Brianna Smith is a freelance writer and editor in Southwest Michigan. A graduate of Grand Valley State University, Brianna has a passion for politics, social issues, education, science, and more. When she’s not writing, she enjoys the simple life with her husband, daughter, and son.
Do you enjoy the occasional bowl of cereal for breakfast? If so, you may want to steer away from Kellogg’s Honey Smacks for the time being. Just recently the popular breakfast cereal was recalled over concerns that certain boxes may be contaminated with Salmonella. Unfortunately, before the potential contamination was detected, the “product was distributed throughout the United States and there have been reported illnesses.”
The parents of 12-year-old Mallory Grossman filed a lawsuit earlier this week against the Rockaway Township Board of Education a year after Mallory’s suicide. According to the suit, Mallory was “tormented, for months, by texts, Instagram posts and Snapchat messages from classmates.” Bullies even allegedly asked her when she was going to kill herself. Tragically, on “June 14, 2017, she did.”
CSX Transportation recently agreed to pay a $3.2 million settlement to settle a lawsuit after it was accused of “administering physical capability tests that prevented women from being hired for certain jobs.” CSX is a company that supplies rail-based freight transportation throughout the United States and Canada. A leader in the industry, the Jacksonville, Florida-based company “operates more than 21,000 miles of track in 23 Eastern states, including West Virginia and Kentucky, and two Canadian provinces.”
When most people think about school buses, they don’t exactly think of them being environmentally friendly. However, in Arizona, Gov. Doug Ducey recently announced that he will be replacing more than 280 “aging and presumably high-polluting school buses…at no cost to Arizona taxpayers.” The money for the new buses will come from the “$59 million the state is getting as its share of a nationwide settlement with Volkswagen to replace buses that are at least 15 years old and have more than 100,000 miles on them.”
Nearly four years after Darren Borges died while in police custody, his family has finally reached a $3.45 million settlement with Humboldt County in the wrongful death lawsuit they filed. In addition to agreeing to the monetary settlement, the county will also “implement health screening protocols before a person is put in a cell,” according to the agreement.
Eight years after filing a class-action lawsuit against Hawaii’s Department of Education, almost 500 former students have finally agreed to a multimillion-dollar settlement. The lawsuit itself alleged the students “were illegally denied special education services.” Specifically, it argued that the “DOE violated the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, which requires that states provide free appropriate public education to all people with disabilities who are under age 22,” according to the lawsuit. The suit settled for $10.45 million.
After a 9-year-old Hawaiian girl starved to death while in the care of the state, her family has decided to sue the “state of Hawaii as well as her parents and grandmother for wrongful death.” According to the suit, a number of individuals, organizations, and government departments were negligent in the child’s death, including the “Department of Human Services, Child Protective Services, Child Welfare Services and the Department of Education.”
The University of Virginia Medical Center is at the center of a new lawsuit that was filed earlier this month. The suit itself was filed by a woman who claims the medical center violated her constitutional rights after she was “sedated by medical staff and forced to give blood and urine samples after a suicide attempt.”
For your Father’s Day cookout this Sunday, you may want to skip the pre-cut melon. According to a recent recall issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), certain containers of pre-cut melon has “been linked to a Salmonella outbreak” that has already sickened more than 60 people throughout eight states.
Country star Martina McBride, her husband, John McBride, and their recording company Blackbird Studios recently came under in a lawsuit filed by a former employee. According to the former employee, Richard Hanson, the “defendants unlawfully terminated him in an act of retaliation after he reported alleged illegal activity about the company’s internship program.” As a result, he is seeking $1 million in damages.