Toyota Motor Corp.'s first loss in a sudden acceleration case, in an Oklahoma courtroom this week, could embolden attorneys nationwide who are looking to bring hundreds of similar cases.
Worse for the Japanese automaker, the verdict centered on the company's electronics, which have been a focus for plaintiffs seeking to prove safety defects in the company's cars.
Toyota on Friday confirmed that it had reached a confidential settlement in the lawsuit, which involved the fatal 2007 crash of a Camry. The settlement came hours after a jury assessed $3 million in compensatory damages but before the panel could levy a punitive award. The verdict could provide a road map for attorneys seeking to hold the automaker liable for injuries and deaths. Toyota has denied any safety defects in its cars, arguing that many incidents of unintended acceleration stemmed from drivers who stepped on the gas instead of the brake. But plaintiffs in the Oklahoma case successfully argued that Toyota's electronic throttle system was flawed, causing the car to speed out of control. The 2005 Camry crashed into an embankment, severely injuring the driver, 76-year-old Jean Bookout, and killing her passenger, Barbara Schwarz. By striking a quick settlement, the company likely sought to avoid bad publicity and damage to its reputation, said Jill Wieber Lens, a product liability expert at Baylor University Law School in Waco, Texas. The Oklahoma defeat could increase pressure on the automaker to come up... |
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(c) 2010-2024 Jon L Gelman, All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Toyota settles acceleration lawsuit after $3-million verdict
F.D.A. Shift on Painkillers Was Years in the Making
Narcotic pain killers have been the subject of concern and regulation by employers' and their insurance carriers nationally. The evolution of the FDA proposed action to regulate is revealed in today's post is shared from the NYTimes.com
When Heather Dougherty heard the news last week that the Food and Drug Administration had recommended tightening how doctors prescribed the most commonly used narcotic painkillers, she was overjoyed. Fourteen years earlier, her father, Dr. Ronald J. Dougherty, had filed a formal petition urging federal officials to crack down on the drugs. Since then, narcotic painkillers, or opioids, have become the most frequently prescribed drugs in the United States and have set off a wave of misuse, abuse and addiction. Experts estimate that more than 100,000 people have died in the last decade from overdoses involving the drugs. For his part, Dr. Dougherty, who foresaw the problem, retired in 2007 and is now 81 and living in a nursing home. “Too many lives have been ruined,” his daughter said. The story behind the F.D.A.’s turnaround on the pain pills, last Thursday, involved a rare victory by lawmakers from states hard hit by prescription drug abuse over well-financed lobbyists for business and... |
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Leaked documents reveal the secret finances of a pro-industry science group
As the judicial system is bombarded with evidential scientific research in order to ascertain the truth, the research process itself is subject to being influenced. Today's post is shared from MotherJones.org and describes what happens when so-called "independent research" becomes tainted. The American Council on Science and Health bills itself as an independent research and advocacy organization devoted to debunking "junk science." It's a controversial outfit—a "group of scientists…concerned that many important public policies related to health and the environment did not have a sound scientific basis," it says—that often does battle with environmentalists and consumer safety advocates, wading into public health debates to defend fracking, to fight New York City's attempt to ban big sugary sodas, and to dismiss concerns about the potential harms of the chemical bisphenol-A (better known at BPA) and the pesticide atrazine. The group insists that its conclusions are driven purely by science. It acknowledges that it receives some financial support from corporations and industry groups, but ACSH, which reportedly stopped disclosing its corporate donors two decades ago, maintains that these contributions don't influence its work and agenda. Yet internal financial documents (read them here) provided to Mother Jones show that ACSH depends heavily on funding from corporations that have a financial stake in the scientific debates it aims to shape. The group also directly solicits donations from these industry sources around specific issues. ACSH's financial links to corporations involved in hot-button health and safety controversies have been highlighted in the past, but these documents offer a more extensive... |
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Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Securing the Right to a Safe and Healthy Workplace | Center for Effective Government
Workers' Compensation is the remedy when workplaces aren't safe. The Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) promulgates safety rule in the workplace. Safer workplaces are needed and OSHA needs to be strengthened. This post is shared from foreffectivegovernment.org . The Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act), passed in 1970, recognizes that workers play a critical role in ensuring their workplaces are healthy and safe. The OSH Act gives workers the right to report unsafe working conditions and the right to refuse to work under such conditions without reprisal. The concept is for workers to function as the “eyes and ears” of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and help the agency prioritize its limited resources to focus inspections on the most dangerous work sites. Workers will only report safety and health hazards in the workplace, however, if they can come forward without fear of reprisal. Thus, the law prohibits employers from taking any adverse action against employees who exercise the rights provided to them under the OSH Act. Unfortunately, the weak guarantees written into the federal OSH Act leave workers with few protections against retaliation by an employer after reporting dangerous working conditions. Problems with current protections include the fact that the amount of time required to file a retaliation complaint is too short, investigations take too long, the burden of proof is too high, OSHA cannot preliminarily reinstate an employee once it determines that a complaint has merit, and employees cannot pursue a remedy independently, even if OSHA takes no action on their behalf. Between 2005 and 2012, OSHA received 11,153 complaints of retaliation, 10,380 were reviewed, and 2,542... |
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Spinal fusions serve as case study for debate over when certain surgeries are necessary
The necessity of medical treatment is coming under increased questioning as payers want to rein in costs. This article is shared from the washingtonpost.com. By some measures, Federico C. Vinas was a star surgeon. He performed three or four surgeries on a typical weekday at the Daytona Beach, Fla., hospital that employed him, and a review showed him to be nearly five times as busy as other neurosurgeons. The hospital paid him hundreds of thousands in incentive pay. In all, he earned as much as $1.9 million a year. Yet given his productivity, some hospital auditors wondered: Was all of the surgery really necessary? To answer that question, the hospital in early 2010 paid for an independent review of cases in which Vinas and two other neurosurgeons had performed a common procedure known as a spinal fusion. The review was conducted by board-certified neurosurgeons working for AllMed, a company accredited to audit health-care businesses. Of 10 spinal fusions by Vinas that were selected, nine were deemed not medically necessary, according to a summary of the report. Vinas is still working at Halifax Health, and a hospital spokesman said that, after the AllMed report, the hospital conducted an internal review that validated his surgeries. Another review conducted this year in response to litigation also validated them, the spokesman said. The hospital would not answer further questions or release details of those reviews. Vinas “has never and will never perform an unnecessary surgical procedure on any patient,” his attorney, Robert H. Pritchard, said in a statement. More than 465,000... |
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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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Updates on America's Persistent Air and Water Pollution Challenges
Air and water problems mainly make headlines these days when extraordinary pulses of pollution surge in places like Beijing and Shanghai. But there are still enormous, if largely hidden, health and environmental costs in many parts of the United States that have failed to meet the goals set decades ago under the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act (e.g., see Muller, Mendelsohn, Nordhaus, 2011). Sometimes the issue is visible. I visited Houston briefly this week and snapped the photo above on the airport approach. Not pretty. Read on for excerpts from two relevant articles. The first, from the Allegheny Front, explores how lessons learned in trying to cut pollution from natural gas facilities in Houston can be applied in Pennsylvania’s fracking zone. The second, by my Pace University colleague and longtime water analyst John Cronin, digs in on the gap between Environmental Protection Agency statements on water pollution and the results in America’s waterways. Here’s “Houston Air Pollution: Preview for Pennsylvania?” It’s the second article in a planned four-part series, “The Coming Chemical Boom,” that was in part paid for by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. ... |
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The Robotic Workforce
Robots are quickly replacing the human workforce in dangerous, risky and hazardous jobs. New jobs are being transferred quickly to a new robotic workplace in all phases of work. In the US Amazon's national warehouse sorting venture has employed them effectively. Even China, with an aging human workforce is moving quickly to replace humans with machines. One thing is for sure, robots have no need for workers' compensation. Today's post is shared from nytimes.com.
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