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Tenn. court rules against Alcoa in asbestos suit

September 11, 2008

Alcoa Inc. can be sued for the asbestos-related death of a former worker’s daughter, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The Pittsburgh-based company had argued that it should not be held responsible for Maryville resident Amanda Satterfield’s mesothelioma, a rare cancer associated with asbestos. She died in 2005 at age 25.

She originally sued the company in 2003, claiming that the asbestos dust her father brought home on his clothes had caused her cancer. Doug Satterfield has continued the lawsuit as the representative of his daughter’s estate. He hauled asbestos for the company in the 1970s.

The court ruled on Tuesday that the employer had a duty to prevent others from being exposed to the asbestos-contaminated clothes of its workers.

Read Article Yahoo News

Plastic surgeon to pay $75,000 to fired pregnant worker

A Cranberry plastic surgery office has reached a consent decree with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over a lawsuit filed by an employee who claims she was discriminated against because she was pregnant.

Erin Griggle, hired as a secretary at Premier Plastic Surgery in June 2005, filed a discrimination complaint against the center in September 2007. After her supervisors learned she was pregnant, Ms. Griggle said, she was told to “suck in her belly,” because if she didn’t, she would scare away patients who went to the facility to “look better.”

She was fired on Dec. 27, 2005, because, she was told, “she was not a good fit.”

According to the lawsuit, when it was time to hire Ms. Griggle’s replacement, Dr. Brian Heil, the president of the center, asked if the candidate “had a uterus.”
As part of the consent decree, Premier has agreed to pay Ms. Griggle $75,000.

Read Article Pittsburg Post Gazette

A Study Revives a Debate on Arthritis Knee Surgery

A study has found that surgery is no better than more conservative treatment to relieve knee pain caused by arthritis.

In the study, being published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, 86 patients who had the operation fared no better over two years than 86 who had physical therapy and took medications to dampen inflammation.

The results of the study are in line with those from a study published in 2002. But experts are divided about what effects the two studies will have.

Some say the new study just confirms what they already knew. Others say they hope that doctors who did not believe the 2002 study will be persuaded by this one to stop doing the operations.

Read Article New York Times

“Business group uses Web site to fight IRS”

Found this article in the Phoenix Business Journal:

by Kent Hoover Washington Bureau Chief

Like Howard Beale in “Network,” small businesses are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore.

The target of their wrath is the Internal Revenue Service, which contends underreported income by sole proprietors and small businesses is a major contributor to the nearly $300 billion gap between what should be paid in taxes every year and what is actually collected. The IRS has increased its audits of small businesses and proposed several steps to require more third-party reporting of payments made to businesses.

Read Full Article Phoenix Business Journal

“Sex offender admits posing as 7th grader”

Very public trial in AZ is making it on CNN:

PHOENIX, Arizona (AP) — A sex offender who posed as a 12-year-old boy to enroll in Arizona schools has pleaded guilty to seven criminal charges, two stemming from the charade he pulled for two years, and will go to prison for more than 70 years, a prosecutor said.

Authorities didn’t find any victims of sexual abuse at the schools 30-year-old Neil Havens Rodreick II attended. But when Rodreick’s ruse was discovered in January 2007, they found an extensive collection of child pornography at his home.

Rodreick had originally faced 28 counts, but pleaded guilty to only a quarter of them Friday in Yavapai County Superior Court in northern Arizona, according to a plea agreement document.

Read Full Article CNN