June 2006 Archives

A jury has awarded nearly $3.2 million to the daughter of a Denver couple who were killed in a car crash.

Clinton Andersen, 85, and Sophie Anderson, 83, who who established one of the city's first buffet restaurants, Andy's Smorgasboard, were killed when they were struck by a car driven by Frederick L. Culp. Accident reconstruction experts estimated that Culp, 31, was traveling between 60 and 67 mph in a 25 mph zone.

A jury on Wednesday ruled that Culp must pay the couple's daughter Marilyn Wagner $2 million in punitive damages, $1 million for causing her pain and emotional suffering, and nearly $200,000 for her economic loss, her attorneys said.

Wagner's attorney, Kyle Bachus, said that because of caps on damages, the jury award could be reduced to $2.4 million. Culp has pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of criminally negligent homicide in the case.

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Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) antipiracy tool is at the center a class action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Monday.

The WGA program collects hardware and software data from the user's system and delivers it to Microsoft servers. This information is then used to warn of possible piracy violations.

The lawsuit alleges the program violates consumer protection laws in California and Washington state, and laws against spyware, invasive programs that surreptitiously collect data.

The suit contends that Microsoft misled users in delivering WGA to computers, masking it under batches of monthly updates that often include critical security patches. It asks Microsoft to delete all data collected by WGA and provide users with the ability to remove the software from their computers, in addition to damages.

"In truth and in fact, Microsoft, in its efforts to maximize revenue through antipiracy measures, misled consumers and the public as to the true nature, functionality and operation of its WGA," the suit said.

In response to user complaints, Microsoft released a new version of WGA this week allowing people to opt out of notifications. The update also changes the frequency with which the program contacts Microsoft to check the validity of Windows.

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Yahoo will pay roughly $5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Checkmate Strategic Group that alleged that the search engine provided insufficient protection against click fraud. The settlement will offset Checkmate's legal fees and Yahoo also promises to revisit its advertising terms.

Click fraud is a phenomenon in which individuals use scripts or manually click on pay-per-click advertisements for financial gain. Yahoo currently offers a 60 review period in which advertisers can challenge clicks.

The search engine will now offer advertisers a one-time extension to the claim period, allowing them to request a review of clicks dating back to January 2004. They will receive full credit for clicks that have been incorrectly invoiced.

The company also promised to appoint a traffic quality advocate, provide access to its Clickthrough Protection system and set up a Traffic Quality Resource Centre where advertisers are offered additional information.

Last March, Google paid $90m to settle a click fraud case from Lane's Gifts and Collectibles. As part of the settlement, Google dropped a 60 day deadline for filing click fraud reports.

Charles Lennon, the North Providence man who had sued Dacomed Corporation over a faulty penile implant, has decided to accept a $400,000 judgment instead of a retrial. With interest dating from 1996, he will receive about $ 1 million.

Lennon was implanted with a Dacomed Dura-II penile prosthesis in 1996. The implant would not remain in the down position and Lennon experienced pain during intercourse.

In 2004, a jury awarded Lennon $750,000. Later a judge lowered that to a $400,000 judgment. After appeals by both sides, the Rhode Island Supreme Court on Friday gave Lennon 20 days to decide whether to take the $400,000 or have a new trial on damages.

Lennon, 68, a retired handyman, decided to take the money. Lawyer Albert R. Romano said Lennon did not want to face the "agony" of another trial. Also, the company that made the implant, Dacomed Corporation, is bankrupt, and it had a limited insurance policy, he said.

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Bell Helicopter has settled a wrongful death case filed by the widows of three Los Angeles city firefighters who died in a helicopter crash in 1998. The crash also killed Norma Vides, 11, of Sun Valley, a car crash victim who was being airlifted to Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.

Details of the agreement between the widows and Bell Helicopter were not released and will remain confidential.

"We have agreed with the defense that there would be no comment on the resolution," said Ron Goldman, an attorney representing the three widows.

The lawsuit was filed in 1999 by the widows of Michael Butler, 33, of Santa Clarita; Eric Reiner, 33, of Carson; and Michael McComb, 48, of Crestline.  The firefighters died March 23, 1998, in Griffith Park when the 20-year-old Bell helicopter they were in lost its tail rotor and crashed.

The lawsuit alleged that the tail rotor yoke and assembly was defective and that the defect caused parts to fatigue. The rotor helps control a helicopter's lateral motion.

Litigation dragged on for years, partly because of an initial ruling upholding federal law that prohibits such suits against manufacturers of helicopters over 18 years old.

In 2003, a state appellate court reversed that decision and said the rule does not apply to this case because Bell had failed to disclose to the Federal Aviation Administration five prior military helicopter crashes that had the same design yoke and fatigue fracture.

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Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison will settle an insider trading lawsuit that he faces with a $100 million donation to his non-profit medical foundation. However there are reports that the $115 million he had pledged to Harvard University last year has not yet been given.

The settlement relates to a civil complaint about a $900 million gain made by Ellison from selling Oracle stock shortly before the share value plummeted in 2001.

Ellison denied any wrongdoing, but agreed to donate the money to charity in Oracle's name and pay $22 million in shareholders' legal costs.

A special committee appointed by Oracle's board to investigate the allegations raised in the lawsuit also concluded that Ellison did nothing wrong.

This settlement comes at a time when Harvard University officials are cutting staff of the planned Ellison Institute for World Health because the donation he pledged to the school has not yet been paid.

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Attorneys for employees who won a $172 million jury verdict against Wal-Mart for not providing paid meal and rest breaks are seeking an injunction to enforce changes in practices at the retailer.

116,000 current and former hourly workers at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in California won their lawsuit against Wal-Mart last December. The suit claimed that Wal Mart had violated their rights under state labor laws by denying them their meal and rest breaks and by secretly deleting hours worked from their paychecks.

An Alameda County Superior Court jury had awarded the plaintiffs $57.3 million in compensatory damages and $115 million in punitive damages. The workers were represented by San Francisco attorney Fred Furth.

Furth is now seeking an injunction ordering Wal-Mart to have all its employees punch in and punch out for their paid rest breaks.

Wal-Mart attorney Neal Manne said "the alleged need to impose the extraordinary remedy of a meal period injunction is moot" because Wal-Mart employees have been able to take their breaks more than 99 percent of the time since mid-2003.

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Recent lawsuits and reports indicate that teenagers on summer jobs often face sexual harassment, and most don't know what they can do to protect themselves.

According to a 2000 report by the U.S. Department of Labor, an estimated 4 million young people between ages 15 to 17 work during the summer, and nearly 3 million teens work during or after school. Since 2001, the first year the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission  began tracking teen cases, the agency has filed more than 100 discrimination lawsuits on behalf of teens, most alleging sexual harassment.

These problems have come into sharper focus with the recent settlement of $ 180,000 that Steak 'n Shake agreed to pay Amanda Nichols. She was 17 when she quit work at the restaurant in Ballwin in 2002, after facing unwanted advances and touching by a male co-worker. Her managers ignored her complaints, and later made her clean floorboards with a toothbrush, she said.

A highly publicised case earlier involved the harassment faced by teenagers while employed at a Burger King in Peerless Park. Burger King agreed to a settlement of $400,000   in 2004. The restaurant manager repeatedly made vulgar comments, groped the young women and demanded sex. The teenagers, six of whom were high school students, complained to assistant managers and a district manager, but no one took action to stop the harassment, the EEOC said.

Now the EEOC, former victims, and relatives of victims are advising young people as to how they can protect themselves when faced with situations like these:

1. Speak up.
2. Know that the EEOC is there to help in such cases.
3. Confide in family members.
4. Parents are advised to know the names of managers, and have a copy of the employee handbook.
5. Victims can write a short letter to the harasser, with specific complaints. This is likely to be taken seriously.

In addition to giving teenagers legal support, the EEOC  has also forced companies to hold training on the issue. The consent decree in the Burger King case, for example, said franchise owners must train managers about sexual harassment, distribute a new sexual harassment policy to all workers and prominently display an 800 number that workers can use to report harassment.

Read the news report

See "Sexual Harassment: What Teens Should Know", a book by Carol Rust Nash.

Read EEOC's Tips to Companies That Employ Teens

The Supreme Court has upheld a lower court decision in favor of a woman forklift operator who said she had been retaliated against after accusing a supervisor of sexual discrimination.

Sheila White, employed at the maintenance department at a railroad yard in Memphis, Tennessee, had complained in 1997 to the railroad of harassment by her supervisor. She then complained to a federal agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, of sex discrimination and retaliation.

White was reassigned from forklift operator to track laborer, which meant her pay and benefits remained the same but she had to do a more difficult job. She was later accused of insubordination in a matter not related to the sex discrimination case and was suspended without pay for 37 days.

After the company determined that she had not been insubordinate, White was reinstated in 1998 with full back pay.

A federal jury rejected White's claims of sex discrimination but found she had been retaliated against and awarded her $43,000 in damages.

A U.S. appeals court upheld the award and ruled a 37-day suspension without pay constituted an adverse employment action, regardless of her later reinstatement. It also said reassignment of duties within the same job classification can constitute retaliation.

The Supreme Court upheld the appeals court's decision for White.

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A former Marshall University cheerleader has filed a sexual harassment lawsuit naming the university’s Board of Governors, the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission and Marshall’s cheerleading coach as defendants.

The plaintiff, represented by lawyer Mary Downey and identified only as “K.C.” in the suit, was invited to join Marshall’s cheerleading squad in April 2005 and was awarded a scholarship. She alleges that “she was subjected to a pervasive environment of sexual harassment, abuse and discrimination” including sexual slurs and inappropriate groping from male cheerleaders.

The suit claims that the plaintiff has suffered “severe emotional distress” and “will continue to need psychological and medical care as a direct result of her treatment by defendants.”

Among abuse alleged in the suit was male cheerleaders routinely “exposing their genitalia” and threatening “female members with violence and physical harm, such as dropping them during routines.”

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A class action lawsuit against a number of health insurers filed by a group of physicians has been dismissed by a Miami federal judge. The lawsuit claimed that the insurers had used claims processing software to delay, reduce and deny payments to hundreds of thousands of physicians

The judge dismissed all claims against UnitedHealthcare Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Coventry Health Care Inc.. These three companies were the last defendants as some of the other insurers in the case -- including Aetna, Cigna, HealthNet, Humana, Prudential and Wellpoint -- had settled for hundreds of millions of dollars during the past few years.

But United and Coventry continued to fight, and U.S. District Judge Federico A. Moreno has ruled that there is not enough evidence that the two insurers conspired to underpay doctors.

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A Pinellas County circuit judge has ordered Global Resources Inc. to pay $ 2.2 million, including restitution to 96 people who were defrauded out of their investments.

According to the commission, Global Resources advertised that it could provide buyers public access Internet machines for investments ranging from $8,000 to $108.000. However, not only did the company not help in locating and setting up kiosks, it also failed to deliver the Internet machines. Those trying to receive refunds were ignored, and complaints were filed with the Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Commission, who filed the lawsuit.

"These people put their faith and money into a business venture and got absolutely nothing in return," said agriculture commissioner Charles H. Bronson. "We asked for and received the maximum fine for each offense, and I hope this sends a message that we will go after companies that rip off our citizens."

Bronson filed the lawsuit charging Global Resources with violations of the state's Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act as well as the Sale of Business Opportunities Act.

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Actor Bruce Willis has sued Anthony Goodrich, a paparazzi photographer, for defamation. Goodrich had alleged that Willis manhandled him outside a Los Angeles restaurant.

Willis' attorney Martin D. Singer said that Goodrich had made "malicious, fabricated and defamatory statements" about an incident on June 13 when Willis was entering the Los Angeles restaurant Koi.

"Plaintiff put his hand up in front of his face to shield his eyes from the blinding flash of the cameras in order to be able to see and walk into the restaurant," the suit said. "Goodrich falsely stated that Willis stiff-armed Goodrich, shoved the photographer and pushed his camera into his face, causing injury to Goodrich's nose and teeth."

The lawsuit said that Goodrich's comments have damaged Willis' "reputation and standing in the community, as well as causing shame, mortification, hurt feelings, embarrassment, humiliation and damage to the value of his name, likeness and goodwill"

Goodrich initially filed a battery report with the Los Angeles Police Department but later refused to prosecute.

The lawsuit seeks "$1 million in general, special and consequential damages as well as punitive damages to be determined at trial."

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The Illinois Supreme Court has ordered that $2.15 billion in cash that was securing the appeal bond in the Price "lights" case be returned to Philip Morris.

The Price "lights" case is a class action suit filed against Philip Morris in Madison County, Illinois in 2000. The plaintiffs alleged that the descriptors -"lowered tar and nicotine" on every pack of Marlboro Lights cigarettes, misled "Lights" smokers to believe that the Marlboro Lights cigarettes were actually less hazardous than the full-flavor brands.

The smokers claimed that though the Marlboro Lights cigarettes did not pose any health risks to them, they suffered economic damages and asked the Court for reimbursement.

In 2003, Madison County Circuit Court ordered Philip Morris to pay a total of $10.1 billion in compensatory and punitive damages including attorney fees in the amount of $1.775 billion. Philip Morris appealed the decision.

Pending the appeal, Philip Morris was ordered to deposit an appeal bond secured by $800 million in cash and a pre-existing $6 billion long-term note to be placed in escrow pending the resolution of the case.

The $6 billion term note bears an interest rate of 7%. The interest amount of $210 million received every six months was to be deposited in the county account beginning October 1, 2003.

In 2004, Philip Morris appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court to overturn the $10.1 billion judgment and decertify the Price class.

The Supreme Court concluded that Philip Morris was specifically authorized to use descriptors such as "light" and "low tar" by the Federal Trade Commission. The trial court's judgment was reversed in favor of the company. The plaintiffs' motion for rehearing was denied. 

With the Supreme Court's verdict favoring Philip Morris, the total amount of $2.15 billion cash including the interest accrued on all cash deposited into the county account, the $800 million paid in quarterly installments and the interest generated from the $6 billion note, will be returned to the company. The Supreme Court's order will also terminate the company's obligations to deposit payments on the note and to pay administrative fees to the Madison County clerk.

If the U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear the plaintiffs' appeal, the $6 billion note, which also secured the 2003 judgment, will be returned to Philip Morris.

The family of Edward Souza, who was fatally struck outside his home by a drunken driver has been awarded $28.2 million by a jury. This includes $ 1 million in punitive damages.

Bexar County jurors found Monte James Cooper, 58, liable in the 2004 death of Edward Souza. Cooper had a blood-alcohol level twice the legal limit when his pickup hit Souza and his wife. Edward Souza was pinned between two vehicles and dragged to his death, while his wife, Aleshia, suffered a broken neck and pelvis.

Cooper was sentenced to seven years in prison and 10 years probation. He pleaded no contest to intoxication manslaughter and intoxication assault.

A judge has reduced the damages awarded to the family of Gregory de Villers, who was killed by his wife, Kristin Rossum, from $ 104.5 million to 14.5 million.  Rossum was employed as a toxicologist with the county of San Diego, and poisoned her husband with drugs stolen from the Medical Examiner's office.

A jury had determined that Rossum should pay $4.5 million to the de Villers family as compensation for their loss and $100 million to prevent her from profiting if she were to sell the rights to her story in a book or movie deal.

Judge John S. Meyer reduced the punitive damages from $100 million to $10 million, finding the ratio between the punitive and compensatory damage amounts was too large and therefore violated due process. The award of $4.5 million compensatory damages stands. Meyer ordered the county of San Diego, which had employed Rossum, to also pay the de Villers family more than $27,500 to cover costs incurred before and during the trial.

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BART has sued GE Transportation Systems to recover the $ 80 million it spent on an automated train control system that will not work. The system was supposed to revolutionize the way trains are controlled and move trains closer and faster using wireless technology.

The goal of the project was to run 30 trains through the Transbay Tube in San Francisco each hour instead of the current 24, meaning an additional 6,000 riders per hour could be squeezed through the underwater tunnel. BART had hailed the technology as a way to increase capacity through electronics, rather than physically building new tracks or a new tunnel.

However serious problems that emerged with the project resulted in BART spending $80 million on contracts, equipment and software which may be unusable.

The lawsuit seeks to recover the $80 million BART has spent so far, as well as the software codes it says GE has developed for the system.

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California and 10 local prosecutors have reached a $1 million settlement with diet-pill maker Nutraquest Inc., manufacturer of the best-selling diet pill, Xenadrine RFA-1. The lawsuit accused the company of using deceptive techniques to sell weight-loss products that contained ephedra.

Nutraquest had claimed that the drug was "clinically proven to increase fat-loss by an unprecedented 1,700 percent," and is "the only diet supplement in the world clinically proven to increase fat loss by an extraordinary 38.6 times more than diet and exercise alone."

The Food and Drug Administration banned ephedra in April 2004 after it was linked to dozens of deaths and thousands of reports of health problems such as heart attack or increased blood pressure. Nutraquest filed for bankruptcy protection in 2003 after a flood of lawsuits claiming the ephedra in Xenadrine caused medical problems, including at least one death.

As part of the settlement announced Thursday, Nutraquest president Robert Chinery has to pay $600,000 in civil penalties and $400,000 in costs.

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Three  manufacturers of dry cleaning chemicals were ordered to pay the city of Modesto $178 million for contaminating its water with suspected carcinogens.

The jury in San Francisco Superior Court found that the companies had acted with malice because they failed to tell dry cleaners how to use the chemicals perchloroethylene or trichloroethylene without harming the environment. 

The city of Modesto was awarded over $175 million in punitive damages and $3.2 million in actual damages for groundwater contamination.

Vulcan Materials Co. was ordered to pay $100 million in punitive damages, Dow Chemical Co. was ordered to pay $75 million and RR Street & Co. Inc. to pay $75,000. Two dry-cleaning businesses that were named in the lawsuit do not have to pay damages as they did not know about the contamination risk.

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Catholic Healthcare West, that has 40 hospitals in California, Nevada and Arizona, has agreed to reimburse approximately 800,000 uninsured patients for excessive charges. This will settle a class action lawsuit that the hospital group faced, claiming that uninsured patients were routinely charged up to five times the amount paid by insurers or government programs for the same services.

The settlement amount is expected to run into hundreds of millions of dollars. The settlement also allows the patients to be compensated in medical care.

Catholic Healthcare West spokeswoman Tricia Griffin said the company had altered its billing methods in 2004 and agreed as part of the settlement never to overcharge the uninsured.

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A jury has awarded $3.7 million in damages to Gerald Vincent, his wife, Corey Vincent, and her 11-year-old son for injuries suffered during a crash. Vincent's  car was slammed by vehicles owned by Harris Ranch Beef Co. and FedEx Ground Package System Inc.

The Contra Costa County jury has ordered Harris Ranch to pay 80 percent of the damages while  FedEx Ground was found liable for the remaining 20 percent.

On December 26, 2003, the Harris Ranch tractor-trailor rear-ended the FedEx Ground delivery van, which crossed the double yellow line and hit another car before slamming into the Vincents' 1999 Dodge Durango.

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Goldie Claude, 86,  of Waverly, is suing her doctors for malpractice after they removed a healthy kidney from her body during surgery instead of one with a cancerous tumor.

In a CT scan done in February, Dr. Kenneth Hawkins at the Horizon Medical Center in Dickson first correctly identified that the left kidney had the cancer.  But later in his report, Hawkins wrote that the right kidney had the cancer. The error was not noticed during transcription or review of the report.

Claude is suing both Hawkins and Dr. Michael Spalding, the surgeon who removed her right kidney at Centennial Medical Center in Nashville. Both hospitals and their parent company, HCA Inc., are named in the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified monetary damages.

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Claudia Muro, recently released after spending 29 months in jail pending trial for child abuse, has sued the manufacturer of the hidden camera system that had filmed her. The suit alleges that misleading camera footage made it appear like she was abusing the five-month old girl in her charge, when in fact, she was just playing with the baby.

The hidden camera clips showed her appearing to shake and slam the child, but video experts concluded the tape was an unreliable depiction of what took place. The Broward State Attorney's office dropped its case against Muro after video analysts said that the abrupt motions on the tape could be due to missing frames - the camera recorded 5.5 frames per second as compared to the 30 frames captured by most video cameras.

Muro's attorneys said the Tyco Fire & Security recording system needed a warning on it that the cameras did not capture real-time movement and could distort the speed of motion. Muro is seeking an unspecified amount in damages.

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A Washington hospital and its insurance carrier have won $4.1 million against a Louisiana hospital and two doctors who gave excellent recommendations for a doctor without disclosing his drug problem.

Dr. Robert Lee Berry had been diverting the narcotic Demerol from patients for his own use while working in Louisiana. Two of his partners and the administration at Lakeview Regional Medical Center in New Orleans knew of his drug problem, but failed to disclose it to officials at Kadlec Medical Center.

Instead, they offered "glowing letters of recommendation" for him to Kadlec. Dr Berry, an anesthesiologist, was involved in a 2002 surgery at Kadlec Medical Center  that left a woman severely brain-damaged. Kadlec Medical Center and Seattle-based Western Professional Insurance filed suit in U.S. District Court in Louisiana, alleging fraud and misrepresentation.

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A federal judge in Oregon has denied a motion by attorneys for the Vatican to dismiss a civil lawsuit brought against it by a sexual abuse victim of a onetime Chicago priest. This is the first time that a lawsuit against the Vatican has proceeded this far in the U.S. courts. 

The victim, known only as "John Doe" was allegedly molested as a youth in Oregon by the Rev. Andrew Ronan.  Judge Michael W. Mosman said the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act, which protects foreign nations from lawsuits in U.S. courts, does not apply to the Vatican in this case because the Vatican knew the priest had a history of sexual misconduct with minors and  allowed him to continue in ministry.

Ronan had been removed from ministry in Northern Ireland after a student at a seminary there accused him of sexual misconduct and left the priesthood in 1966 amid more allegations of abuse in Portland.

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Hamilton County in Ohio has agreed to a settlement of $ 6 million with Debra Singler who had sued the county for removing her dead father's brain without informing the family. When Singler read the autopsy report, she realized that she had buried her father without his brain, which was kept to determine what had killed him.

The lawsuit later included about 960 people whose relatives had body parts removed without permission at the Hamilton County morgue.

Previously, a $5 million settlement had been paid to Cincinnati attorney John Metz, for a lawsuit accusing then-Hamilton County Coroner Frank Cleveland of improperly harvesting corneas from bodies at the morgue.

In Singler's case,  the settlement also includes an agreement that the coroner's office can no longer take body parts without permission, and families must be given the option of having the body part returned after the cause of death has been determined.

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Two FedEx Ground drivers of Lebanese descent who claimed a manager harassed them with racial slurs for two years were awarded $ 61 million by a jury.  Edgar Rizkallah and Kamil Issa said in the discrimination lawsuit that they were called "terrorists," "camel jockeys" and other derogatory terms in 1999 and 2000 by Stacy Shoun. Shoun was the terminal manager for the Oakland facility where the two men were contract drivers.

An Alameda County Superior Court jury on Friday awarded the men $50 million in punitive damages, on top of $11 million in compensatory damages.  The lawsuit accused FedEx Ground of failing to enforce its anti-discrimination policies.

Shoun was ordered to pay $1 million to the drivers under a California law allowing individuals to be held personally liable for workplace harassment.

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A class action suit has been filed against Vonage Holdings Corp. claiming that the company improperly steered consumers toward investing in its $531 million initial public offering.

Shares of the Internet phone startup have dropped by over 30% since the IPO on May 24. The company had taken the unusual step of setting aside 4.2 million IPO shares priced at $17 for customers. The stock closed at $11.98 last Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.

The suit, filed  in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, claims Vonage tried to compensate for a lack of interest among institutional investors by selling shares to consumers, according to a statement issued by the law firm Motley Rice LLC.

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A class action lawsuit has been filed against six phone companies who allegedly allowed the National Security Agency to access their phone and internet records.

The plaintiffs are four West Michigan phone customers who have brought the suit against phone companies and internet providers AT&T, Cellular One, Charter Communication, MCI, Transworld Network and Verizon Wireless.

Christopher and Rebecca Yowtz of Coopersville, Ryan Halbower of Traverse City and Joan DuBois of West Olive are among the many people who have filed a dozen class action lawsuits against the phone companies. These four residents represent all Michigan phone customers.

Their attorney, Russell Sipes of the law firm George & Sipes, said that the violation is of both state and federal statutes.

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A class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Greater New Orleans Metropolitan Area homeowners insurance policyholders who have been denied insurance coverage for losses caused by Hurricane Katrina, the law firm of Anderson Kill & Olick P.C. announced.  The lawsuit has been brought against fifteen insurance companies that sold All-Risk homeowners insurance policies to Louisiana residents.

The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages for the companies' conduct designed to avoid payment of claims to policyholders who suffered residential and other property losses caused by the Hurricane.  The policyholders' claim that the insurers had not specifically excluded  hurricane damage or  levees failure in the policies that they sold in the New Orleans area. 

The suit alleges wrongful acts by the insurance companies, such as a directive that  adjusters arbitrarily apply any nearby waterline and ignore  other evidence in order to deny full payment of claims under applicable "flood" exclusions. The insurers also equate windstorm, storm surge and the negligent design, construction and maintenance of New Orleans area levees with "flooding" to exclude coverage.

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The Rohm & Haas chemical plant in Deer Park will pay a $485,000 civil penalty and purchase at least 300 acres of environmentally sensitive land in the Galveston Bay watershed. This will settle a lawsuit by the U.S. Justice Department Environmental Protection Agency that  found that the plant was dumping pollution in excess of its permits into the Houston Ship Channel, Tucker Bayou and the east fork of Patrick Bayou.

The pollutants included chlorine, nickel, cyanide, acid compounds and volatile compounds, according to the lawsuit. Rohm's clean-air violations included failing to conduct weekly inspections of pumps and record meter readings in 1999 and 2000.

According to the terms of the settlement, Rohm must purchase at least 300 acres but must try to buy 450 to 600 acres of a "mix of coastal estuarine or freshwater wetlands and upland habitats that will protect water quality and provide support for fisheries and wildlife."

Read our post about brain cancer patients suing Rohm & Haas

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A federal jury has awarded nearly $2 million Wednesday to three Delaware state police troopers in their lawsuit against the agency. The troopers, Sgt. Christopher D. Foraker, Cpl. Wayne Warren and Cpl. B. Kurt Price, accused former and current commanders of retaliating against them for speaking about environmental conditions at the department's firing range.

Retired Col. L.Aaron Chaffinch and Col. Thomas F. MacLeish were found to have violated the troopers' rights. Chaffinch mocked the troopers in front of other high-ranking officers and used profanity when referring to Foraker.

The troopers said that Chaffinch and MacLeish violated their free speech by retaliating against them after they spoke to state auditors about concerns at the Smyrna-area range, which included high levels of toxic metals. The range was closed in 2004.

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