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.
Earlier this month a class action lawsuit was filed against Prince Lionheart after “at least 15 toddler boys suffered cuts to their genitals from using a potty-training toilet seat.” Prince Lionheart is a family-owned company in California that has been busy “making products for children for 45 years.” However, the lawsuit alleges that one of the company’s “potty training products, the WeePod Basix, is causing serious harm to toddler boys.”
Another former Texans cheerleader recently joined one of the two lawsuits recently filed against the NFL team “overpayment and workplace issues.” According to the former cheerleader, Angelina Rosa, “cheer director Alto Gary derided her as ‘skinny fat’ and applied duct tape to her stomach before a 2017 game.” A two-year member of the Texans cheerleading squad, Rosa was also a “dancer for the Chicago Bulls and a member of the Astros’ Shooting Stars group,” and is now the 10th cheerleader to join the legal battle against the team.
Earlier this month Del Monte issued a recall of three batches of fresh-cut vegetables after it was discovered that the products are “linked to a parasite that has caused 78 people across four states to fall ill.” According to the recall notice, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) confirmed that the specific contaminated products include “broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, celery, and dip.” So far many of the consumers who ate the recalled products “fell ill with the cyclospora parasite.”
The family of a woman who died in her jail cell on May 12, 2012, recently lost their wrongful death lawsuit they filed in federal court against Douglas County and the sheriff. During the lengthy court proceedings, jurors weighed “allegations against both the county and the sheriff that their jail staff denied or delayed medical care to Rachel Hammers and also had inadequate training.” In the end, the jury found the county and sheriff were not responsible for the death of Hammers. As a result of the verdict, “heirs of Hammers will recover nothing.”
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.
