Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Consumer Law Blogs -> ThePopTort

Consumer Law

: ThePopTort

Mastectomies, Rental Cars, BP, Discrimination, Drugs - and Other News

By Joe Consumer

In no particular order, here are five good stories (good as in ?worse is better?) today relating to things we?ve been covering:

Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center has settled with a woman who had a double mastectomy when she never had cancer, because the hospital failed to properly review biopsy specimens.  The only thing more shocking about mix-ups like this is that they keep happening!  And unlike some states, California severely caps compensation to patients with these kinds of injuries - pain, mutilation, trauma. Take it away, Dennis Quaid.  

Consumer groups filed a petition with the Federal Trade Commission asking that rental car companies ?start fixing every vehicle with a safety recall before renting them to consumers.?  OK, how many are shocked to learn that a petition like this is even needed, or that ?the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration does not have the authority to force rental-car companies to carry out recalls.?  Speaking of recalls, recall the tragic case of Jacqueline Houck and her sister, Raechel, who died because Enterprise failed to carry out a safety recall of the car they rented.  Their brave mother Carol joined the FTC petition.  Read her comment on our earlier coverage of this case. 

For anyone who doesn?t trust BP?s motives in setting up the $20 billion trust fund for victims, here?s something to feed on.  Apparently, the company responsible for the payout is ?a fairly remote subsidiary, BP Exploration & Production Inc. (BPEC) -- a Delaware corporation that operates BP's Gulf oil leases.  So if BP's drilling revenues from the Gulf suddenly vanished, so, presumably, would the compensation fund, said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program.?

"This is a very advantageous agreement from BP's point of view," Slocum told the Huffington Post. "Because their big concern is that the Deepwater Horizon incident would result in sanctions that would significantly reduce BP's involvement in lucrative Gulf operations. But if you tie the compensation fund to Gulf of Mexico production, you are helping to guarantee BP's continued involvement in that market," he said.

And in follow up to our coverage of the botched treatment of Shirley Sherrod comes more frustration by victims of U.S. Department of Agriculture race discrimination.  Seems like the administration is pledging to find $1.5 billion to help farmers hit by natural disasters, but the $1.25 billion civil rights settlement to compensate black farmers ?for being left out of federal farm loan and assistance programs for years due to racism? is still not funded.  Several deadlines have now been missed.  "At some point, you have to start questioning what is going on here," said John Boyd, head of the National Black Farmers Association.

Also, more trouble for Johnson & Johnson and their dirty plants, with the company now receiving ?multiple subpoenas from federal prosecutors?  requesting ??documents broadly relating to both the recent recalls of products made by McNeil Consumer Healthcare and inspections of two of the unit's factories. One of the plants, in the Philadelphia suburb of Fort Washington, Pa., has been shut down since April due to multiple problems and is expected to remain shut until at least next summer.? State Attorneys General are also getting involved, reports the Wall Street Journal. 

Did we miss anything?

Full post as published by ThePopTort on August 12, 2010 (boomark / email).