underway in San Jose, the industry is seeking a final victory in a case brought by 10 public agencies, including Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties and the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and San Diego. The suit seeks to force the defendants to inspect more than 3 million California homes, and to remove any lead paint hazards that are discovered, at an estimated cost of more than $1 billion.

Lead lawsuits once were expected by some experts to follow the path of tobacco litigation. States that sued to recover smoking-related health care costs wrested a $248 billion settlement in 1998 from cigarette makers.

As in the tobacco cases, public agencies in California and elsewhere hired

private law firms, including veterans of...

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Thursday, May 1, 2014

MisLead: America's Secret Epidemic

America continues to be MisLead about the epidemic of lead paint poisoning. This movie expands upon the recent successful trial against the lead paint pigment industry in California, and explains why the taxpayers are paying the estimated costs of over $50 Billion each year as a result of impairments and disabilities flowing from on going lead contamination.

"MisLEAD: America’s Secret Epidemic is the first documentary film that undertakes an intellectually rigorous, emotionally compelling and illuminating inquiry into a hidden epidemic that impacts one in three American children today. Tamara Rubin, an Oregon mother whose children were poisoned, travels the country talking with parents and top experts across many fields—uncovering surprising answers."

Click here to read more about this incredible movie.

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Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson). For over 4 decades the Law Offices of Jon L Gelman 1.973.696.7900 jon@gelmans.com have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.

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Friday, December 13, 2013

Increase in miscarriages coincided with high levels of lead in D.C. water, study finds

The study findings, which are scheduled to be published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, do not prove that the city’s lead crisis caused fetal deaths or miscarriages. But the results show a significant correlation between the two events.
Lead is an extremely toxic metal, and ingestion of lead paint dust and high doses of lead in water have been traced to brain damage, behavioral problems and developmental delays in children. Exposure to lead has also been linked to miscarriages. In the early 1900s, lead-laced pills were used to induce abortions.
The study, by Virginia Tech environmental engineer Marc Edwards, contrasts sharply with government-led health studies that were released amid an outcry after people learned of hazardous lead in the water in 2004. Those studies largely rejected the notion that the water had harmed public health.
The data seem “to confirm the expectation, based on prior research, that about 20 to 30 extra fetal deaths occurred each year that the lead in water was high,” Edwards said.
One rushed and disputed analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asserted in April 2004 that there was no indication of health trouble from the water problem, even among children in homes with the highest lead levels in the water. Under repeated criticism, the CDC published a corrected analysis in 2010, acknowledging that this overarching statement had been misleading and based on incomplete data.
Today, the city’s...

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Thursday, August 8, 2013

How the Paint Industry Escapes Responsibility for Lead Poisoning

Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com

This story was produced by FairWarning, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit news organization focused on public health and safety issues.

In April, based on new toxicity estimates, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention raised to 535,000 its estimate of the number of children with potentially dangerous levels of lead in their blood. But the communities trying to tackle the problem may not see another cent from what somepublic officials say is the prime culprit: the manufacturers of lead pigments whose products infuse the flaking paint still found in millions of American dwellings. The lead-paint industry may, in fact, be on the verge of defeating the last major legal assault by municipalities and states seeking damages to pay for lead removal.

Some experts had expected such lawsuits to follow the path of tobacco litigation during the 1990s, when states wrested a $248 billion settlement from cigarette makers to cover smoking-related health costs. "My prediction was that lead would be the next big toxic tort litigation," says Jed Ferdinand III, a Connecticut lawyer who is familiar with the issue. "That really hasn't happened."

Indeed, apart from one settlement,the industry has successfully fended off roughly 50 lawsuits by states, cities, counties, and school districts over the past quarter century. Now, in a trial under way in San Jose, California, industry lawyers are seeking a final victory in a case brought by 10 agencies, including the cities of San Francisco, Oakland...

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Wednesday, February 5, 2014

The Rule of Law and The Media's Role

Today's post is authored by David DePaolo and shared from workcompcentral.com

Those not living in California are befuddled by our system. Heck, even those living in California are befuddled...

Yesterday was also the start of the 21st annual California Division of Workers' Compensation Educational Conference in Los Angeles, CA, where the weather is a bit warmer than it is here in CT.

So too has the activity been a bit warmer in California - at the Educational Conference Acting Administrative Director Destie Overpeck gave an overview of what has been going on with the division since the directive of SB 863 to implement numerous changes to the system.

The list of work that the division has been engaged in is impressive, and demonstrates just how vast the changes were in SB 863:

New rules to reduce payments to ambulatory surgery centers from 120% of Medicare’s outpatient rate to 80%;
A new fee schedule for providers based on a Resource Based Relative Value Scale;
A lien fee system (currently partially in abeyance due to legal challenges which also adds to the division's work load);
New statute of limitations for lien filers;
New Independent Medical Review process and procedures;
New Independent Medical Bill review process and procedures;
Revised Medical Provider Network approval and renewal process and rules;
Pending fee schedule for copy services;New penalties for failures in notifications and standards for MPNs.

This is all in addition to the normal work load...

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Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Lead and Crime: It's a Brain Thing

Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com

When I wrote my big piece last year about the connection between childhood exposure to lead and rates of violent crime later in life, one of the big pushbacks came from folks who are skeptical of econometric studies. Sure, the level of lead exposure over time looks like an inverted U, and so does the national rate of violent crime. But hey: correlation is not causation.
I actually addressed this in my piece—twice, I think—but I always felt like I didn't address it quite clearly enough. The article spent so much time up front explaining the statistical correlations that it made the subsequent points about other evidence seem a bit like hasty bolt-ons, put there mainly to check off a box against

possible criticism. That's not how I intended it,¹ but that's how it turned out.
For that reason, I'm pleased to recommend Lauren Wolf's "The Crimes Of Lead," in the current issue of Chemical & Engineering News. It doesn't ignore the statistical evidence, but it focuses primarily on the physiological evidence that implicates lead with higher levels of violent crime:

Research has shown that lead exposure does indeed make lab animals—rodents, monkeys, even cats—more prone to aggression. But establishing biological plausibility for the lead-crime argument hasn’t been as clear-cut for molecular-level studies of the brain. Lead wreaks a lot of havoc on the central nervous system. So pinpointing one—or even a few—molecular switches by...

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Monday, June 20, 2022

The Toxic Legacy of Ford Motor Company

The State of New Jersey is suing Ford Motor Company [FMC] for environmental pollution due to dumping its toxic waste in Ringwood, New Jersey. FMC operated a huge assembly plant in Mahwah, New Jersey, from 1955 through June 1980.

Self-Promotion Watch: Lead and Crime in Postwar America

Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com

I'm usually a little reticent about tooting my own horn, but since I've always had a lot of respect for James Surowiecki, I was sort of chuffed to see this in his year-end roundup of his favorite business stories:

Kevin Drum’s brilliant Mother Jones piece, “America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead,” explores the relationship between lead in the environment and crime (and a host of other social ills). It is not, I guess, a classic business story. But it’s a rigorous and enormously enlightening look at how businesses’ and regulators’ choices—in this case, the decision to keep lead in gasoline and paint—end up shaping society in ways that few expect. I’m not entirely sure that lead explains the entire drop in crime we’ve seen in cities across America. But Drum has certainly convinced me that getting lead out of the environment is one of the best, and most cost-effective, social interventions that regulators can make.

Thanks, James! More here for those who want to dive into some of the other reaction to the lead-crime story, as well as a few items that got left on the cutting room floor.

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Thursday, August 8, 2013

The FMLA: 20 Years On and Keeping America’s Families Strong

Today's post was shared by US Dept. of Labor and comes from social.dol.gov

Today we announced that national restaurant chain T.G.I. Fridays has agreed to change its employee leave policy to be in compliance with the Family and Medical Leave Act. The move affects thousands of employees at locations across the U.S.

The company has also agreed to pay back wages to an employee in Louisiana after failing to reinstate the employee to the same or equivalent position following FLMA-covered leave, and not allowing the employee to return to work immediately.
Younger man caring for an older man

Workers should not have to choose between their jobs, and their health or the health and welfare of family members who need their care.

That is the core belief behind the FMLA, which provides America’s workers the right to take unpaid, job-protected leave for up to 12 weeks to care for themselves or a loved one while maintaining full health care coverage. It also guarantees that a worker can return to the job at the same level with the same pay and benefits.

Millions of American workers and their families have benefited since the FMLA’s provisions became effective 20 years ago this week. In the first year-and-a-half after it became available, it’s estimated that between 1.5 and 3 million Americans took FMLA-covered leave to care for themselves or a loved one.

Twenty years later, FMLA leave has been used nearly 100 million times, and research shows that the FMLA has not imposed an undue burden on employers.
But the FMLA must evolve to keep pace with the changing face of the modern family....

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Monday, April 28, 2014

US EPA Seeks Input About Lead Contamination in Public and Commercial Buildings

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is inviting small businesses to participate as consultants for a Small Business Advocacy Review (SBAR) Panel as the agency considers steps to reduce lead based paint exposure from the renovation, repair, and painting of public and commercial buildings as required by section 402(c)(3) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

The SBAR Panel is being established pursuant to the Regulatory Flexibility Act, and will include representatives from the Small Business Administration (SBA), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and EPA. The Panel will ask a selected group of Small Entity Representatives (SERs) to provide advice and recommendations on behalf of their company, community, or organization to inform the Panel on impacts of a proposed rule on small entities involved in the renovation, repair, and painting of public and commercial buildings. SER panelists may participate via telephone or webinar, as well as in person.

EPA seeks self-nominations directly from the small businesses, small governments and small organizations that may be subject to the rule requirements to facilitate the selection of SERs. An entity is eligible to be a SER if it will be directly subject to the particular proposed regulation under development and meets one of the SBA’s definitions http://www.sba.gov/content/table-small-business-size-standards
to qualify as a small entity.

EPA encourages the actual owners or operators of small businesses, community officials, and representatives of non-profit organizations to participate in this process. However, a person from a trade association that exclusively or primarily represents potentially regulated small entities may also serve as a SER.

Self-nominations may be submitted through the link below and must be received by May 9, 2014.

To nominate yourself, visit: How can I get Involved: http://www.epa.gov/rfa/lead-pncb.html

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Thursday, August 15, 2013

Facebook Disclosure for 87 Class Action Plaintiffs? Federal Court Denies Discovery Request

Social media accounts are evidential to determine the credibility of the a party in a workers' compensation claim. Take it one step further and they can also be a factor in determining deviation from employment. Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from p.ost.im

Social media accounts, typically Facebook, are currently a hot-button issue for plaintiff ESI production in civil litigation. Most courts (but not all!) require a threshold showing that the public account has relevant information that would lead to discoverable evidence before requiring a plaintiff to produce private portions of the account.

In an order dated July 19, 2013 in the case of Jewell v. Aaron’s, Inc., Civil No. 1:12-CV-0563-AT (N.D.Ga. 2013), 87 opt-in plaintiffs are suing their employer for, among other claims, not allowing certain lunch breaks as required by law. The defendants sought, among their discovery requests:
“All documents, statements or any activity available that you posted on any internet Web site or Web page, including, but not limited to, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, or a blog from 2009 to the present during your work hours at Aaron’s store.”

Neuroscience may offer hope to millions robbed of silence by tinnitus

Occupational and traumatic hearing loss claims usually have a "tinnitus component" in measurable disability as a compensable portion of the award. Today's post is shared from pbs.org .

On Easter Sunday in 2008, the phantom noises in Robert De Mong’s head dropped in volume -- for about 15 minutes. For the first time in months, he experienced relief, enough at least to remember what silence was like. And then they returned, fierce as ever.

It was six months earlier that the 66-year-old electrical engineer first awoke to a dissonant clamor in his head. There was a howling sound, a fingernails-on-a-chalkboard sound, “brain zaps” that hurt like a headache and a high frequency "tinkle" noise, like musicians hitting triangles in an orchestra.
Many have since disappeared, but two especially stubborn noises remain. One he describes as monkeys banging on symbols. Another resembles frying eggs and the hissing of high voltage power lines. He hears those sounds every moment of every day.

De Mong was diagnosed in 2007 with tinnitus, a condition that causes a phantom ringing, buzzing or roaring in the ears, perceived as external noise.

When the sounds first appeared, they did so as if from a void, he said. No loud noise trauma had preceded the tinnitus, as it does for some sufferers -- it was suddenly just there. And the noises haunted him, robbed him of sleep and fueled a deep depression. He lost interest in his favorite hobby: tinkering with his ‘78 Trans Am and his two Corvettes. He stopped going into work.

U.S. Companies Thrive as Workers Fall Behind

In 1911 most states enacted workers' compensation legislation creating a promise for a better system of benefits for injured workers. Over the decades that promise has been broken. Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

American companies are more profitable than ever — and more profitable than we thought they were before the government revised the national income accounts last week. Wage earners are making less than we thought, in part because the government now thinks it was overestimating the amount of income not reported by taxpayers.

The major change in the latest comprehensive revision of the national income and product accounts — known as NIPA to statistics aficionados — is to treat research and development spending as an investment, similar to the way the purchase of a new machine tool would be treated by a manufacturer, rather than as an expense. That investment is then written down over a number of years.

The result is to make the size of the economy, the gross domestic product, look bigger, and to appear to be growing faster, in years when new research spending is greater than the amount being written down from previous years. For the same reason, corporate profits also look better in those years.

A lot of money is spent on research and development. Nicole Mayerhauser, the chief of the national income and wealth division of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which compiles the figures, said that in 2012 the total was $418 billion, about one-third of which was spent by governments. That amounted to about 2.6 percent of G.D.P.

The other major conceptual change deals with pensions. Until now, corporate and government contributions to pension plans were counted as personal...

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Why are there revisions to the jobs numbers?

Workers' Compensation premiums are usually estimated based on anticipated payroll numbers. As those change so does the cost of workers' compensation premiun costs. Basically they are both subject to retroactive audits to verify accuracy. Today's post was shared by BLS-Labor Statistics and comes from www.bls.gov

Why are there revisions to the jobs numbers?

By Thomas Nardone, Kenneth Robertson, and Julie Hatch Maxfield

At the beginning of each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports the change in payroll employment for the previous month. This estimate of jobs gained or lost over the month is closely watched by policymakers and those who work in financial markets and the media.

When the estimate is revised in subsequent months, however, data users sometimes perceive a very different picture of the job market than what was initially reported. Data users frequently ask why the number was revised. The short answer is, the revised estimate includes additional information that was not available at the time of the initial release information that makes the revised estimate more accurate.

This Beyond the Numbers article explains the data collection process that BLS conducts every month to produce the estimate of U.S. employment change. The article will also clarify why BLS releases revisions to the initial release, so that users will better understand the change, if any, in the data.

Judge denies jury trial in Chevron RICO case

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

The federal judge overseeing a fraud lawsuit filed by Chevron Corp. has decided to deny the defendants in the case a jury trial.

The trial is set to begin Oct. 15.

Now, instead of pleading their case in front of a jury, New York attorney Steven Donziger and the Ecuadorians must do so before Judge Lewis Kaplan for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

In his seven-page memorandum opinion Monday, Kaplan declined to order a jury trial in the case.

Last week, Chevron said it would drop money damages claims against Donziger if Kaplan tried the case. The oil giant already said it would drop money damages claims against the two Ecuadorians, Hugo Gerardo Camacho Naranjo and Javier Piaguaje Payaguaje.

Donziger and the Ecuadorians argued they are entitled to a jury as a matter of fairness.

“But that argument — even if it had merit, which it does not — is beside the point,” Kaplan wrote. “Insofar as is relevant to this case, the availability of trial by jury depends on one thing alone — whether the Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution requires it.”

It does not, the judge said.

Kaplan explained that when a party — in this case, Chevron — withdraws its damages claims and pursues only equitable relief, a jury trial is no longer available and issues must be tried by the court.

“In such circumstances, trial by jury is available only if the parties and...

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Thursday, September 5, 2013

Study: Healthcare-linked infections cost US $10 billion a year

Today's post was shared by CIDRAP and comes from www.cidrap.umn.edu

Five of the most common, costly, and preventable healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) cost the United States nearly $10 billion per year, according to a meta-analysis of 27 years' worth of data by a team from Harvard Medical School and affiliated institutions.

The team reviewed data spanning 1986 to 2013 concerning surgical site infections (SSIs), central line–associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs), catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs), ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), and Clostridium difficile infections (CDIs), according to their report, released yesterday by JAMA Internal Medicine.

For HAI incidence estimates, the investigators used the National Healthcare Safety Network of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which includes 1,700 reporting sites. By conducting a systematic literature review, the team found 26 studies that provided "reasonably robust" estimates of attributable costs and/or length of stay for HAIs.

The overall cost of the HAIs was estimated at $9.8 billion annually. On a per-case basis, CLABSIs were found to be the most expensive HAI at $45,814 each, followed by VAP, $40,144; SSIs, $20,785; CDIs, $11,285; and CAUTIs, $896, the report says.

SSIs, however, accounted for the largest share of costs, at 33.7%. The second largest contributor was VAP, at 31.6%, followed by CLABSIs, 18.9%; CDIs, 15.4%; and CAUTIs, less than 1%.
"While quality improvement initiatives have decreased HAI...

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Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson). For over 4 decades the Law Offices of Jon L Gelman 1.973.696.7900 jon@gelmans.com have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.