March 31st, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
As she left Back to the Future: The Ride one day eight years ago, Mary Ann Williams felt her right arm go numb.
“I felt my face drop. I couldn’t talk. And then I passed out,” she said in recalling those moments outside the Universal Studios attraction Jan. 3, 2001.
Williams, then 35 and in apparent fine health, had suffered a debilitating stroke.
She sued Universal Orlando three years later, blaming her stroke on the popular flight-simulator ride. The Prairieville, La., woman’s case was settled out of court about a year ago, with no admission of fault, its terms sealed from public scrutiny.
Williams’ lawsuit and scores of others filed in the past five years have left no public record that might verify or debunk allegations that her injuries and those in the other cases were caused by the rides and attractions at the core of Central Florida’s theme-park industry.
An Orlando Sentinel review of 477 personal-injury lawsuits filed against the region’s three big theme-park companies from the beginning of 2004 through the end of last year found 101 cases in which people say they were injured by rides or attractions owned by Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando or Busch Entertainment Corp. (which operates SeaWorld Orlando and Busch Gardens-Tampa Bay). The rest of the suits involve everything from routine slip-and-fall accidents to allegations of show animals gone berserk.
Only a tiny percentage of personal-injury lawsuits in the U.S. ever go to trial. But in the case of the 101 ride- or attraction-related suits filed against Disney, Universal or Busch Entertainment in state or federal court, none has reached a jury. Twenty-three of the suits are still pending, but the other 78 — including some that claim rides caused strokes, heart attacks, spinal injuries or, in two cases, a person’s death — were either settled out of court or dismissed by a judge.
And, as is typical in personal-injury cases, many of the park-case dismissals and nearly all of the settlement agreements were then sealed from public view; the only three exceptions involved small settlements, worth $25,000 or less each.
Disney, Universal and Busch defend their safety records and policies. They note that many millions of people use their rides each year, yet injury claims are rare.
“The safety of our guests and cast members is our top priority,” Disney World spokeswoman Kim Prunty said. “We design our rides in accordance with internationally recognized safety standards and host millions of guests on our attractions each year.”
The three companies do not, however, discuss ride-related litigation.
“We take the safety of our guests as our highest priority,” Universal spokesman Tom Schroder said. “That said, we’re not going to discuss our legal strategies or the details of specific cases.”
Injuries reported
Florida law exempts theme parks from the state inspections and mandatory reporting required of carnivals and small amusement parks. In 2000, the big parks signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the state in which they volunteered to start providing certain ride-injury information to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Service’s Bureau of Fair Rides Inspection.
Chad Emerson, an associate law professor at Faulkner University in Montgomery, Ala., focuses on the amusement business. Emerson says the industry’s limited concession was still a big step, because it gave Florida what he describes as one of the country’s best injury-reporting systems. California, the only other state with several large theme parks, has stricter reporting requirements, but they don’t necessarily generate better data, Emerson said.
Yet the Florida system requires theme parks to disclose only injuries that involve a person’s death or an immediate hospital stay that exceeds 24 hours “for purposes other than medical observation.”
As a result, only nine of the 101 ride-related lawsuits found in the Sentinel’s review of 2004-08 court cases were reported to the state as accidents when they occurred, even though at least a few of the 92 other cases include allegations of serious harm.
According to Rob Jacobs, chief of the state’s ride-inspection bureau, Florida’s goal was to collect basic data on ride injuries, and the voluntary-reporting agreement reached with the big theme-park companies achieved that. But many injury claims don’t show up in the state reports, he acknowledged, because they do not meet all of the requirements spelled out in the state agreement.
Delia Guerra’s accident, for instance, never was reported. According to her 2007 lawsuit, she felt abdominal pain while riding the Kraken roller coaster during a 2004 visit to SeaWorld. But the pain wasn’t severe, and she did not seek help right away. The pain grew worse, however, and as her family drove home to Georgia three days later, Guerra finally sought medical attention at a hospital emergency room in St. Augustine. A doctor diagnosed a ruptured spleen that needed emergency surgery.
The state reports also don’t require much detail.
In July 2005, for example, a British teenager, Leanne Deacon, suffered bleeding in her brain and collapsed after riding the Tower of Terror at Disney-MGM Studios (now called Disney’s Hollywood Studios), court records show. The official notification that Disney submitted described her affliction in two words: “Felt ill.”
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March 31st, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
Bank of America Accused in Ponzi Lawsuit
LESLIE WAYNE
Published: March 27, 2009
Bank of America effectively set up a branch in a Long Island office that helped Nicholas Cosmo carry out a $380 million
Ponzi scheme, according to a class-action lawsuit filed in federal court.
The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn late Thursday, contends that Bank of America “established, equipped and staffed” a branch office in the headquarters of Mr. Cosmo’s firm, Agape Merchant Advance. As a result, the lawsuit contends that the bank knowingly “assisted, facilitated and furthered” Mr. Cosmo’s fraudulent scheme.
“Bank of America was at the epicenter of this scheme,” said the lawsuit, which seeks $400 million in damages from the bank and other defendants. “Without Bank of America’s participation, the scheme would not have succeeded and grown to such an enormous size.”
Mr. Cosmo surrendered to authorities at a Long Island train station in January in connection with a suspected Ponzi scheme involving what Mr. Cosmo called “private bridge loans” that promised investors returns of 48 percent to 80 percent a year. Many of his 1,500 investors were blue-collar workers and civil servants.
Bank of America declined to comment, saying that it had not yet seen the suit.
According to the suit, representatives of Bank of America worked directly out of Mr. Cosmo’s West Hempstead office, which was about 30 miles from the branch where Agape and Mr. Cosmo maintained their bank accounts. In addition, Bank of America provided on-site representatives at Agape with bank equipment and computer systems that allowed direct access to the bank’s accounts and systems, the suit said.
“Essentially, Bank of America established a fully functional bank branch manned by its own representatives within Agape’s offices, which is contrary to normal banking practices,” the lawsuit said. As a result, the bank’s representatives had “actual knowledge” that Mr. Cosmo was “diverting money to his own account” and “engaging in virtually no legitimate business whatsoever.”
In a complaint filed against Mr. Cosmo in January by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, the government contends that from 2004 to 2008, Mr. Cosmo operated a fraudulent trading scheme in which investors were solicited to provide short-term bridge loans but that the money instead went into commodities trading contracts that lost money.
This is the second time that Mr. Cosmo has been accused of fraud. He had previously served 21 months in federal prison in Allenwood, Pa., for mail fraud. Upon his release in 2000, his broker’s license was revoked. He founded Agape after leaving prison.
The lawsuit also names a number of futures and commodities trading firms that, the lawsuit said, “assisted Cosmo in running an illegal unregistered commodities pool.” The suit says that the trading firms should “never have accepted this business,” which violated “know your customer” duties that are required of these firms.
One of the firms named in the suit was MF Global. Diana DeSocio, a spokeswoman for MF Global, said that when the firm became aware of Mr. Cosmo’s background last October, it closed Mr. Cosmo’s account and notified regulators.
Ms. DeSocio added that the account that Mr. Cosmo had was an individual account and was not an account set up on behalf of his investors.
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March 12th, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
Supreme Court’s Wyeth ruling “a major setback” for drug industry.
In a story that received coverage from many news sources, the New York Times (3/5, A1, Liptak) reports on its front page, “In a major setback for business groups that had hoped to build a barrier against injury lawsuits seeking billions of dollars, the Supreme Court on Wednesday said state juries may award damages for harm from unsafe drugs even though their manufacturers had satisfied federal regulators.” The decision “could have significant implications beyond drug manufacturing” and “many companies have sought tighter federal regulation in recent years in part to shield themselves from litigation.”
The Washington Post (3/5, A2, Barnes) reports, “The 6 to 3 vote in the court’s most anticipated business decision of the term was a rejection of Bush administration policy and a major setback to pharmaceutical companies, which face thousands of lawsuits in state courts from patients who allege that drugs have harmed them.”
The AP (3/5) reports, “The Supreme Court” upheld “a $6.7 million jury award to a musician who lost her arm to gangrene following an injection.” The plaintiff, “Diana Levine of Vermont once played the guitar and piano professionally” and “her right arm was amputated after she was injected with Phenergan, an anti-nausea medicine made by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, using a method that brings rapid relief, but with grievous risks if improperly administered.” There were many other outlets that covered the Wyeth ruling, including: BusinessWeek (3/5, Johnson), CBS News (3/5, Cohen), the San Francisco Chronicle (3/5, Egelko), the Wall Street Journal (3/5, Bravin), the Legal Times (3/5, Mauro) reports, the AP (3/5, Curran), the Legal Intelligencer (3/4, Passarella), the Los Angeles Times (3/5, Savage), Dow Jones Newswires (3/5, Anderson), USA Today (3/5, Biskupic, Appleby), UPI (3/4) ABC World News (3/4, story 9, 0:30, Gibson), CBS Evening News (3/4, story 4, 2:00, Couric) and NBC Nightly News (3/4, story 5, 2:05, Williams).
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March 12th, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
Consumers Could Face Hurdles Collecting From Peanut Corp.
The peanut processor linked to a nationwide salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds may not have sufficient assets to cover claims filed by those injured by its products. According to a recent bankruptcy filing, Peanut Corp. of America will not use more than $7 million in assets to cover consumer lawsuits but instead will use the money to pay off other businesses. However, an attorney familiar with the matter said he believes a separate insurance policy will ultimately cover most claims. AP, Richmond Times-Dispatch 03/07/2009
Read Article: Richmond Times-Dispatch
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March 12th, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
Lawsuits Link Device Makers to Shamed Surgeon
Two medical device companies tied to a former West Virginia doctor named in more than 100 medical malpractice lawsuits could face liability for allegedly paying the osteopathic surgeon to use their products, the Charleston Gazette reports. According to complaints, Wright Medical Technology Inc. and EBI Inc. paid kickbacks to John Anderson King and others in return for using devices with questionable medical benefits. Last year, King’s former employer paid $100 million to settle lawsuits filed by patients treated by the doctor between 2002 and 2003. Paul J. Nyden, The Charleston Gazette 03/09/2009
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March 12th, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
Family Files Lawsuit Over Home Explosion
The family of a Pennsylvania man who was killed in a home explosion last year has filed a lawsuit accusing a gas company, plumber and contractor of negligence in the blast. In the lawsuit, the family of Richard Leith claims that workers from Higgins Plumbing and W.S. Lea General Contracting damaged a gas line while performing maintenance on a sewer line and that Dominion Peoples Gas Co. failed to identify and fix the leak. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for wrongful death and for injuries to a granddaughter who was present at the time of the explosion. Kristie Linden, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 03/09/2009
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