Posts Tagged ‘ chinese drywall ’

Week Adjourned: 10.15.10

October 15th, 2010. By LucyC

Top Class Actions

Equality? What equality! Where’s Gloria? A gender discrimination lawsuit was filed against Citigroup this week, brought by five former directors and analysts and one current employee.

Interestingly, Bloomberg crunched the numbers and found out that Citigroup’s female finance managers, which include bank tellers as well as executives, earned 63.9 cents for every dollar of income men earned in 2000, based on median salaries. Bloomberg analyzed Government Accountability Office (GAO) statistics to produce its report. And, they also found that in 2007, the last year for which data are available, that figure was down—incredibly—58.8 cents. Not only is that number utterly depressing, but it’s going in the wrong direction!

The suit, filed on behalf of women at job levels from analyst to managing director, alleges that Citigroup is an “outdated boys club” and claims “systematic and pervasive discrimination and retaliation” in decisions involving compensation, promotion and termination.

Top Settlements

Beat Finally Does Go On… Finally—unbelievably, a settlement of the lawsuits against Medtronic over defective Sprint Fidelis leads.

The leads were recalled three years ago in 2007, due to the alleged defect that made the Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: chinese drywall, Citigroup, Medtronic, Sprint Fidelis
Posted in Emerging Issues, Week Adjourned | 5266No Comments »Week+Adjourned%3A+10.15.102010-10-15+19%3A14%3A52LucyC

Chinese Drywall Tax Breaks? IRS Says Yes

October 12th, 2010. By LucyC

As the unfortunate saga of Chinese drywall continues to unfold, a new and welcome twist has emerged. On September 30, 2010, the Internal Revenue Services (IRS) made public its Revenue Procedure 2010-36—which implements tax breaks for people whose homes contain or contained the toxic stuff. In short, the IRS is allowing taxpayers to claim a casualty loss on the repairs of the drywall and any household appliances that were affected—against their taxes.

Apparently, this tax break is the first large-scale effort by the federal government to provide financial relief to victims of Chinese drywall. The IRS says it will give tax breaks to homeowners who suffered property losses due to bad Chinese drywall installed in their homes between 2001 and 2009. People can file amended tax returns to claim the deduction.

Deductions are allowed only on amounts that exceed $500. In order to receive the tax break, homeowners must also have started the process of repairing their homes, and the amounts paid for repairs must exceed 10 percent of the taxpayer’s adjusted gross income.

This move could affect thousands, if not tens of thousands of homeowners. The Homeowners Consumer Center in Washington, DC says Chinese Drywall has allegedly been Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: chinese drywall
Posted in Defective Products | 5222No Comments »2010-10-12+18%3A37%3A53LucyC

Week Adjourned: 8.13.10

August 13th, 2010. By LucyC

Top Class Actions

No Answer for No Answer Charges? A couple of major players in the telecommunications game got hit with class actions this week. First up—AT&T. The suit alleges violations of federal truth-in-billing laws, false advertising and deceptive trade practices under New York law, and breach of contract, among other things.

Lead plaintiff, Los Angeles resident Kenneth Thelian, claims he was charged $12.90 partly for calls that he did not answer. He allegedly complained to AT&T who reversed $8 of the charges, but the company representative “did not adequately explain why these charges were incurred.”

Thelian faced a further $15.81 in roaming charges while traveling in Montreal, Canada in August 2005, again for calls he did not answer. Then, in February and March of 2007, Thelian was billed $92.72. “The bill did not indicate which of these charges were for calls that he did not answer while traveling abroad,” the suit alleges.

So, maybe time to be checking those phone bills…

And, second up—T-Mobile. This class action alleges that the company puts limits on its unlimited data plan. Ummm. who would have thought…

The suit claims that advertisements for T-Mobile’s “Unlimited Web & E-mail” plans, offered for both Blackberry and other brands of smartphones, promise the consumer access to Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Astra Zeneca, ATT, Cell Phone, chinese drywall, Lowe's, Seroquel, T-mobile, Week Adjourned
Posted in Week Adjourned | 4714No Comments »Week+Adjourned%3A+8.13.102010-08-13+22%3A04%3A40LucyC

Bought Drywall at Lowe’s? There’s a Settlement…

August 11th, 2010. By LucyC

A rather big announcement this week for people who purchased sulfur contaminated drywall from Lowes, the do-it-yourself (DIY) home building supplies retailer. They have agreed to pay the equivalent of $6.5 million in gift cards, to end a class action lawsuit that claimed they sold defective drywall.

So if you bought defective drywall—i.e. sulfur laden drywall—Chinese drywall—you know the stuff—at Lowes, you could be eligible for a gift card. FYI—there doesn’t appear to be any information on how much the gift cards will be for.

The settlement agreement, interestingly, didn’t specify where Lowe’s obtained their defective drywall, but in a report by the Wall Street Journal, a company spokesperson is quoted as follows “Lowe’s has been assured by vendors who provided stock drywall for sales in our stores that drywall they provided was not imported from China. But the settlement includes claims of all types of allegedly defective drywall people claim to have purchased from Lowe’s.”

I don’t know if it’s just me but $6.5 million seems a rather paltry amount, considering the damage inflicted on tens of thousands of unsuspecting homeowners. Although it is larger than the settlement awarded in the first Chinese drywall trial brought by Lisa and Armin Seifart. More on that in a minute.

According to the Homeowners Consumer Center in Washington, D.C, Chinese drywall has Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: chinese drywall, defective drywall, Lowe's
Posted in Defective Products, Settlement | 469311 Comments »2010-08-11+14%3A10%3A42LucyC

Week Adjourned: 6.26.10

June 26th, 2010. By LucyC

Top Class Actions

Anadarko Petroleum. Who? Just know, if you don’t own shares in Anadarko Petroleum breathe easy. If you do own shares, you better strap yourself in. A shareholder lawsuit seeking class action status was filed against the petroleum company this week, on behalf of anyone who purchased company common stock of between June 12, 2009 and June 9, 2010, inclusive—otherwise known as the “Class Period”.

Anadarko, it seems, owns 25 percent of the Macondo/Deepwater Horizon well—you know—the gusher currently leaking millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico with ramifications so far reaching it’s impossible to get your head around the scope of the disaster.

The suit alleges that Anadarko and certain of its officers, failed to disclose, “among other things:

1) that there was no effective Exploration and Oil Spill Response Plan for Macondo/Deepwater Horizon;

2) that BP implemented drilling procedures solely to cut costs at the expense of safety;

3) that the Company lacked adequate systems of internal, operational or financial controls to maintain adequate insurance reserves or to meet the known or foreseeable risks associated with its deepwater drilling liabilities; and

4) that defendants lacked any reasonable basis to claim that Anadarko was operating according to plan, or that Anadarko could achieve guidance sponsored and/or endorsed by defendants.”

And the allegations go on, mentioning false and misleading statements that were issued concerning the amount of the clean-up, and the company’s liability etc, all which culminated in massive drops in share prices. So it’s off to court they go.

Only one problem, if the company is stripped of millions of dollars in lawsuits, and this goes for BP as well, who’s going to pay for the clean-up, and all the other costs we haven’t even begun to see yet?

And it’s on from Big Oil to Big Banks…those leading lights of the international Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Anadarko, BP, chinese drywall, Goldman Sachs, paxil
Posted in Week Adjourned | 4186No Comments »Week+Adjourned%3A+6.26.102010-06-26+11%3A25%3A01LucyC