UNIVERSAL CITY, CA – The Manville Corporation, when it was Johns-Manville, learned a lot about the link between asbestos products and liability lawsuits. Now a Manville unit has sued to keep an RJR Nabisco unit from using Manville’s fiberglass in cigarette filters. As The Wall Street Journal reported, by filing the suit in U.S. District …
SAN FRANCISCO – The state office building at 107 South Broadway, where Cal-OSH Standards Board and other such meetings are held and where 1,750 state employees work, is still open. Structural engineers told the state that the building and adjacent parking structure were seismically unsafe. The garage was closed in December. On March 1, a …
SAN FRANCISCO – Nancy Urbanski, a former high school secretary who claims she was injured by using computer keyboards, settled her personal injury suit with Apple in late February. However, the company said it was not at fault—it agreed to the settlement because its outside lawyers erred when they failed to turn over documents before …
SAN FRANCISCO – One of Nancy Urbanski’s lawyers first made a name for himself pursuing asbestos personal injury cases. Reportedly, he is one of a group of attorneys on the East Coast who is gathering data to support filing repetitive stress (RSI) lawsuits based on defective design of computer keyboards. So far they have two …
SAN FRANCISCO – The late Charles Sparks and his wife brought an asbestos damage suit in superior court here and won a jury award in 1991. Sparks has since died of mesothelioma—an asbestos-related cancer. Owens-Illinois appealed. The CA Court of Appeal for the first district upheld the verdict on January 17, 1995, and certified it …
SAN FRANCISCO – A lost-time accident in Martinez, CA, caused by inadvertent mixing of incompatible chemicals prompted the Contra Costa County Health Department to call in the district attorney’s office. Subsequently, the DA charged the employer, Arrow Transportation Company of Portland, OR, with criminal misdemeanor violation of Penal Code 387, the Corporate Criminal Liability Act. …
SAN FRANCISCO – Start-up dates for complying with most provisions of the new Fed-OSHA asbestos standards have been extended to July 10. However, the new exposure limit of .10 fibers per cubic centimeter (f/cc), which took effect October 11, 1994, is not being delayed. “We want to ensure that employers and employees have sufficient time …
SACRAMENTO – Accomplished speakers presented material of considerable interest to safety professionals March 1 at the America West Safety & Health Expo. It was too bad there were not more people there, although the workshop approach some presenters employed lent itself to small group discussions. ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION TECHNIQUES: Jim Hughes, M&M Protection Consultants, San Francisco, …