2014 | California Personal Injury Blog

Hoang Nguyen of Huntington Beach has filed an employment lawsuit against Ameri-King Inc. alleging that he was illegally fired for blowing the whistle on his employer.

According to a news report in the Huntington Beach Independent, Nguyen alleges in the complaint that Ameri-King, an aviation equipment manufacturer, has been selling rebranded or refurbished products that were made in China and not approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The federal agency is investigating the company on allegations that it …Read the rest »

Mitsubishi Motors North America is recalling 54,779 SUVs to fix a problem with the front passenger seatbelt lap fastener.

According to Edmunds.com, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has announced the recall of 2013-15 Mitsubishi Outlander Sport SUVs.

In the affected vehicles, the front passenger seatbelt lap end attachment fastener may not be torqued to specification.

This means that the fastener may loosen with time and be incapable of withstanding the load forces associated with a car crash.

This could leave the vehicle occupant insufficiently restrained and at risk of …Read the rest »

Trinity Industries conducted the second of eight crash tests of a potentially dangerous guardrail system as concerns remain about whether some of the units being evaluated are different than those previously installed.

According to a report in the New York Times, the testing in San Antonia is being overseen by the Federal Highway Administration.

The products in question are the ET-Plus guardrails manufactured by Trinity.

The federal agency’s associate administrator told reporters after the crash tests that the guardrails seemed to …Read the rest »

One of the major concerns we, as California nursing home abuse lawyers have, is the excessive use of antipsychotic drugs in these care facilities. The truth is that antipsychotic medications are simply not necessary in a majority of dementia cases. These pills can be stupefying and significantly raise the risk of falls and hip fractures among the elderly. According to a recent report by KIOS-FM radio, nearly 300,000 nursing home residents are currently receiving antipsychotic drugs to suppress anxiety or aggression. Most of these recipients are either Alzheimer’s or dementia sufferers.
…Read the rest »

Airbag patent filings show researchers for airbag manufacturer Takata looked for ways to make the safety devices more durable and the explosive propellant inside them more stable for decades before the company’s products that were designed to save lives started to do the opposite – kill people. According to a Bloomberg report, the patents, some from as early as 1985, were intended to improve the ammonium nitrate propellants that help inflate the bags and strengthen their metal housing. The patent applications have added to a mountain of evidence showing that Takata could have acted sooner to prevent airbag deaths linked to at least five fatalities worldwide.
…Read the rest »

Zillow has been slapped with another employment lawsuit in Orange County alleging that sales employees in the office engaged in age discrimination against one of their co-workers. According to the complaint, 41-year-old Jennifer Young, an employee on Zillow’s sales team, had a sales manager who would ask her if she was “too old” to close the deal. Young stated in the complaint that she was a victim of a “pervasive culture of retaliation and harassment” at Zillow, which she says placed a premium on sales as opposed to “human decency and basic employment rights.”
…Read the rest »

Nissan Motor Company is issuing an auto defect recall for about 470,000 SUVs and cars worldwide for possible fuel leaks.

According to a Reuters news report, Nissan is recalling the vehicles from model years 2012 through 2015 because fuel pressure sensors may not have been properly tightened during production.

This defect, reported in vehicles with direct injection engines, could lead to a …Read the rest »

General Motors is issuing an auto defect recall for more than 2,200 model year 2015 Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon trucks. According to an Associated Press news report, GM had ordered dealers in October to stop selling the trucks because the driver’s side airbag could fail to deploy during a car accident. The automaker blames the problem on driver-side airbag connections that are incorrectly wired and cause a reversal of the airbag deployment sequence.
…Read the rest »

A recent article in The New York Times talks about a pharmaceutical company using doctors with trouble pasts to market its painkillers.

The article gives the example of Dr. Judson Somerville, a Texas pain specialist who made $67,000 in speaking fees, travel and meals in 2013 to promote a powerful and addictive painkiller called Subsys, manufactured by Arizona-based Insys Therapeutics, Inc.

Even while he was on this “special assignment,” Somerville was under investigation by the Texas Medical Board after three of his patients …Read the rest »

McDonald’s is recalling about 2.3 million Hello Kitty toys that came with its Happy Meals because they pose a choking danger. According to a CNN news report, the item in question is a red whistle that came with the Hello Kitty Birthday Lollipop Toy, which is basically a Hello Kitty figurine holding a pink heart-shaped lollipop. The whistle can be detached from the toy and used to make sounds by inhaling and exhaling.
…Read the rest »