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Skittles manufacturer Mars Inc. has been sued by a California woman who claims a colorant used in the candies is dangerous and puts people at risk of damage to their brains and DNA. In a proposed class action filed on Thursday in the Oakland, California federal court, Jenile Thames accused Mars of endangering unsuspecting Skittles eaters by using 'heightened levels' of titanium dioxide, or TiO2, as a food additive. The lawsuit highlighted how titanium dioxide will be banned in the European Union next month after a food safety regulator there deemed it unsafe because of 'genotoxicity,' or the ability to...

A jury has awarded $10 million to a South Carolina woman who sued Walmart after she needed multiple surgeries because of an infection that resulted from stepping on a rusty nail inside one of the company’s stores in Florence, her lawyers said. “The weakness of Walmart’s case, among other things, was their failure to produce a video that they claim showed their conforming behavior to a company policy calling for employees to perform regular safety sweeps,” the news release said. “No such evidence was presented for the duration of the five-day-long trial.”

OBILE, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama woman who says she was falsely arrested for shoplifting at a Walmart and then threatened by the company after her case was dismissed has been awarded $2.1 million in damages. A Mobile County jury on Monday ruled in favor of Lesleigh Nurse of Semmes, news outlets reported. Nurse said in a lawsuit that she was stopped in November 2016 when trying to leave a Walmart with groceries she said she already paid for, according to AL.com. She said she used self-checkout but the scanning device froze. Workers didn’t accept her explanation and she was...

Editor's Note: This post was authored by Christian Watson.Americans rarely agree on political matters. Polarization has, unfortunately, infected seemingly every facet of American life. But one issue has historically drawn broad consensus across the political spectrum: The need to iron out serious holes in America’s notoriously abused tort system. We don’t know when it’ll be, but once this is all over, there will likely be a deluge of frivolous claims (for instance, if a customer contracts coronavirus and blames the business or restaurant they visited for it), which would strain our already-bloated legal system and leave cash-strapped businesses to the...

Every Democrat presidential nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate). Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school. Barack Obama was a lawyer. Michelle Obama was a lawyer. Hillary Clinton was a lawyer. Bill Clinton was a lawyer. John Edwards is a lawyer. Elizabeth Edwards was a lawyer. Look at leaders of the Democrat Party in Congress: Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer is a lawyer. Ex-Senator Harry Reid is a lawyer. The Republican Party is different: President Trump is a businessman. President Bush 1 and 2 were businessmen....

A California jury recently awarded $289 million in damages (later reduced to $78 million) to a former groundskeeper, who claimed the weed killer glyphosate caused his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and Monsanto deliberately or negligently failed to warn him adequately about the chemical’s cancer risks.The case is on appeal, and a second trial will soon begin before U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria, who himself has 620 more glyphosate cases on his docket. Overall, more than 9,300 additional cases are in the works against Monsanto and its new owner, Bayer – and personal injury mass-tort law firms are trolling for more alleged...

If the U.S. economy is really doing so well, then why is homelessness rising so rapidly? As the gap between the rich and the poor continues to increase, the middle class is steadily eroding. In fact, I recently gave my readers 15 signs that the middle class in America is being systematically destroyed. More Americans are falling out of the middle class and into poverty with each passing day, and this is one of the big reasons why the number of homeless is surging. For example, the number of people living on the street in L.A. has shot up 75...

...The boats, modeled on the amphibious landing craft used in the D-Day invasion, have a checkered history including more than three dozen fatalities on water and land, including the Branson sinking, according to the complaint. “This tragedy was the predictable and predicted result of decades of unacceptable, greed-driven, and willful ignorance of safety by the Duck Boat industry in the face of specific and repeated warnings that their Duck Boats are death traps for passengers and pose grave danger to the public on water and on land,” the complaint said. Robert Mongeluzzi, an attorney for the families, told a news...

A California judge on Friday threw out a $417 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson in a lawsuit by a woman who claimed she developed ovarian cancer after using its talc-based products like Johnson’s Baby Powder for feminine hygiene. The ruling by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Maren Nelson marked the latest setback facing women and family members who accuse J&J of not adequately warning consumers about the cancer risks of its talc-based products. The decision followed a jury’s decision in August to hit J&J with the largest verdict to date in the litigation, awarding California resident Eva Echeverria $70...

Customer says she feels 'poisoned' after discovering meat in vegetarian meal ordered at a local eatery A Jewish woman from Michigan is suing a restaurant for serving her bacon in an omelet that was supposed be meatless. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories FREE SIGN UP That lawsuit was filed on behalf of Angela Montgomery, 30, of Sterling Heights by her attorney Majed Moughni, the Detroit Free Press reported Monday. Montgomery is seeking monetary damages for emotional and physical distress caused by eating the bacon. She alleged breach of contract and...

A Los Angeles jury awarded a woman a $417 million verdict yesterday. The jury found that Johnson & Johnson failed to adequately warn users of the cancer risks of the talc in its baby powder. The jury's 9-3 vote to hold J&J liable for not warning Eva Echeverria about cancer risks is a huge blow to the company, which is facing thousands of such claims across the country. The verdict consists of $70 million in compensatory damages and $347 million in punitive damages, according to Reuters. No clear link connects talcum powder to ovarian cancer. Some case-control studies, based on...

SEATTLE (CN) — Two Microsoft employees who had to watch “horrific images” of murder, child pornography and bestiality as part of their “online safety” job have sued the company after developing post-traumatic stress disorder. Henry Soto and Greg Blauert say Microsoft failed to warn them about the dangers of the job and failed to provide psychological support. They sued the company in King County Court on Dec. 30, alleging negligence, disability discrimination and violations of the Consumer Protection Act. The men were customer service workers assigned to Microsoft’s online safety program, responsible for deciding whether content should be removed or...

ENROLLMENT Any state licensed medical practitioner/medical facility who/which: 1. is participating in Medicare and/or Medicaid and/or 2. has EMTALA responsibilities and/or 3. has professionally impacted interstate commerce since enactment and paid a quarterly income tax amount (described below) into the system for a state may enroll in the system for their state and shall have the due process rights of the system for any and all practice/business done in the state after enrollment. FUNDING 1. To process claims and pay economic damages: a. a 10% federal tax on gross participating practitioner obstetric care income and b. a 2% federal tax...

It’s become as American as apple pie. When something awful happens, someone gets sued. It’s one thing when there is obvious fault or negligence, but we’ve gone from being a nation of individual responsibility to a culture that seeks a payday out of any tragedy. I am not ascribing a motive to the family, and the hell they’re going through is unimaginable. But I just watched a segment on TV about the tragedy of the toddler who was killed by an alligator at Disney World. One of the lawyers was talking about liability and Disney potentially being on the hook...

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley signed into law legislation that would protect drug manufacturers from being sued for products created by their generic brand competitors. In January of 2013 and again last summer, the Alabama Supreme Court decided to allow an individual who used only the generic version of Reglan to sue the manufacturer of the brand name drug. Even though the brand manufacturer had no involvement in the production or sale of the generic drug, the company may be held liable for damages presumably caused by a third party competitor.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A California trial judge ruled Saturday that a woman suing a Silicon Valley venture capital firm in a high-profile gender bias case may seek punitive damages that could add tens of millions of dollars to the $16 million in lost wages and bonuses she is pursuing. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn denied a request by lawyers for Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to have Ellen Pao's demand for unspecified punitive damages thrown out. Pao, the interim CEO of the news and social networking site Reddit, claims she was passed over for a promotion at...

The American Tort Reform Assn calls NYC's asbestos court the nation’s top “judicial hellhole”. Silver has been blocking tort-reform bills for decades. Silver's arrest centers on his no-show legal work for asbestos-profiteer, Weitz and Luxemberg, (as well as millions in bribes and kickbacks from fixing real-estate cases)..... judges with ties to Silver and his lifelong pal, Jonathan Lippman, the chief judge of the state Court of Appeals, presided over the cases. Silver was “of counsel” to Weitz & Luxemberg which earned unusual fast-track “red-carpet treatment” “better judges” and first dibs on jurors. Sherry Klein Heitler, the chief asbestos judge (at...

A young computer whiz from New York City has launched a site to help people buy cheap plane tickets. But an airline company and its travel partner want to shut him down. United Airlines and Orbitz filed a civil lawsuit last month against 22-year-old Aktarer Zaman, who founded the website Skiplagged.com last year. The site helps travelers find cheap flights by using a strategy called “hidden city” ticketing. The idea is that you buy an airline ticket that has a layover at your actual destination. Say you want to fly from New York to San Francisco — you actually book...

The biggest mystery that never unraveled in Florida Election 2014 has to be super-uber trial attorney Steve Mostyn. Why would a Houston multimillionaire with no current business in the Sunshine State out-donate billionaire George Soros, giving it to Democrat Charlie Crist's Florida gubernatorial campaign and the Florida Democratic Party? We never did get to the bottom of it. Crist and Mostyn didn't really know each other before the campaign. What did Mostyn want? Soros, founder of the far-left Open Society Institute, who advocates bringing European social democracy to the United States, only gave Crist a smidgen over $1 million. But...

But Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said that the initial outpouring of negative reaction may be giving way to a more receptive response as the ad continues to air. “I think opinion has shifted over the past couple of days,” he said. “It is a galvanizing ad, and it stops and commands attention.” By referring to his disability in his political campaign, some analysts say, Mr. Abbott effectively opened the door for Ms. Davis’s depiction of the wheelchair in her ad. “Greg Abbott has made the wheelchair a representation of his strength and his...