BP Victims Call Deal `Lenient;´ Seek $2 Billion Fine
Laurel Brubaker Calkins and Margaret Cronin Fisk, The Bloomberg News (Bloomberg.com)
November 20, 2007

The federal judge presiding over BP Plc´s Texas refinery blast prosecution stepped down after victims attacked a U.S. plea agreement as ``shockingly lenient´´ and accused the judge of a conflict of interest.
The victims´ lawyer said he will ask a new judge to award $2 billion for claims related to the blast instead of the $50 million provided for under the plea deal. They also argued in court papers filed in Houston today that U.S. District Judge Gray Miller should remove himself since he worked for BP´s law firm at the time of the 2005 explosion that killed 15 workers. Miller stepped aside today....

Credit Card Arbitration
Gary Weiss Forbes.com
October 11, 2007

"Aggressive debt collection tactics are bad enough, but throwing the Constitutional right to a court hearing down the drain is a step too far, even for the credit card industry."...

State fines Kaiser again
The HMO´s second such penalty in a year targets its handling of patient complaints at nine hospitals.
By Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein, The Los Angeles Times
July 26, 2007

Kaiser Permanente will be assessed a record fine today for its haphazard investigations of questionable care, physician performance and patient complaints at its California hospitals, according to state HMO regulators.... The penalty marks the second time in a year that Kaiser has been publicly rebuked and fined for glaring breakdowns in oversight....

VA rebuked for balking on Agent Orange care
A court says the agency must provide benefits to Vietnam veterans with a type of leukemia.
Henry Weinstein The Los Angeles Times
July 20, 2007

In a stinging ruling, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ripped into the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on Thursday for its continued resistance to paying benefits to veterans suffering from chronic lymphocytic leukemia because of their exposure to Agent Orange....

Wiley Rein, Insurer Sanctioned $1.25 Million
Mark Hamblett, New York Law Journal
June 20, 2007

Judge says document destruction by employees of Zurich American Insurance Companies and misleading statements by their attorneys added years and millions of dollars to the cost of prosecuting suits on behalf of people who died or were injured or suffered property loss in the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center....

Unsafe culture led to BP Texas refinery blast
Reuters
March 19, 2007

An unsafe culture at oil major BP was behind an explosion at its massive Texas oil refinery that killed 15 people and injured about 180 others in 2005, the head of the main government body investigating the accident said on Monday....

NYS announces settlement in Brooklyn adult home lawsuit
Associated Press
December 28, 2006

NEW YORK (AP) _ New York State officials announced a settlement Thursday in a 2002 lawsuit that charged the former operators of a Brooklyn adult home forced the home´s residents to live in deplorable conditions....

Texas Blast Lessons Were Not Learnt, BP Executive Claims
Stephen Foley, The Independent
December 23, 2006

The BP refinery in Texas where 15 people were killed in an explosion last year was still failing a safety audit more than a year after the incident, according to an executive at the oil company. The revelation came in a deposition taken as evidence for a potentially embarrassing trial between BP and three employees injured in the blast, which is due to start next month....

U.S. Chemical Safety Board Investigators Conclude "Organizational and Safety Deficiencies at All Levels of the BP Corporation" Caused March 2005 Texas City Disaster That Killed 15, Injured 180
Full Board to Weigh Recommendations to OSHA, Oil Industry, BP, and Union to Improve U.S. Refinery Safety at Public Meeting
Chemical Safety Board News Release
March 20, 2007

Chairman Merritt said, "The combination of cost-cutting, production pressures, and failure to invest caused a progressive deterioration of safety at the refinery...."...

Firm Accused of Deleting Missing E-Mail
Morgan Stanley Said Files Were Lost After Sept. 11
Carrie Johnson, The Washington Post
December 20, 2006

The complaint filed Dec. 19 is not the company´s first run-in with regulators. Earlier this year Morgan Stanley & Co., a separate unit for institutional clients, agreed to pay $15 million to settle SEC charges that it failed to produce documents related to a pair of enforcement probes. In March 2005, a judge in Florida criticized the same unit for withholding evidence. Two years ago, Morgan Stanley´s brokerage arm paid $250,000 to resolve separate NASD charges that it failed to comply with obligations to turn over papers in arbitration cases....

Jury puts big hit on Freightliner
Verdict - The truck maker faces Oregon´s largest punitive award; other fines could push the total to $1 billion
Brent Hunsberger The Oregonian
December 16, 2006

A Portland jury on Friday issued what´s believed to be the largest punitive damages award in state history, finding truck maker Freightliner liable for intentionally shifting assets among several of its divisions in an effort to avoid a legal judgment....