November 25th, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
Extending the company’s largest recall ever, Toyota announced on Wednesday it will replace the accelerator pedals on the 3.8 million vehicles it recalled in September. The original recall was for faulty floor mats accused of jamming accelerator pedals.
After the September recall, Toyota claimed the problem resolved, with no further defects to be found on the vehicles. However, the Nation Highway Traffic Safety Administration reminded Toyota its investigation was ongoing, with the latest recall a result of probe.
Vehicles involved in the latest recall include the 2007-2010 Toyota Camry, 2005-2010 Toyota Avalon, 2004-2009 Toyota Prius, 2005-2010 Toyota Tacoma, 2007-2010 Toyota Tundra, 2007-2010 Lexus ES 350, 2006-2010 Lexus IS 250 and 2006-2010 Lexus IS 350. In order to resolve the issue, Toyota will install a re-shaped accelerator pedal and replace the vehicles’ original floor mats with redesigned mats.
Additionally, recalled Toyota Camry, Avalon and Lexus ES and IS models will be fitted with a brake override system. The system is designed to cut engine power if the brake and accelerator pedals are pushed at the same time.
Toyota says it has $5.6 billon stashed away specifically to fund recalls. As such, the company should be able to function as normal while the recall is resolved.
(original story can be found at leftlanenews.com)
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November 25th, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), in cooperation with Stork Craft Manufacturing Inc., of British Columbia, Canada, today announced the voluntary recall of more than 2.1 million Stork Craft drop-side cribs, including about 147,000 Stork Craft drop-side cribs with the Fisher-Price logo. The recall involves approximately 1,213,000 units distributed in the United States and 968,000 units distributed in Canada.
CPSC urges parents and caregivers to immediately stop using the recalled cribs, wait for the free repair kit, and do not attempt to fix the cribs without the kit. They should find an alternative, safe sleeping environment for their baby. Consumers should contact Stork Craft to receive a free repair kit that converts the drop-side on these cribs to a fixed side.
The cribs’ drop-side plastic hardware can break, deform, or parts can become missing. In addition, the drop-side can be installed upside-down, which can result in broken or disengaged plastic parts. All of these problems can cause the drop-side to detach in one or more corners. When the drop-side detaches, it creates space between the drop-side and the crib mattress. The bodies of infants and toddlers can become entrapped in the space which can lead to suffocation. Complete detachment of drop-sides can lead to falls from the crib.
CPSC, Health Canada, and Stork Craft are aware of 110 incidents of drop-side detachment; 67 incidents occurred in the United States and 43 in Canada. The incidents include 15 entrapments; 12 in the U.S. and three in Canada. Four of the entrapments resulted in suffocation: a 7-month-old in Gouverneur, N.Y.; a 7-month-old in New Iberia, La.; a 6-month-old in Summersville, W.Va.; and a 9-month-old in Bronx, N.Y. Included in these incidents are 20 falls from cribs; 12 in the U.S. and eight in Canada. Fall injuries ranged from concussion to bumps and bruises. The cribs involved in these incidents had plastic drop-side hardware that had broken, missing, or deformed claws, connectors, tracks, or flexible tab stops; loose or missing metal spring clips; stripped screws; and/or drop-sides installed upside-down.
This recall involves Stork Craft drop-side cribs and Stork Craft drop-side cribs with the Fisher-Price logo. This recall does not involve any cribs that do not have a drop-side. This recall does not involve any cribs with metal rod drop-side hardware. It involves only those cribs with plastic trigger and one-hand-system drop-side hardware.
This recall includes Stork Craft cribs with manufacturing and distribution dates between January 1993 and October 2009. This recall also includes Stork Craft cribs with the Fisher-Price logo that have manufacturing dates between October 1997 and December 2004. The Stork Craft cribs with the Fisher-Price logo were first sold in the U.S. in July 1998 and in Canada in September 1998. The cribs were sold in various styles and finishes. The manufacture date, model number, crib name, country of origin, and the firm’s name, address, and contact information are located on the assembly instruction sheet attached to the mattress support board. The firm’s insignia “storkcraft baby” or “storkling” is inscribed on the drop-side teething rail of some cribs. In Stork Craft cribs that contain the “Fisher-Price” logo, this logo can be found on the crib’s teething rail, in the manufacturer’s instructions, on the assembly instruction sheet attached to the mattress support board, and on the end panels of the Twinkle-Twinkle and Crystal crib models.
Major retailers in the United States and Canada sold the recalled cribs including BJ’s Wholesale Club, J.C. Penney, Kmart, Meijer, Sears, USA Baby, and Wal-Mart stores and online at Amazon.com, Babiesrus.com, Costco.com, Target.com, and Walmart.com from January 1993 through October 2009 for between $100 and $400.
The cribs were manufactured in Canada, China and Indonesia.
For additional information, contact Stork Craft toll-free at (877) 274-0277 anytime to order the free repair kit, or log on to www.storkcraft.com
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September 1st, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
The number of alcohol-impaired female drivers involved in fatal motor vehicle crashes increased in 2008, Department of Transportation officials said at the Aug. 20 launch of a nationwide enforcement campaign against drunk driving.
Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood said researchers studied fatal crash data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System, paying close attention to driver gender as well as where the crashes occurred.
According to the report (.pdf file), the number of alcohol-impaired female drivers increased or remained flat in 15 states in 2008, compared with 2007, while the number of alcohol-impaired males involved in a fatal crash increased or stayed flat in 13 states. Recently released FBI data also showed an increase in the number of female drivers arrested for driving under the influence
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September 1st, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
ALBANY – Two teenage sisters have been awarded $11 million in a malpractice lawsuit against a prominent Saranac Lake pediatrician who failed to take steps to prevent the girls from being repeatedly sexually assaulted by their half-brother when they were children in Lake Placid.
An eight-member jury in U.S. District Court ruled against Dr. Patricia Monroe and her workplace, Adirondack Internal Medicine and Pediatric, ending a federal case rooted in horrific abuse dating back more than nine years.
The older sister, now 18, will receive $6 million, the 16-year-old younger sister $5 million, according to a news release issued by Albany attorneys Pamela Nichols and Stephen Coffey, who represented the victims. He noted they were “never offered a dime” to the settle the case, which dates to 2002.
The news release said the jury of four men and four women found Monroe and her medical group were “negligent in their care and treatment of the children when they failed to take the proper measures to investigate a situation which would have prevented the girls from being sexually assaulted by their half brother.”
The series of events leading to the suit began as follows, according to interviews with attorneys and documents filed in the case:
On Aug. 15, 2000, one of the sisters, then 9, showed her mother a diary and asked her to read it.
The girl had written that she was “sad all the time because I’ve been touched in places I don’t want to be touched.”
She disclosed that her half-brother, then 14, had inappropriately touched her at least three times.
The next day, Aug. 16, 2000, the mother called Monroe, informed her of the abuse, and that the brother was living with the victim and the other sister. The doctor only suggested the victim and boy be separated.
The doctor examined the older daughter that September for a sore throat – yet never asked about the reported abuse.
Monroe examined the child again that October, again not inquiring about the abuse. But police were unaware of the rape and sodomy of both girls, then ages 8 and 9, until February 2001.
The lawsuit was filed by the victims’ family. It had targeted Monroe and others, including a school, rape crisis center and county mental health office, but the cases against the other defendants were dismissed. The suit against Monroe was dismissed as well, but that ruling was reversed by a U.S. Court of Appeals court.
The trial began Aug. 18 in U.S. District Court on Broadway. Nichols noted the most severe sexual attacks on the victims could have been stopped had the doctor spoken up.
“We were very pleased with the verdict,” Nichols said. “What happened to them was horrific. It was preventable and they’ll live with the ramifications of this for the rest of their lives.”
Monroe could not be reached. A call to her private office was not returned.
According to the Web site of Adirondack Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, the doctor is a married mother of three who received a medical degree and completed her residency in pediatrics at Syracuse College of Medicine, SUNY Health Science Center in Syracuse.
It stated she returned to the area in 1999 to practice with the medical group, primarily working in Saranac Lake.
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September 1st, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) — Toyota Motor Corp. may face demands that rollover-crash cases it won or settled be reopened, in light of accusations by a former company lawyer that the company hid records sought by plaintiffs.
The ex-Toyota lawyer, Dimitrios Biller, sued the company in July, claiming the world’s largest automaker and its U.S. units destroyed engineering and testing evidence relevant in more than 300 suits over sport-utility vehicle rollover accidents. Biller managed the electronic document-discovery program for Toyota, he said in court papers.
“The petition alleges conduct by Toyota that would cause every case ever resolved by Toyota in the past 10 years to be re-opened,” said Mikal Watts, a lawyer in Corpus Christi, Texas, referring to Biller’s suit. “We intend to ask the courts to re-open these lawsuits.”
Watts said Biller’s claims raise questions about the results of 10 other Toyota cases he handled. They include a trial he lost in Huntsville, Texas, over an accident that left a 6-year-old boy quadriplegic and dependent on a ventilator.
“A lot more information can be gleaned from electronic documents than paper,” said Sean Kane, co-founder of the advocacy group Safety Research & Strategies in Rehoboth, Massachusetts. “You are looking for who knew what and when.”
Biller, 46, said he worked from 2003 to 2008 managing records for Toyota litigation. He “suffered a complete mental and physical breakdown” battling company executives and finally resigned after objecting to Toyota’s insistence on hiding data, he said in a July 24 complaint in federal court in Los Angeles.
‘Systematic Practice’
“Defendants are, and have, engaged in a systematic pattern and practice of discovery abuses and criminal acts against plaintiffs in litigation against the Toyota entities,” according to Biller’s complaint.
Toyota has 27 million vehicles on the road, and rollovers “are a rare event,” Sona Iliffe-Moon, a U.S. Toyota spokeswoman, said by e-mail on Aug. 30. “The number of rollover claims by Mr. Biller pending at this time is many times less than the number claimed by Mr. Biller.”
Iliffe-Moon declined to comment on the specifics of Biller’s lawsuit or confirm his former status as national counsel for the Toyota rollover program. She also declined to comment on a $3.7 million settlement he said he received after claiming he was wrongfully discharged from Toyota. Biller attached a copy of the settlement agreement to his complaint.
Avoiding Obligations
“Toyota takes its legal obligations seriously and works to uphold high professional and ethical standards,” Iliffe-Moon said in another message. “We are disappointed that Mr. Biller has elected to file this lawsuit to attempt to avoid what we believe are his obligations as an attorney formerly employed by Toyota. Since this matter is in litigation, that’s all that we have to say at this time.”
“This is the kind of publicity no company wants,” said Rebecca Lindland, an analyst at auto industry forecaster IHS Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts. “If the allegations are true, it would violate the trust so many people put into Toyota.”
Toyota gained 0.8 percent to 4,020 yen at the close of trading in Tokyo.
The case is Biller v. Toyota Motor Corp., 2:09-cv-5429, U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Los Angeles).
To contact the reporter on this story: Laurence Viele Davidson in Atlanta at lviele@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: September 1, 2009 05:24 EDT
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July 30th, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
The Los Angeles Times (7/30) reports that in a town-hall meeting yesterday, President Obama announced his “Bill of Insurance Rights.” The president “outlined eight consumer protections that he expects to see included in the final healthcare overhaul produced by Congress.” These include prohibiting insurance companies from refusing coverage because of “medical history”; capping the “amount insurance companies could charge for out-of-pocket expenses”; requiring insurers to “fully cover” preventive care, such as “regular checkups and tests”; disallowing rescission practices, gender-based pricing, and “annual or lifetime caps on coverage”; and requiring insurance to provide “extended coverage for young adults” and “guaranteed insurance renewal” policies.
Notably, the Wall Street Journal (7/30, A4, Adamy) points out that the health insurance industry is facing “renewed fire” from the Obama Administration despite the fact that it “conceded months ago to key demands.” The Journal suggests the President “took aim at insurers” at the forum in Raleigh, N.C., “as a way of selling his health plan.”
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June 26th, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
FDA seizes generic drugs at Michigan facilities due to manufacturing deficiencies.
Bloomberg News (6/26, Olmos) reports, “Generic drugs made by Caraco Pharmaceutical Laboratories Ltd. were seized by US authorities, who cited violations of manufacturing standards.” The FDA said drugs “and raw ingredients for pain, heart ailment, and psychiatric medications were confiscated today at three Caraco facilities in Michigan to prevent the Detroit-based company from distributing its products until the manufacturing deficiencies are corrected.” The agency also said the “drug seizure could lead to shortages of one pill, choline magnesium trisalicylate, a generic pain-relief medication.” Deborah Autor, director of the Office of Compliance at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said inspectors who saw the facilities in May 2009 “found ‘serious violations’ of manufacturing standards and ‘serious deficiencies’ in quality control.”
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June 22nd, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
Resistant staph bacteria is being transmitted between animals and humans, study finds.
By Robert Preidt
MONDAY, June 22 (HealthDay News)—Transmission of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections between pets and humans are increasing, with the most common being infections of the skin, soft-tissue and surgical infections, say researchers who conducted a review of clinical evidence.
“Pet owners are often unaware of the potential for transmission of life-threatening pathogens from their canine and feline companions,” Dr. Richard Oehler, of the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa, and colleagues wrote in the July issue of The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Dog and cat bites account for about 1 percent of emergency department visits each year in the United States and Europe. Severe infections occur in about 20 percent of all cases and are caused by bacteria from the animal’s mouth, plus possibly other bacteria from the human patient’s skin, the study authors pointed out.
Sepsis, a bloodstream infection, can be a severe complication of bite wounds infected with MRSA and a number of other types of bacteria, noted Oehler and colleagues.
Increasing prevalence of community-acquired MRSA in humans has been accompanied by MRSA colonization in domestic animals such as dogs, cats and horses. This makes the animals potential reservoirs of MRSA infection. And MRSA-related skin infections in pets, such as simple dermatitis, can easily spread to humans, according to the article.
Treatment of MRSA infections in pets is similar to that used in humans, said the researchers, who added that much more research needs to be done on MRSA pet-human infections.
“Bite injuries are a major cause of injury in the USA and Europe each year, particularly in children. Bites to the hands, forearms, neck and head have the potential for the highest morbidity,” the study authors conclude. “Health-care providers are at the forefront of protecting the vital relationships between people and their pets. Clinicians must continue to promote loving pet ownership, take an adequate pet history, and be aware that associated diseases are preventable via recognition, education, and simple precautions.”
The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has more about MRSA.
(original story can be found http://health.msn.com/health-topics/vaccinations/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100240768>1=31049
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June 3rd, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
By Thomas F. Schaller
June 2, 2009
I last wrote about America’s abysmal savings rate. Now, the flip side: our even more crippling credit card debt situation.
According to a recent study, in 2008 more than 91 million U.S. households, or 78 percent, held at least one credit card, with an average of 5.4 cards per household. Total credit debt as of December 2008 is $973 billion, with a household average of $8,329.
Almost 90 percent of that outstanding debt is held by 10 creditors; Chase, Bank of America, Citi, American Express and Capital One (the company with those zany commercials) are, in order, the top five creditors.
All of this borrowing and lending would be of little concern if American cardholders were borrowing money in the short term and paying those debts off immediately or within a few months with some interest. In fact, given that almost no merchants offer lower prices for paying cash (I occasionally see a gas station that still does), in some ways it makes more sense to use a credit card: Cash is much harder to recover if lost or stolen, and taking cash out from ATMs can incur fees.
Unfortunately, too many Americans use credit cards to finance their purchases over the longer term, at which point debts become punitive, even paralyzing. Many card holders quickly find themselves in a debt spiral wherein they can never pay back the principal – exactly what credit card companies want, explains Tom Geoghegan in recent essay for Harper’s magazine.
Mr. Geoghegan notes that annual percentage rates were more or less capped by states at around 9 percent until the Supreme Court ruled in 1978 that banks could lend at the rate allowable in the state where the bank is located, not where the creditor lives. “Now we’re all shoveling billions into the banks, and there’s no way working people who can’t get a raise will ever climb out of debt,” writes Mr. Geoghegan.
Credit card companies can be ruthless, too. A recent Pew Charitable Trusts survey of such companies revealed that 93 percent allow issuers to raise the interest rate at any time by simply changing the account agreement; 87 percent allow them to impose penalties even if the borrower is not 30 days or more overdue; and 72 percent offer promotional rates that can be revoked after a single late payment.
Last month, Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed a new law that would provide greater transparency for credit card holders and new restrictions on issuers. Among the provisions: Credit card companies can no longer change the teaser APR rates they use to lure customers within the first six months; cardholder payments must be 60 days late before companies can assess penalties; creditors must alert cardholders 45 days in advance of any rate changes, fees or finance charges; and cardholders whose rates are increased as a result of late payments must have their original rate restored after six consecutive months of on-time payments.
Overall, these changes should eliminate some of the predatory aspects and reduce the informational asymmetries that favor creditors over consumers. Hopefully, consumers will make more discriminating choices about using credit and, once burned, will be twice shy about sliding that card to buy non-essential items.
But maybe not. A recent study by University of Maryland economists Haiyan Shui and Lawrence Ausubel found that consumers, lured by attractive teaser rates, often made poor choices despite clear, preferable alternatives. “The problem isn’t in the availability of information [but] the processing of the information,” Mr. Ausubel recently told Time magazine. And, whatever might be said about predatory profiteering of credit card companies, every dollar of the nearly $1 trillion in current debts started with a purchase made by a consumer.
Using plastic more wisely will help, but using it less often is crucial.
Thomas F. Schaller teaches political science at UMBC. His column appears regularly in The Baltimore Sun. His e-mail is schaller67@gmail.com.
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June 3rd, 2009 Roberts & Roberts
The Hill (6/3, Swanson) reports, “Consumer groups and trial lawyers are crying foul over the Obama administration’s bankruptcy plans for General Motors and Chrysler” because “those plans would extinguish all ongoing auto accident claims that blame a death or serious injury on a defective GM or Chrysler vehicle.” According to Clarence Dilow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, “the plans are unusual in that they would prevent anyone from bringing a future liability claim against GM or Chrysler if a car already purchased from either company is defective and results in an accident causing death or serious injury.” Also, he added, “it was…unusual for no money to be set aside for liability claims.”
On the Wheels blog on the New York Times website (6/3) Christopher Jensen writes, “In approving the sale of most of Chrysler’s assets to a new company, run by Fiat, over the weekend, Judge Arthur J. Gonzalez also granted the automaker’s request that the new company not be held liable for future product-liability problems involving current owners” which “means people who own a Chrysler, Dodge or Jeep have lost their right to sue if they are injured by a safety defect.” He says that consumer groups are concerned that “people who already have been injured in accidents and have filed suits against Chrysler, asserting that a vehicle had a safety defect” will not get any money from the carmaker even if they “win in court.”
ClickonDetroit (6/3) also covers the story and reports, “It’s like slamming the courthouse door in the victim’s face.” Consumer groups want the “new Chrysler” to “at least create a victim’s fund.”
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