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Age bias suit against Starbucks heads to trial

December 1, 2008

A Portland woman’s age discrimination lawsuit against coffee giant Starbucks appears headed for trial early next year. A federal judge in Portland denied a motion to dismiss Deborah Boyajian’s lawsuit alleging that she was denied a job as a barista because of her age.

 

Boyajian, 56, claimed that age was the only reason Starbucks failed to hire her when she submitted multiple applications to stores in the Portland area in 2005 and 2006. Her lawyer, Anne Carney of Portland, said the manager who declined to hire Boyajian ignored the company’s hiring practices and lied to her about why she was not hired. None of the 19 employees hired by the manager was older than 30, Carney said.

 

The company argued that Boyajian was rejected for employment because of her personality, her behavior toward Starbucks employees and errors on her applications.

 

Read Article: Seattle Post-Intellengencer

 

$1.6M may be awarded in Harbor-UCLA hospital suit

Los Angeles County officials will consider today whether to recommend paying more than $1.6 million to settle a malpractice lawsuit brought against the county by a woman who was paralyzed during back surgery at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

 

The county Claims Board will discuss the proposed settlement with legal counsel behind closed doors. If they give their go-ahead, the matter will then go before the county Board of Supervisors for final approval. The lawsuit was brought by Shanay Bridges, a woman who had two vertebrae fractured in a car accident in March 15, 2005.

 

While receiving surgery at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center the following month, Bridges — who was 20 years old at the time — was paralyzed. In her lawsuit, Bridges contended that no one explained the risks of the procedure to her and that the hospital’s staff failed to provide her with the necessary care. Although county officials maintained that she received proper care, the settlement was proposed to avoid a potentially risky jury trial.

 

Read Article: Contra Costa Times

 

$48-million jury award to injured railroad worker is OKd by judge

A judge Tuesday approved a $48-million jury award to a former Union Pacific Railroad employee who was left a quadriplegic after a work-related car accident last year.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court jury award to Eric Doi last month was the largest verdict ever to a plaintiff under the federal law that covers railroad workers injured on the job.Railroads and their employees are not covered by state worker’s compensation laws.

Union Pacific spokesman Tom Lange said in a statement today that the railroad company would “pursue further judicial review.”Doi, 30, was the passenger in a company truck last year when a co-worker behind the wheel became distracted and lost control of the vehicle. The truck rolled over down an embankment, crashed through a fence and into oncoming traffic on a highway, said Donald Britt, an attorney for Doi.

“In that split second — it happened so fast — my life changed,” said Doi, a railroad signalman who had traveled from his home in the San Gabriel Valley to Tucson for work.

 

Read Article: Los Angeles Times

 

Class-action lawsuit proposed against The Reserve

Attorneys for investors in a second mutual fund managed by The Reserve have filed a proposed federal class-action lawsuit, opening a new front in the expanding legal battle against the company.

 

Filed in New York, the lawsuit accuses Reserve of misleading the thousands of investors in the firm’s Yield Plus fund by pursuing risky investments, rather than preserving capital.

 

Those investments included commercial debt of Lehman Bros., which sought bankruptcy court protection in September, triggering a freeze on the $1.1 billion Yield Plus fund.

 

The lawsuit also charges that TD Ameritrade misled hundreds of its clients who placed their assets in the fund by describing it as “just like a money market.” In fact, Yield Plus is a diversified mutual fund that made “significantly riskier” investments than a money market fund, the lawsuit alleges.

 

Read Article: USA Today

 

Juvenile prison system called troubled 4 years after consent decree

Joseph Daniel Maldonado became a poster boy for all that is wrong with juvenile prisons by hanging himself after eight weeks on 24-hour lockdown in 2005. The state recently paid the 18-year-old’s family $350,000 to resolve a lawsuit that alleged obvious signs that Maldonado was in the process of attempting suicide were ignored.

 

The Maldonado case is one of three wrongful-death lawsuits in Sacramento federal court that have been settled – for a total of $1.3 million – since the state entered into a consent decree in November 2004 to improve conditions in its juvenile prisons.

 

Those conditions have not improved to any appreciable degree, says Donald Specter of the Prison Law Office, lead counsel in the lawsuit that led to the consent decree. That suit, filed in 2003, challenged virtually every aspect of juvenile confinement, including safety and welfare of wards.

 

And Alameda Superior Court Judge Judge Jon S. Tigar, who approved the consent decree, wrote in an Oct. 27 order that while remedial plans were developed as required, the state “has not complied with the deadlines in any of them.”

The circumstances of Maldonado’s death were the subject of a report by the Office of the Inspector General lashing corrections personnel.

 

Read Article: Sacramento Bee

 

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