Miscellaneous | InjuryBoard Richmond

Lockheed Martin Corporation has agreed to pay a former African American employee $2.5 million to settle a racial discrimination case filed by the U.S. Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission. The former employee, a 45 year old aviation electrician, said he was called racial slurs and threatened by four co-workers and a supervisor between 1999 and 2001. When he complained about how the...

The Seventh amendment to the Constitution of the United States says, "In suits at common law...the right to trial by jury shall be preserved." This right has been under attack by so-called tort reformers who want to preserve the right to trial for corporations while restricting it for citizens. One tactic of the tort reform movement has been to devise talking points to scare the public about...

A Florida jury found that Merrill Lynch took advantage of New Jersey philanthropist George Rothman and his wife. Both Rothmans were declared mentally incompetent in 1999. According to a lawyer for the Rothman family, Merrill Lynch took advantage of the couple's deteriorating mental condition to shift their money into investments that would pay higher commissions. The lawsuit alleged that a...

Thanks to a tip from fellow injuryboard blogger, Ben Glass, I recently contacted my automobile insurer to report that my eldest child matriculated from his high school and is now attending college. When our auto insurer learned that my son would not have a car on campus, it lowered our annual premiums by almost $700.00. My son is still an insured driver on our policy, but the carrier now deems...

Richmond's own Johnny Johnson won a $16 million verdict against grocery giant, Supervalue, Inc., the nation's third largest grocery chain. The jury awarded $15.5 million for negligent misrepresentation and $500,000 for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Johnson started in the grocery business as a bag boy and worked his way up to manager. In the early 1990's, Richfood, Inc....

Judge Roy Pearson, Jr., who filed a $65 million lawsuit against a dry cleaner for losing a pair of his pants, has brought great embarrassment to the legal profession. The profession is fighting back. The American Association for Justice, formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, filed an ethics complaint against Pearson with the D.C. Bar.

There is a potential nationwide settlement involving Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America and the sale of deferred annuities to persons over the age of 65. The allegations asserted against Allianz are that they conspired with a network of insurance sales agents to fraudulently induce people 65 years of age or older to purchase deferred annuities by means of misleading...

A new court in Tampa, Florida seeks to resolve commercial litigation matters between businesses. The Complex Business Litigation Division is a new court established to resolve business-related cases such as contract disputes, non-compete agreements, trade secrets claims, and other business matters. The Tampa court is part of a trend in various parts of the United States to establish business...

The SEC and the Sun-Times Media Group Inc concluded a civil settlement of $28.7 million with ithe company's former President and Publisher David Radler relating to claims of backdated stock options and other transgressions in a commercial litigation matter. The SEC settlement includes a $5 million civil penalty, one of the largest on record against an individual. Radler has already plead...

In a complex commercial litigation matter involving employee pension rights, jurors in Butte, Montana ordered Northwestern Corporation to pay $17.4 million in compensatory damages and $4 million in punitive damages to 15 retired executives who sued after the company terminated their supplemental pensions. This case affirms the rights of executives and employees to the continuation of pension...

Two of seven business executives prosecuted for stock option backdating pled guilty last week in prosecutions initiated by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. There appears to be enhanced momentum for the prosecutions initiated last year in these criminal matters that may transform into substantial business litigation by shareholders.Stock options allow the...

How soon they forget! Just five years after the huge accounting fraud scandal at WorldCom and the collapse of Enron decimated tens of thousands of retirement and investment accounts, the lobbyists for the accounting industry, Chamber of Commerce, and big, publicly held companies have succeeded in convincing the Securities and Exchange Commision to abandon some of the investor protections...

My partner, Aubrey Ford, prevailed last week in a significant commercial litigation trial. Aubrey represented the plaintiffs in the case of G.C.R., Inc., et al. v. James Clayton, pending in the Circuit Court of the County of Chesterfield, Virginia. After a two- day trial, the Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in this dispute between the two major shareholders in a real estate development...

A business lawsuit in which record companies claimed that XM Satellite Radio Holdings, Inc. was depriving them of revenue by allowing consumers to store songs can proceed to trial, a New York judge ruled last week. The case is another in recent highly publicized actions relating to the recording industry.The case was brought by Atlantic Recording Corporation, BMG Music, Capitol Records, Inc.,...

To the horror of many of the victims of Hurricane Katrina who lost their homes in the storm, the insurance industry uniformly denied these folks' property damage claims. Insurers contended that damage to houses in Louisiana and Mississippi was caused by surging flood waters and not by high winds. The insurers said their policies covered only wind damage. The New York Times reports today that...