Los Angeles Personal Injury Lawyer - New York

Maclaren Stroller Defect Went Unfixed for Five Years

Paul Kiesel — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:15:53 GMT

Maclaren knew for at least five years that its strollers could lop off a child's finger, but did nothing about the dangerous defect until federal regulators all but forced it to, The Post has learned.

This week, the company agreed to a "voluntary recall" of all its models sold as far back as 1999, conceding that the fingers of 12 children were severed by the stroller's hinges when they were opened or closed.

But since Maclaren failed to notify the Consumer Products Safety Commission when it first became aware of even a "potential danger," the British-based company could still face a fine of $1 million or more, sources said.

Companies are required by federal law to "report to CPSC immediately on learning of a problem with a product that makes it a substantial hazard or poses a potential hazard," commission spokesman Scott Wolfson said.

The company has known the stroller hinges could become finger guillotines since at least July 12, 2004, when 23-month-old Connecticut toddler Carlos DeWinter lost his right pinky, according to court papers obtained by The Post.

His mother, Jane DeWinter, was shopping for a Maclaren Triumph stroller at a Right Start shop near her Greenwich home, and she was testing the one-handed folding and unfolding mechanism.

As she was about to lock the stroller into the open position, Carlos put his finger on the hinge, and he suffered a "traumatic amputation," the court papers said.

Despite two surgeries, the pinky could not be reattached.

Maclaren and Right Start argued that the mother's "own negligence" was to blame, the suit says.

Click here for the rest of the article.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Fearing a Flu Vaccine?

Paul Kiesel — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:37:49 GMT

From The New York Times:

When I tell nonmedical friends that our clinic is vaccinating children against the H1N1 flu virus, here is what they say.

With about half, it is something like: “Oh, my God, our doctor doesn’t have it! Can you get me a dose?” And with the other half, it is something like, “Oh, my God, that brand-new vaccine — do you really think it’s safe?”

There is a peculiar duality in the collective cultural mind just now, a kind of pandemic doublethink. Other doctors I know are all eagerly having their own children immunized. Many are answering frantic calls from people desperate for the vaccine. But at the same time, we are all coming up against parents who are determined to refuse that same vaccine.

Wondering what history might have to say about this incongruous state of affairs, I called David M. Oshinsky, a professor of history at the University of Texas who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Polio: An American Story” (Oxford, 2005). Dr. Oshinsky compared the current vaccination campaign with two previous situations.

In 1947, a man newly arrived in New York City from Mexico died of smallpox. The authorities “lined up the entire city” and vaccinated everyone, even those who had already been vaccinated, Dr. Oshinsky said. “The entire city was revaccinated,” he added, “and there was no real resistance. People had a sense of risk versus reward and listened to public health officials.”

Then there were the polio vaccine trials of 1954, in which parents volunteered more than a million children to receive either an experimental vaccine or a placebo. And while they trusted the medical profession much more than parents do now, there was another factor, Dr. Oshinsky said: “They also had lived through virulent epidemics. That to me is probably the biggest issue of all. You’re dealing with parents who’ve never seen a smallpox epidemic, a polio epidemic.”

Few doctors now practicing have ever seen a single case of smallpox, much less an epidemic (thanks to vaccination). But when pediatricians look at today’s strain of H1N1, we tend to be good and scared.

Serious cases of this flu are relatively rare but far from unheard of; more than 100 children have died of H1N1. The deaths seem to occur disproportionately in children and pregnant women.

So we give the H1N1 vaccine to children whose parents are almost tearfully afraid of the virus, and we try to win over those parents who are just as tearfully afraid of the vaccine. To them, we explain over and over that in fact this is not a brand-new vaccine — it is made with the same techniques as the seasonal influenza vaccine. Yes, it has been tested. Yes, it’s safe. Yes, it’s effective.

Click here for the rest of the article.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Lucrative Fees More Attractive to Loan Servicers than Modifications

Paul Kiesel — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:21:32 GMT

From The New York Times:

This week, the Obama administration summoned mortgage company executives to Washington to demand they move faster to lower payments for homeowners sliding toward foreclosure. Treasury officials called on the companies to hire and train more people quickly to field applications for relief.

But industry insiders and legal experts say the limited capacity of mortgage companies is not the primary factor impeding the government’s $75 billion program to prevent foreclosures. Instead, it is that many mortgage companies are reluctant to give strapped homeowners a break because the companies collect lucrative fees on delinquent loans.

Even when borrowers stop paying, mortgage companies that service the loans collect fees out of the proceeds when homes are ultimately sold in foreclosure. So the longer borrowers remain delinquent, the greater the opportunities for these mortgage companies to extract revenue — fees for insurance, appraisals, title searches and legal services.

“It frustrates me when I see the government looking to the servicer for the solution, because it will never ever happen,” said Margery Golant, a Florida lawyer who defends homeowners against foreclosure and who worked in the law department of a major mortgage company, Ocwen Financial. “I don’t think they’re motivated to do modifications at all. They keep hitting the loan all the way through for junk fees. It’s a license to do whatever they want.”

For the rest of this article, click here.

For another article on Loan Modification Scams, click here.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

NYT: Safer Food?

Paul Kiesel — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:48:51 GMT

From The New York Times:

Far too many Americans are falling ill after eating foods tainted with salmonella, E. coli and other pathogens. The Food and Drug Administration, which is charged with protecting much of the nation’s food supply, doesn’t have the authority or the tools to do its job. The House of Representatives can start to fix that problem if it votes this week to approve the Food Safety Enhancement Act.

Under the current system, the F.D.A. can only try to coax a food production facility to voluntarily recall its product after people have grown sick or even died. The legislation, the best in years, would give the agency a great deal more power and responsibility to prevent such outbreaks.

The F.D.A. would finally have the authority to set strong science-based safety standards for the growing, harvesting and transporting of both domestic and imported food. The agency would then require each food production facility to come up with the best safety plan showing how it would meet those standards.

Click here for the rest of this editorial.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

NYT: The Eyeshade Smelled Trouble

Paul Kiesel — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:41:01 GMT

From The New York Times:

WHEN it comes to corporate America, critics and skeptics are about as welcome as skunks at a pool party. And when companies try to silence dissenters, shareholders are often imperiled.

This truism is on full display in the mess at Matrixx Initiatives, a Scottsdale, Ariz., maker of over-the-counter health care products. Best-known for its homeopathic Zicam Cold Remedy offerings, Matrixx hit a rough patch on June 16, when the Food and Drug Administration advised consumers to stop using two of its popular remedies.

The F.D.A. said that it had received more than 130 reports of anosmia — or loss of smell — from users of the products and that more than 800 such reports had been delivered to Matrixx. The agency told Matrixx that Zicam Cold Remedy Nasal Gel and the same treatment in swab form could no longer be marketed without government approval.

Matrixx maintains that the products, which contain zinc, are safe. But it immediately withdrew them from the market. Bill Hemelt, Matrixx’s president, said company officials would meet with the F.D.A. to try to persuade it to reverse its decision.

Click here for the rest of the article.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Cardinal Dolan Vows to be the "Same Kind of Priest" He's Been for the Past 33 Years: Indifferent to Clergy Abuse Victims

Paul Kiesel — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:42:39 GMT

From the February 26, 2009 Los Angeles InjuryBoard blog, "Archbishop Timothy Dolan to Sexual Abuse Victim: 'What was the Name of Your Guy Again?'":

"[. . .] Over the last three decades, 60 to 70 clergy members have sexually assaulted children in Milwaukee, according to New York City news outlet NY1. [Survivor's Network of Those Abused By Priests (SNAP)] is also certain that Mr. Dolan knows who these criminals are and that he has basically "pushed it off" for the next Archbishop the deal with.

"He sort of pushed it off to leave it to the next person. He has done some things around [sic] this issue that are disconcerting. He has not reported to police priests who have sexually assaulted children who were subsequently arrested andconvicted," said Peter Isely, who as a child was raped by a Catholic priest in Milwaukee.

John Pilmaier, an abuse victim, agrees with Mr. Isely. He states that Mr. Dolan has not been comforting to victims.

"When I did meet with as a victim coming forward for the first time, his questions to me immediately was 'What was the name of your guy again?' Which made me realize that he had taken five minutes to read my file," said Mr. Pilmaier.

From CNN:

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Timothy Dolan was installed Wednesday as archbishop of New York in a ceremony in the city's St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Once officially installed, the former archbishop of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, embraced his predecessor, Cardinal Edward Egan, 77, who is retiring as an archbishop.

In his homily, Dolan spoke of Easter's message of rebirth. "The risen Christ has been and is very much alive here (in the New York archdiocese). Can I count some of the ways," he said before naming the church's priests and the city's faithful as two of several examples.

Dolan alluded to abortion in his remarks, noting the church's message of embracing and protecting "the dignity of every human person (and) the sanctity of human life," including, "the tiny baby in the womb."

The remark drew a standing ovation.

Earlier, he elicited laughs from those seated within the cathedral when he addressed his mother.

"I am really relieved to see Mom," he said. "We were a little afraid this morning that she might not make it; she found out there was a sale on at Macy's."

At a news conference earlier Wednesday, Dolan, 59, acknowledged that his new pulpit carries a high profile, but he resolved to remain the "same kind of priest and preacher" he's been for three decades.

"The pulpit of the archbishop of New York does have, perhaps, an enhanced prominence that might take some getting used to on my part," he told reporters.

"I'm just going to be the same kind of priest and preacher that I've been for 33 happy years."

The Vatican announced in February that Dolan would become the archbishop of New York.

Egan had led the New York archdiocese since 2000. He became a cardinal a year later.

Dolan was named archbishop of Milwaukee by Pope John Paul II on June 25, 2002, according to his biography on the Milwaukee archdiocese's Web site. He was installed as Milwaukee's 10th archbishop on August 28, 2002, at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist.

Dolan served in Rome from 1994 to 2001 before returning to the United States to become Auxiliary Bishop of St. Louis, Missouri.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

NYT: Religious Leaders Lobbying to Thwart Sexual Abuse Bill Favoring Victims

Paul Kiesel — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:03:16 GMT

This article is in regards to a New York State Senate bill, the Child Victims Act. The bill is growing in popularity by the new Democratic majority in the State Legislature, and there is a good chance that it will pass. However, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Jewish officials in New York are trying their best to prevent this piece of legislation from seeing the light of day; a bill that would help victims of sexual abuse seek the justice they deserve.

From The New York Times:

March 12, 2009

By PAUL VITELLO

Roman Catholic and Orthodox Jewish officials in New York are mounting an intense lobbying effort to block a bill before the State Legislature that would temporarily lift the statute of limitations for lawsuits alleging the sexual abuse of children.

A perennial proposal that has been quashed in past years by Republicans who controlled the State Senate, the bill is now widely supported by the new Democratic majority in that chamber, and for the first time is given a good chance of passing.

If signed by Gov. David A. Paterson, a longtime supporter, the bill would at minimum revive hundreds of claims filed in recent years against Catholic priests and dioceses in New York, but dismissed because they were made after the current time limit, which is five years after the accuser turns 18. Similar legislation has passed in Delaware and in California, where a 2003 law led to claims that have cost the church an estimated $800 million to $1 billion in damages and settlements.

The rekindled prospects of the New York bill, known as the Child Victims Act, come at a delicate juncture for the Archdiocese of New York, the nation’s flagship see, where Cardinal Edward M. Egan is scheduled to hand over the reins in April. His successor, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of Milwaukee, was so hard hit by settlements for past abuse by priests in that archdiocese that he was forced to put its headquarters up for sale.

“We believe this bill is designed to bankrupt the Catholic Church,” said Dennis Poust, spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference, a group representing the bishops of the state’s eight dioceses. He said that Cardinal Egan and Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of Brooklyn visited Albany this week to voice their opposition, and that a statewide network of Catholic parishioners had bombarded lawmakers via e-mail.

But while the Catholic Church is leading the opposition, in recent months a loose coalition of disparate groups has also joined the effort. They include leaders of the Hasidic and Sephardic Jewish institutions in Brooklyn, which could face equally costly abuse claims. The New York Civil Liberties Union and the criminal defense bar oppose lifting statutes of limitation as unfair to the accused, who must defend themselves against claims of transgressions decades old.

Under the Albany measure, which Assemblywoman Margaret M. Markey, a Queens Democrat, has shepherded to Assembly approval in each of the last three sessions, people claiming they were sexually abused as children would be given a one-year exemption from the statute of limitations. Regardless of how long ago the alleged abuse occurred, they could file suit in civil court.

At the year’s end, time limits on such claims would be restored, but with a wider window: Instead of a five-year period after turning 18, victims would have 10 years to file claims.

The bill would not lift the statute of limitations for criminal prosecutions of child abuse, which in most cases are the same as for civil complaints. For violent assaults like rape, there are no time limits on prosecution.

Many children’s advocates say guilt, shame and fear of the emotional toll on family members have often deterred victims from reporting sexual abuse until well into adulthood. The revelations of past abuse by priests that became a national scandal starting in 2002 prompted some to seek redress, only to discover they were barred by the statutes of limitation.

Marci A. Hamilton, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University who has argued that states should remove all statutes of limitation on child sex abuse claims, said the principle is comparable to the way industrial pollution is treated under the law. “The consequences of toxic pollution may not be known or felt for years after the fact,” she said. “The same is often true for children who are sexually abused.”

But opponents of such unlimited time frames of liability contend that decades-old memories of childhood events are not reliable.

THE REST OF THE ARTICLE IS HERE.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

One of the Largest Food Recalls Ever Just Got Bigger: Peanut Corp. Texas Closed

Paul Kiesel — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:31:32 GMT

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The Peanut Corporation of America closed its processing plant in Plainview, Tex., on Monday night after a laboratory test indicated possible salmonella contamination, a development that threatens to widen one of the largest food recalls ever and raises more questions about why the government allowed the plant to operate.

The company’s plant in Blakely, Ga., was identified a month ago as the source of a nationwide salmonella outbreak. And even though investigators soon determined that the company may have deliberately shipped contaminated products to some of the nation’s largest food makers, officials allowed the company’s plant in Texas to continue supplying customers.

Former workers at the Texas plant said in interviews with The New York Times that the facility was “disgusting” and shared many of the problems found in the plant in Georgia. But state and federal health officials said they did not have enough evidence to close the Texas plant.

The company also has a plant in Suffolk, Va. The Food and Drug Administration said it conducted a comprehensive inspection of the plant in late January and found no evidence of problems.

The Texas Department of State Health Services released a statement on Tuesday saying that “it does not appear that any of the implicated products — peanut meal, granulated peanuts and dry roasted peanuts — have reached consumers.” But a top official at the food and drug agency was far less reassuring, saying the investigation in Texas was continuing.

“I can’t speculate where this might lead us and whether another or expanded recall would be initiated” based on conditions at the Texas plant, said Michael Rogers, director of the F.D.A.’s division of field investigation.

Meanwhile, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and criminal investigators from the food agency descended on the Peanut Corporation’s plant in Georgia on Monday and hauled away “a whole bunch of stuff,” said George Straitt, a food and drug agency spokesman.

The Peanut Corporation released a statement saying it was cooperating with the investigations and had voluntarily closed its Texas plant.

The contamination scare has been associated with 8 deaths and more than 500 illnesses and has led to one of the largest food recalls in the nation’s history, with more than 1,800 separate recalls of peanut butter, cookies, crackers and other foods. Peanut butter sales have plunged.

The scandal has also focused attention on weaknesses in the nation’s oversight of food safety, leading the Obama administration to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the food agency’s procedures and spurring multiple legislative proposals on Capitol Hill to overhaul food regulations. On Wednesday, the investigations subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee is to hold the second Congressional hearing on the scare, with more likely.

The Texas facility, which once housed a Jimmy Dean sausage plant, “had a blanching and roasting operation but did not make peanut butter,” Mr. Rogers said, based on a food agency inspection in late January.

Rest of the article is here.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

Paul Krugman is on the Edge

Paul Kiesel — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:53:48 GMT

As the economy remains stagnant or contracts into a more depressing declivity, reports of the number of job losses from January coming in and continuing to rise (600,000 and counting; not to mention the 200,000 state workers in California who didn't work today), and a Republican Congress hell-bent on an "insurgency," here (below) is an article that compliments and captures the sentiments most people in this country currently feel.

On the Edge by Paul Krugman

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.

It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.

Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.

Consumers, their wealth decimated and their optimism shattered by collapsing home prices and a sliding stock market, have cut back their spending and sharply increased their saving — a good thing in the long run, but a huge blow to the economy right now. Developers of commercial real estate, watching rents fall and financing costs soar, are slashing their investment plans. Businesses are canceling plans to expand capacity, since they aren’t selling enough to use the capacity they have. And exports, which were one of the U.S. economy’s few areas of strength over the past couple of years, are now plunging as the financial crisis hits our trading partners.

Meanwhile, our main line of defense against recessions — the Federal Reserve’s usual ability to support the economy by cutting interest rates — has already been overrun. The Fed has cut the rates it controls basically to zero, yet the economy is still in free fall.

It’s no wonder, then, that most economic forecasts warn that in the absence of government action we’re headed for a deep, prolonged slump. Some private analysts predict double-digit unemployment. The Congressional Budget Office is slightly more sanguine, but its director, nonetheless, recently warned that “absent a change in fiscal policy ... the shortfall in the nation’s output relative to potential levels will be the largest — in duration and depth — since the Depression of the 1930s.”

Worst of all is the possibility that the economy will, as it did in the ’30s, end up stuck in a prolonged deflationary trap.

We’re already closer to outright deflation than at any point since the Great Depression. In particular, the private sector is experiencing widespread wage cuts for the first time since the 1930s, and there will be much more of that if the economy continues to weaken.

As the great American economist Irving Fisher pointed out almost 80 years ago, deflation, once started, tends to feed on itself. As dollar incomes fall in the face of a depressed economy, the burden of debt becomes harder to bear, while the expectation of further price declines discourages investment spending. These effects of deflation depress the economy further, which leads to more deflation, and so on.

And deflationary traps can go on for a long time. Japan experienced a “lost decade” of deflation and stagnation in the 1990s — and the only thing that let Japan escape from its trap was a global boom that boosted the nation’s exports. Who will rescue America from a similar trap now that the whole world is slumping at the same time?

Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive.

So what should Mr. Obama do? Count me among those who think that the president made a big mistake in his initial approach, that his attempts to transcend partisanship ended up empowering politicians who take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. What matters now, however, is what he does next.

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel

What Did JPMorgan Know?

Paul Kiesel — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:43:42 GMT

From the New York Times:

By CLAUDIO GATTI and DIANA B. HENRIQUES

JPMorgan Chase says that its potential losses related to Bernard L. Madoff, the man accused of engineering an immense global Ponzi scheme, are “pretty close to zero.” But what some angry European investors want to know is when the bank cut its exposure to Mr. Madoff — and why.

As early as 2006, the bank had started offering investors a way to leverage their bets on the future performance of two hedge funds that invested with Mr. Madoff. To protect itself from the resulting risk, the bank put $250 million of its own money into those funds.

But the bank suddenly began pulling its millions out of those funds in early autumn, months before Mr. Madoff was arrested, according to accounts from Europe and New York that were subsequently confirmed by the bank. The bank did not notify investors of its move, and several of them are furious that it protected itself but left them holding notes that the bank itself now says are probably worthless.

A spokeswoman, Kristin Lemkau, said the bank withdrew from the Madoff-linked funds last fall after “a wide-ranging review of our hedge fund exposure.” Ms. Lemkau acknowledged, however, that the bank also “became concerned about the lack of transparency to some questions we posed as part of our review.”

Investors were not alerted to the move because, under sales agreements, the issues did not meet the threshold necessary to permit the bank to restructure the notes, she said. Under those circumstances, she added, “we did not have the right to disclose our concerns.”

That doesn’t satisfy some investors. As they see it, they were the first people who should have been alerted to the bank’s concerns. “Instead, we continued to pay our fees to the bank and remained the only ones exposed to the risks that JPMorgan did not want to assume,” said the chief asset manager of an Italian investment firm, who declined to be identified because of potential litigation.

The tale began several years ago when a unit of JPMorgan Chase in London issued a series of complex derivatives that gave investors a way to triple their bets on the Fairfield funds, whose solid consistency mirrored the track record that had quietly — and ruinously — drawn investors to Mr. Madoff for decades.

Leveraged notes issued by big banks like JPMorgan Chase and Nomura became conduits through which fresh money flowed from institutional investors into the Fairfield Sentry and the euro-based Fairfield Sigma funds, both run by the Fairfield Greenwich Group — and, in turn, into Mr. Madoff’s hands.

The arrangement worked like this: Investors put up cash to buy the notes from the bank. In return, the bank promised to pay them up to three times the future earnings of the Fairfield funds. When the notes matured in five years, assuming the funds did well, these investors would get more than if they had invested in the funds directly. The bank collected just under 2 percent in fees, investors said.

And because the bank had to hedge its entire risk, it put up to three times the face amount of the notes into the Fairfield funds. Thus, Fairfield Greenwich got more cash to manage than it otherwise would have, increasing its own fee income. To reward note-holders for making that possible, Fairfield paid them a so-called rebate of a fifth to a third of a percentage point a year, according to documentation of those transactions.

The first sign of trouble came in early October, when Fairfield Greenwich notified investors that it would no longer pay them rebates.

The rest of the article is here.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Paul Kiesel