This year’s Golden Globe Awards, which showed popular actors Julia Louis Dreyfus and Leonardo DiCaprio puffing on e-cigarettes, has drawn the ire of lawmakers in Washington, CBS News reports. E-cigarettes or vaporized cigarettes are becoming the new “cool thing.”  In addition, they are not regulated and they contain no health warnings. This disturbing trend that glamorizes smoking…
Bisnar Chase - California Personal Injury Blog
Glamorization of E-Cigarettes at the Golden Globes Angers Lawmakers
Florida Man Says Defective BMW Parking-Assist Caused Crash
A defective parking-assist function in a 2013 BMW has been blamed for sending a car zooming over a parking lot division and crashing into a parked vehicle. According to an ABC news report, the incident occurred in a Target parking lot in Stuart, Florida. Jonathon Libratore, 27, told police he was trying to park when…
Los Angeles Woman Sues McDonald’s Over Hot Coffee
The new case filed by Paulette Carr states that she was injured Jan. 12, 2012 after ordering coffee at the drive-through window of a McDonald’s on Sepulveda Boulevard in Van Nuys. She is seeking unspecified monetary damages in the lawsuit, which was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court. In the lawsuit, Carr alleged that the lid for the hot coffee was “negligently, carelessly and improperly placed on the coffee cup.” The lid came off the top at the window and the hot coffee spilled on Carr, the complaint states. The lawsuit does not describe the nature or severity of Carr’s injuries.
General Motors Recalling Pickup Trucks for Fire Hazards
When a truck idles, typically, it should only use only two cylinders. But because of a software glitch, the recalled trucks idle with most of the cylinders. This causes the vehicles to overheat and leads to the fires, officials say. All vehicles that have reported fires are trucks that have V-8 engines. The fire danger is signaled by a continuous yellow “check engine” light and an “engine power reduced” message in the driver information center.
Feds Shut Down Foster Farms Plant Over Roach Infestation
Officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) suspended operations at a Foster Farms poultry plant due to a cockroach infestation resulting in contaminated food. According to a Los Angeles Times news report, the plant, which is located in Livingston, California, 25 miles southeast of Modesto, was one of three Foster Farms facilities linked to…
Federal Officials Tell Child Car Seat Maker to Issue Safety Recall
Combi USA has been issued a child car seats recall on about 33,000 units because federal officials say the restraining straps could break in the event of a crash. According to a report in The New York Times, the recall comes after the safety agency rejected Combi’s request that it be “excused from the recall”…
Land Rover Recalls SUVs for Airbag Defects
Jaguar Land Rover has issued an auto defect recall for Range Rover SUVs from the 2013 and 2014 model years due to defects in the airbag system. According to a report in The Washington Post, a number of these vehicles suffer from a problem with their safety systems, which could dramatically increase the risk of…
15 Salmonella Illnesses Linked to Contaminated Raw Cashew Cheese
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has opened an investigation into a multistate outbreak of Salmonella Stanley linked to cashew cheese products manufactured by a West Sacramento company. According to a report on Examiner.com, The Cultured Kitchen recalled all flavors of its cashew cheese products with an expiration date on or before…
Report Says Salmonella Outbreaks from Raw Chicken Point to Weak Enforcement
Consumer Reports also released a study this month, which showed that 97 percent of raw chicken breast sample tests contained potentially harmful bacteria. Pew’s report takes a closer look at two multistate salmonella outbreaks linked to Foster Farms, the sixth largest producer of chicken in the United States. One outbreak lasted from June 2012 to April 2013 and the other began in March 2013 and remains ongoing.
FDA Investigating Surgical Robots Used at Hospitals
According to a report in the Bangor Daily News, Intuitive Surgical Inc., the maker of the $1.5 million da Vinci robotic surgery system, issued an urgent medical device recall in November alerting customers that friction in the instrument arms of some of the robots can cause them to stall momentarily. The FDA had also issued a warning about this defect. This problem affects up to 1,386 of the instrument arms worldwide.
