Emerging Issues Archive

Ms. ‘Lean In’ Sheryl Sandberg Called ‘Exploitive’ over Unpaid Intern Job

August 14th, 2013. By AbiK

Say it isn’t so! You have to love social media—where everything you (or your hired minions) say can, and will, be held against you. Enter Sheryl Sandberg, author of the much-talked-about “Lean In” book and COO of Facebook. Ms. Sandberg, herself, did not apparently say anything on Twitter, but one of her minions, Jessica Bennett—who ‘heads up editorial’ for Ms. Sandberg’s Lean In team (whatever that really means) did tweet something about an available gig as an unpaid intern on the Lean In team.

That was on Tuesday. Today, according to a post over at Gawker, there had also been a post by Bennett on Facebook that offered up the gig.

Ordinarily, it might sound like a great opportunity. But, given how much Ms. Sandberg is probably reaping financially from both Facebook and her book sales, why is the job “unpaid”? And isn’t it a bit at odds with the whole Lean In female empowerment thing? Take risks! Sit at the table! Seek challenges! But, by the way, if you’re goal is to sit at MY table, don’t expect to receive a dime from me.

Not to mention, last we looked, an intern is supposed to be learning something on the job—this job description sounds like the Lean In team is looking for more of a seasoned pro. Here are the requirements for the unpaid intern:

“Part-time, unpaid, must be HIGHLY organized with editorial and social chops and able to commit to a regular schedule through end of year. Design and web skills a plus!”

You have to love the chutzpah there. Note to Ms. Bennett: Merriam-Webster defines “chops” as “expertise in a particular field or activity”. Hmm. That would seem to be at odds with the requirements of an unpaid intern who would typically come to a company in order to be trained on-the-job.

Oh, but it’s all for the prestige of getting dumped on to promote Leaning In!

For kicks, here’s the image of Bennett’s Twitter post that appeared over at Gawker (note the comments):

Here’s some advice for Ms. Sandberg and her Lean In team: practice what you preach…walk the talk (ugh, hate that saying but the shoe fits) and pay your damn interns. Otherwise, maybe you should refund everyone who bought your book; after all, it’s starting to sound a bit like consumer fraud…

Tags: Employment, Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg, unpaid interns, Wage and Hour
Posted in Consumer Fraud, Emerging Issues | 1 Comment »

Asbestos News Roundup: 7.25.13 – Ford Cited for Worker Asbestos Exposure

July 25th, 2013. By LucyC

A roundup of recent asbestos-related news and information that you should be aware of. An ongoing list of reported asbestos hot spots in the US from the Asbestos News Roundup archive appears on our asbestos map.

US Navy Veterans at Risk for Asbestos

US Navy Veterans are at high risk for asbestos-related disease, due to their asbestos exposure while working on navy ships undergoing refits, for example. But because asbestos-related disease can take up to 30 years or more to manifest, it is often detected long after men have left the Navy.

The states with the most US Navy Veterans include California, Florida, New York, Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Arizona, Massachusetts, Washington, Maine, Oregon, Arizona, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Montana, Kansas, North Dakota, Hawaii, Nebraska, and Mississippi.

US Navy Veterans are not the only group of workers at high risk for asbestos exposure. Men and women who worked in power plants, manufacturing factories, chemical plants, oil refineries, mines, smelters, aerospace manufacturing facilities, demolition construction work sites, railroads, automotive manufacturing facilities, or auto brake shops may also have been exposed to high levels of asbestos.

Asbestos Law – Ford Cited for Exposing Workers to Asbestos

Detroit, MI: Ford Motor Co exposes its workers to asbestos, according to a report by The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Earlier this week, the federal agency cited Ford for eight violations covering asbestos exposure at a stamping plant in Buffalo, N.Y.

Ford could face up to $41,800 in fines for failing to protect workers from asbestos-containing material at the plant, according to OSHA.

Among the violations is the exposure of a pipefitter to asbestos-containing material in the insulation of a steam line he was working on. Additionally, none of the workers who were exposed to asbestos-containing materials wore respiratory protection.

OHSA also reported that the workers’ area was not properly organized to limit the amount of employees working in the area, asbestos-contained areas were not properly cordoned off, and airborne levels of the hazardous mineral were not properly monitored.

Violations are defined as “serious” when death or significant injury to workers is likely from a problem that Ford knew or should have known about, according to the agency.

Ford has 15 business days from when it received the citations to comply, meet with local OSHA officials, or contest the citations. The factory employs 537 workers, according to Ford. (autonews.com)

Asbestos Settlements

New York, NY: An 81-year-old Los Angeles man and his wife have been awarded a $1.525 million verdict in his asbestos-cancer lawsuit this July.

In May of 2012, Marty Marteney, a successful architect whose father was an immigrant to the United States from Mexico, was diagnosed with asbestos mesothelioma. After a three week trial, a Los Angeles jury returned a verdict on July 1 in favor of Marteney, giving him a judgment against Union Carbide Corporation and Elementis Chemicals, Inc.

According to the attorneys representing the Marteneys, Mr. Marteney’s disease stemmed from his exposure to workers who used asbestos-containing construction products and automotive parts. Union Carbide was a supplier of asbestos fiber and Elementis was the distributor of Union Carbide’s asbestos on the West Coast.

Marteney’s asbestos exposure goes back to his childhood, when his father took him out of school and made him work in his father’s auto shop, where he handled these toxic materials without any knowledge of their danger.

Without an education and with no knowledge of his asbestos exposure, Marteney enlisted in the armed forces, started a family, and later became an apprentice architect.

Eventually Mr. Marteney returned to school and built a career as a well-respected architect, designing homes for the rich and famous in Beverly Hills. Unknowingly, this hard work exposed him to asbestos-containing construction products that would later cause the cancer that would ruin his well-deserved retirement.

Mr. Marteney is currently undergoing treatment for his mesothelioma. Marteney lives in San Marino, California, with his wife. (watchlist.com)

New York, NY: An asbestos verdict of $190 million has been awarded in a lawsuit brought by five men who were exposed to asbestos-tainted products and equipment during their jobs as steamfitters, plumbers, and construction workers.

A panel of New York Supreme Court jurors found the two defendant companies had acted negligently and recklessly, then rendering a verdict worth a total of $190 million, the largest consolidated asbestos verdict in New York history. It is believed that the $60 million individual amounts two of the men received are the largest individual sums awarded in a New York asbestos case.

Daniel Blouin, an attorney with Weitz & Luxenberg, the firm representing the plaintiffs, said he and his team tackled the case by telling the jury a story of five men who worked honest jobs for decades only to be repaid with immense suffering. “We wanted to show the jury the sorrow our clients were and are going through,” Blouin said. “And not just physically but psychologically. Once you are exposed to asbestos and develop mesothelioma, you know your fate. It’s an unbearably heavy burden.”

Lawyers for the plaintiffs told the jury there wasn’t an amount they could give the men that would be unreasonable. The defendants in this case subjected thousands of men and women to a terribly toxic substance. It is likely the companies took a calculated risk in doing so. That isn’t a debt that can be repaid, the attorneys said.

The jury, returning a verdict at 4 p.m. on July 23, found both defendants—boiler companies Cleaver Brooks and Burnham—negligent in having failed to warn about the dangers of the asbestos used in connection with their equipment. The verdict said both companies had acted with reckless disregard for human life.

All five of the plaintiffs were tradesmen from the tri-state area.

One man, from Toms River, NJ, worked in the 50s and 60s as a pipefitter in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He was exposed to asbestos daily while fitting pipes into the salt-water distilling units aboard aircraft carriers like the USS Constellation and USS Independence.

Another, from Oyster Bay, NY, worked for nearly 30 years as a plumber, handling dozens of different types of products contaminated with asbestos.

A third, of Middle Village, NY, was also exposed to asbestos working as a plumber in Brooklyn, Queens, and Rockland Co.

Another man, from Howard Beach, NY, was exposed to asbestos on the job as a painter and construction worker. He was involved with the removal and demolition of boilers containing asbestos-laden parts.

The final client, from Kent, CT, also worked with boilers and boiler parts in the course of his job as a steamfitter.

All five men developed mesothelioma as a result of asbestos exposure. Three have died of complications related to the disease.

The trial (Index Nos. 190008/12, 190026/12, 190200/12, 190183/12, 190184/12) was held in New York Supreme Court before Judge Joan Madden. (pr.com/press-release)

Tags: Asbestos, asbestos lawsuit, Asbestos Mesothelioma
Posted in Asbestos Mesothelioma, Emerging Issues, lawsuits, Settlement | No Comments »

BofA Customer Service Finally Proves it’s Run by Morons

July 11th, 2013. By AbiK

(Image: Twitter/@darthmarkh)

You gotta love Bank of America. On the heels of reports of debt collection harassment—and the recent Bank of America debt collection harassment class action lawsuit that was filed—BofA managed to not only inspire ire in its customers but also make a complete fool out of itself! How did it manage that, you ask? Read on…

In the age of social media-enhanced customer service (ie, have a problem with a company? Tweet it and await your response…), Bank of America is right up there with the best of them responding to customer mentions (#BofA, @BofA, etc…) of the big bank on Twitter. Well, as Gizmodo reported earlier in the week, sometimes too much monitoring for company mentions—along with what looked like either cookie-cutter automated responses or more likely complete incompetence—can make a customer service department look like a bunch of idiots. And, indeed, BofA’s customer service looked that way.

Here’s the low-down: A guy (Twitter handle=@darthmarkh) tweeted that he’d been creating some chalk art on the sidewalk out in front of a BofA location in NYC—and, might I add, he’d done a damn good job recreating the Monopoly game “go to jail” graphic (see pic above). Needless to say, the cops finally told him to stop and move along. He did, and he then tweeted about the incident with the mention of “@bankofamerica”—but his goal was to spread word of BofA’s alleged “illegal foreclosure fraud” rather than to have BofA take notice and ask if he’d like assistance.

Well, the clueless wonders over at BofA customer service reached out to @darthmarkh to find out if there was “anything they could do to help?” Seriously. (See the twitter conversation here). And, it went on to include gems like “We are here to help, listen, and learn from our customers and are glad to assist with any account related inquiries.”

And we’re so glad you are! Can you imagine the level of incompetence it takes to either respond—in person—like that, or to build an automated-response system that would generate such responses regardless of the nature of inquiry it was responding to? #EpicFail doesn’t even do this one justice.

The field day that @darthmarkh’s followers had after that was, as you can imagine, hilarious. And it should be mentioned that as of today, there hasn’t been an official response from BofA or acknowledgment of the screw-up—guess it’s better to stay mum and hope it all just creeps off everyone’s Twitter pages.

Sadly, doesn’t look like BofA has done much since the rallying cry for better customer service from CEO Brian Moynihan back in January of this year. Now, instead of looking like they’re listening to customers and ‘making it easier for customers to do business with the bank’, you have to wonder if anyone at all is actually listening—and, if they are, if they even have a brain.

Tags: #EpicFail, Bank of America, BoFA, BofA class action lawsuit, BofA Customer Service, debt collection harassment, foreclosure fraud
Posted in Consumer Fraud, Emerging Issues | 7 Comments »

Under 18 Energy Drink Ban Gets AMA Support

June 19th, 2013. By AbiK

Tags: Energy Drink Ban, Monster Energy Drink, Monster Energy Lawsuit
Posted in Emerging Issues, Food Illness, Personal Injury | 2 Comments »

Duh. Watch College Kids React to Monster Energy Death News (Parent Alert!)

June 14th, 2013. By AbiK

Add energy drinks to the list of worries for parents sending kids off to college. Of course, energy drinks seem to pale when compared to sex, drugs, alcohol and all that comes with that trio of vices—from OD’ing, to date rape, to DUI’s. But that’s the thing—energy drinks seem…so…harmless, right? After all, they’re sold in convenience stores and vending machines right next to the bags of chips…

If the above news clip is any indication, energy drinks are quite popular on college campuses—and just as readily available as coffee. So why the fuss?

The fuss is due to a pending lawsuit against Monster Energy Drink that alleges that 14-year old Anais Fournier went into cardiac arrest and died after drinking two 24-ounce cans of Monster in less than 24 hours. (Check out our interview with attorney Kevin Goldberg of Goldberg, Finnegan & Mester–he’s one of the attorneys representing the Fournier’s).

And there’s also the lawsuit filed by San Francisco city attorney Dennis Herrera which claims the Monster caffeine levels can lead to elevated blood pressure, seizures and cardiac arrest. That’s all bad enough (if true) but the real fuss ought to be that Monster’s being marketed to kids. Your kids.

Let’s back up a moment. There was a time when college exam cram time meant coffee-infused study sessions, splashing your face with cold water and relying on whatever other natural means there were to stay awake and pull an all-nighter. Sure, some kids popped the occasional No-Doz (some still do)—not a good practice, but there’s a bit of a difference: when was the last time you saw No-Doz logos popping up all over black hoodies or on the “sponsor” list of latest batch of rad, gnarly, wicked or badass athletes?

Not remembering?

That would be because No-Doz doesn’t really market itself that way. It knows its place isn’t in the culture of cool. Monster Energy, however, does something different. By selling (allegedly) extreme caffeine in drink form rather than pill form, it’s tried to create a whole lifestyle around ramping things up a notch. Or two. Or three.

Here’s how the ‘guys’ at Monster talk about themselves (straight from their website):

In short, at Monster all our guys walk the walk in action sports, punk rock music, partying, hangin’ with the girls, and living life on the edge. Monster is way more than an energy drink. Led by our athletes, musicians, employees, distributors and fans, Monster is…

A lifestyle in a can

Right. “Lifestyle in a can”. Live life on that edge, dude.

See, somehow when you put it in drink form, wrap the can in cool graphics, and get extreme sports icons to promote it, downing super-charged soda somehow becomes cool. The sexed up version of caffeine pills. And the marketers at Monster know that. They know how impressionable kids, pre-teens, teens and even twenty-somethings can be. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen any banner ads for Monster over at AARP. Why? Because your average grown-up over the age of 40 knows a soft drink loaded with caffeine is bullshit.

Monster markets to a gullible crowd—and one that thinks it’s invincible.

Unfortunately, if the allegations surrounding the Anais Fournier case prove true, and if reports on the increase in energy drink-related emergency room visits* are any indication, the very folks Monster is marketing to are not invincible. They’re vulnerable—first mentally for buying into this marketing crap, and possibly physically for drinking it.

As parents, sometimes it’s the more innocent-looking influences—the wolf in sheep’s clothing—that are more insidious than the stuff we’re reminded to be wary about on a daily basis.

*In 2011, the US Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) reported a tenfold spike in emergency room visits involving energy drinks. Approximately 70% of cases involving teens from ages 12 to 17 going to ER was due to energy drinks itself – without drugs or alcohol. Most hospitalizations are caused by dehydration, heat exhaustion and heart problems. A January 2013 update from DAWN indicates that from 2007 to 2011 the number of energy drink ER visits doubled, with 20,783 reported emergency room visits due to energy drink consumption in 2011.

Tags: Monster Energy Drink, Monster Energy Drink Lawsuit, Personal Injury, Wrongful Death
Posted in Emerging Issues, lawsuits, Personal Injury | No Comments »