Author Archives: Lawyer Team

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This blog scans breaking news to find significant and interesting legal settlements. Lawyer.com is a directory website for lawyers. Featuring the best search in its field, lawyer.com connects people who need legal advice to the most qualified professionals who can provide it.

NJ School District to Pay $4.2 Million to Student Paralyzed by a Bully

Protect our students

Sawyer Rosenstein was twelve years old when a bully punched him in his stomach hard enough to cause a blood clot in the artery that supplies blood to his spine. Two days later, the injury paralyzed him from the waist down, permanently, in a series of events declared “incredibly rare”. There is a certain heart-tugging sympathy we feel for the boy, because everyone has experienced a bully either as a victim or an agent or a powerless onlooker, and because in our experience bullying is merely “something kids just do”, and because this time it was more than that. Imagine being confined to a wheelchair for the better part of your entire life all because of the baseless anger of a violent child. Imagine no consequences to said child’s actions (the bully in this case, who was known to be one and had a history of violence, received only a few days’ suspension) and having to look him in the eye daily from your new wheelchair you’ll never leave. Try to imagine — and this is the difficult part — whether a $4.8 million check would make that prison any better.

Formaldehyde-laced FEMA Trailer Companies Pay $14.8 Million to Katrina Victims

Trailer

In the weeks and months following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, thousands of displaced families were given trailers to live in by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. These trailers, while welcome shelter for whole communities wracked by natural disaster, turned out to leak formaldehyde in the air at levels up to eleven times the EPA recommended exposure limit. Formaldehyde is a fundamental and inexpensive chemical used in all sorts of building materials. My guess is that the trailers’ small, compact design, combined with poor ventilation and cheap formaldehyde-based components (plywood, carpeting, insulation — even paint) caused the uptick in formaldehyde levels. Also, they aren’t meant to be inhabited for such long periods — some refugees still live in their FEMA trailers today. Nevertheless, despite assurances from FEMA that the risk of formaldehyde was overstated, many refugees began to exhibit persistent flu-like symptoms, breathing difficulties, and eye irritation. The CDC conducted a study and found that 42% of the trailer homes had higher levels than what they recommend for a mere 15-minute exposure. Now imagine sleeping all night in that kind of environment.

Today, following lawsuits alleging fault in providing such poison-inflated housing, more than twenty manufacturers agreed to pay out $14.8 million in settlement to thousands of derelict mobile home denizens. Hopefully this will be some good news for those unfortunate people who are definitely in want of some.

Memphis to Clean Itself Up

Welcome to Memphis

In what might be the government equivalent to a friendly “take a shower, bro” at the gym, the city of Memphis, Tennessee has agreed to spend $250 million over a decade to fix and update its sewer system as part of a settlement. Apparently, the occasional overflow of untreated sewage was becoming a big problem in Memphis. Gross. The federal government, in particular the EPA, undertook litigation to force Memphis to fix these problems. On Monday, Memphis settled, paying a $1.29 million civil penalty (half of which will go right back to unrelated Memphis-bettering infrastructure projects) and agreeing that raw sewage is disgusting and probably shouldn’t be spewing out willy-nilly from time to time.

As to what extent these $250 million improvements will go is unclear. At least part of it will be to develop a “comprehensive fats, oil, and grease program”, which makes you wonder why there wasn’t one in the first place. This article shows images of a person actually kayaking through backed-up foamy white sewage sludge byproduct. In light of that repulsive fact, maybe the best course of action would be to have the TVA come in and toss a dam in there to fix everything up.

Nutella Settles Class Action About Healthiness

Anyone who scoops Nutella with a spoon has no intention of using it as a “spread.”

Nutella, the hazelnut spread considered by some to be the immortality-inducing ambrosia of myth, was alleged in a class action lawsuit to not be as healthy as advertised. How anyone can believe that a product akin to a peanut-butter-chocolate lovechild is healthy is beyond me, but nevertheless, the company that makes it, Ferrero, now must pay out $4 per container in trust to anyone who bought their product over a four-year period. If you bought a jar of Nutella between Jan. 1, 2008 and Feb. 3, 2012, you’re entitled to recompense for up to five jars, or $20. A fund of $2.5 million will be set up by Ferrero to pay out these claims.

In addition to the monetary penalty, Ferrero agreed to change its advertising to remove any suggestions that Nutella is healthy. What used to say “An example of a tasty yet balanced breakfast” will now say “Turn a balanced breakfast into a tasty one.” Astute readers will note that these two phrases are not very different at all. The key distinction, though, is that the former slogan implied that Nutella is both tasty and balanced, while the new one only implies that Nutella adds some taste to an otherwise bland albeit healthy breakfast. Ignoring the fact that many Nutella aficionados eat it by the spoon as meal in itself, this new advertising will actually make little impact on the perception of Nutella as healthy. I don’t think Ferrero was actually fooling anybody with their previous slogan for the 100 calorie-per-tablespoon spread.

To find out how to file a claim on your own jar of fraudulently-advertised hazelnut butter, visit the official Nutella class action settlement website.

California Workers Given a Break or Two

Can almost taste it

The California State Supreme Court issued a decision today to define employers’ obligations concerning their employees’ mealtime. Some confusion was inherent in California’s meal break laws, which state that employers must give employees a 30-minute meal break per every 10-hour-or-fewer shift. Employers weren’t sure, however, whether employees must abstain from all work during the 30-minutes and whether it was the employers’ problem to ensure that they do. Today’s ruling makes it clear: employers must provide employees with the ability to take a 30-minute lunch break, but if an employee decides to work straight through anyway, well, that’s their prerogative.

So, employers are let off the hook and employees must be the ones to make sure they don’t overwork themselves. The pressure to meet deadlines and maximize performance won’t influence low-level employees’ “decisions” to skip lunch at all. Sounds like a step in the right direction. Full disclosure: I usually eat lunch and do a little work at my desk, so I might be biased. The whipping is a little much, but motivation is motivation!