Tag Archives: negligence

Hawaiian Electric Company blamed for negligence in causing the wildfire

Important Takeaways:

  • Maui County Sues Hawaiian Electric for Causing Wildfire Through Negligence
  • President Joe Biden’s administration has explicitly blamed climate change for the blaze, with senior “clean energy” adviser John Podesta going further and touting Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act as the solution. But it turns out that the spread of alien, invasive grass species on abandoned farmland was a major factor in providing fuel for the blaze that destroyed the town of Lahaina, and local authorities are placing immediate blame on the local power company.
  • The Wall Street Journal reported:
    • Maui County filed a lawsuit … in state Second Circuit Court in Hawaii against Hawaiian Electric and its subsidiaries on Maui, alleging the company failed to maintain the electrical system and power grid during a windstorm that lashed the island, resulting in three different fires that erupted on Aug. 8.
    • The lawsuit claims that the utility, known as HECO, acted negligently by not pre-emptively cutting power despite a warning the prior day from the National Weather Service of high winds and temperatures, along with low humidity—prime conditions for a wildfire. It also says HECO’s failure to maintain its system led to energized, downed power lines causing the fires.
  • The utility has also been faulted for spending money on “green” energy alternatives rather than in improving the safety of its transmission network, which had been identified as a potential source of wildfire risk in the recent past.

Read the original article by clicking here.

U.S. grand jury accuses Amplify Energy of negligence in oil spill

(Reuters) -A federal grand jury has accused Amplify Energy Corp and two of its subsidiaries of illegally and negligently discharging oil during a pipeline break in California in October and failing to respond to alarms.

The Department of Justice said the indictment alleges that the companies, which own and operate the 17-mile (27 km) San Pedro Bay Pipeline, failed to properly respond to eight alarms over more than 13 hours on October 1-2.

The indictment also accuses Amplify and its Beta Operating Co LLC and San Pedro Bay Pipeline Co subsidiaries of shutting and restarting the pipeline five times after the first five alarms were triggered, sending oil flowing through the damaged pipeline for more than three hours.

Amplify said it investigated the pipeline but it was then not known to the crew that the leak detection system was malfunctioning.

The detection system was “wrongly signaling a potential leak at the platform where no leak could be detected by the platform personnel and where no leak was actually occurring,” it said in a statement.

The oil spill left fish dead, birds mired in petroleum and wetlands contaminated, in what local officials called an environmental catastrophe.

An estimated 25,000 gallons of crude oil were discharged from a point approximately 4.7 miles west of Huntington Beach from a crack in the 16-inch pipeline, the statement said.

An earlier report by the Associated Press showed how the spill was not investigated for nearly 10 hours.

(Reporting by Seher Dareen in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler and Stephen Coates)

U.S. appeals court rules against nursing homes over COVID-19 lawsuits

By Tom Hals

(Reuters) – In a setback to nursing-home operators facing hundreds of COVID-19 negligence and wrongful-death lawsuits, a federal appeals court on Wednesday said cases against two New Jersey facilities should proceed in state courts.

The nursing homes had argued that the suits against them belonged in federal court, citing an emergency U.S. law known as the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, which shields those fighting the pandemic from lawsuits.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia affirmed a lower court ruling and rejected the nursing homes’ argument that the PREP Act was so far reaching that families’ state-law negligence claims were really federal claims that belonged in federal court.

The families “asserted only garden-variety state-law claims, so state court is where these cases belong,” the court said.

Neil Lapinski, a Gordon, Fournaris & Mammarella attorney who represented the families, said “the court has provided a clear roadmap for litigants” that was consistent with lower court rulings.

The cases were filed in state court in April 2020 by families of four residents who died of COVID-19. They sued two nursing homes operating as Andover Subacute & Rehabilitation I & II, alleging the facilities failed to take precautions to contain the spread of the virus.

The cases were among the first against nursing homes, where more than 100,000 people died during the pandemic. Like hundreds of similar wrongful death claims against care facilities, the cases stalled over which court should hear the lawsuit.

The operator said it was shielded by the PREP Act and the cases belonged in federal court. A lower federal court, however, said the case should be heard in state court, and the nursing home operator appealed.

The 2005 PREP Act is meant to jumpstart U.S. defenses against an outbreak like COVID-19 by shielding from lawsuits makers of critical products, from diagnostic tests to vaccines, as well as doctors and drug distributors. Nursing homes have said the law should shield them from liability because they were on the front line of the outbreak.

Wednesday’s ruling could help get cases moving, said Adam Pulver of Public Citizen Litigation Group, a consumer advocacy group that filed an amicus brief with the appeals court.

“By being the first appeals court to weigh in, the 3rd Circuit signaled to judges around the country that these appeals are unlikely to succeed and there is no reason to stop cases from moving forward while the nursing homes appeal,” he said.

The 3rd Circuit’s ruling said determining whether the PREP Act shields nursing homes from pandemic-related lawsuits should be determined by a state court, although other federal appeals courts are expected to address that question in the coming months.

Lann McIntyre, a Lewis Brisbois attorney who represented the nursing homes, declined to comment.

The appeal was heard by three Republican appointees – Michael Chagares, Jane Roth and David Porter, who was appointed by President Donald Trump and who wrote the opinion.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Bill Berkrot)

‘Possibility of external interference’: Lebanon’s president expands blast probe

By Michael Georgy and Ellen Francis

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon’s president said on Friday an investigation into the biggest blast in Beirut’s history would examine whether it was caused by a bomb or other external interference, as residents tried to rebuild their shattered lives after the explosion.

The search for those missing has intensified, as rescuers sifted rubble in a race to find anyone still alive after Tuesday’s blast that killed 154, smashed up a swathe of the city and sent seismic shockwaves around the region.

“The cause has not been determined yet. There is a possibility of external interference through a rocket or bomb or other act,” President Michel Aoun said in comments carried by local media and confirmed by his office.

He said it would also consider whether the explosion was due to negligence or an accident. He previously said highly explosive material had been stored in unsafe conditions for years at the port. A source has said an initial probe blamed negligence related to storage of the explosive material.

The United States has previously said it has not ruled out an attack. Israel, which has fought several wars with Lebanon, has also previously denied it had any role.

Security forces fired teargas at a furious crowd in Beirut late on Thursday, as anger boiled over at the ruling elite, who have presided over a nation that faced economic collapse even before the deadly port blast that injured 5,000 people.

The small crowd, some hurling stones, marked a return to the kind of protests that had become a feature of life in Beirut, as Lebanese watched their savings evaporate and currency disintegrate, while government decision-making floundered.

“There is no way we can rebuild this house. Where is the state?” Tony Abdou, an unemployed 60-year-old.

His family home is in Gemmayze, a district that lies a few hundred metres from the port warehouses where 2,750 tonnes of highly explosive ammonium nitrate was stored for years, a ticking time bomb near a densely populated area.

A security source and local media previously said the fire that caused the blast was ignited by warehouse welding work.

SWEEPING UP

Volunteers outside swept up debris from the streets of Beirut, which still bears scars from the 1975-1990 civil war and has often witnessed big bombings and other unrest since then.

“Do we actually have a government here?” said taxi driver Nassim Abiaad, 66, whose cab was crushed by falling building wreckage just as he was about to get into the vehicle.

“There is no way to make money anymore,” he said.

The government has promised a full investigation. State news agency NNA said 16 people were taken into custody.

But for many Lebanese, the explosion was symptomatic of years of neglect by the authorities while corruption thrived.

Officials have said the blast, whose seismic impact was recorded hundreds of miles (kilometres) away, might have caused losses amounting to $15 billion – a bill the country cannot pay when it has already defaulted on its mountain of national debt, exceeding 150% of economic output, and talks about a lifeline from the International Monetary Fund have stalled.

Hospitals, many heavily damaged as shockwaves ripped out windows and pulled down ceilings, have been overwhelmed by the number of casualties. Many were struggling to find enough foreign exchange to buy supplies before the explosion.

In the port area, rescue teams set up arc lights to work through the night in a dash to find those still missing, as families waited tensely, slowly losing hope of ever seeing loved ones again. Some victims were hurled into the sea because of the explosive force.

‘NOWHERE TO GO’

The weeping mother of one of the missing called a prime time TV program on Thursday night to plead with the authorities to find her son, Joe. He was found – dead – hours later.

Lebanese Red Cross Secretary General George Kettaneh told local radio VDL that three more bodies had been found in the search, while the health minister said on Friday the death toll had climbed to 154. Dozens are still unaccounted for.

Charbel Abreeni, who trained port employees, showed Reuters pictures on his phone of killed colleagues. He was sitting in a church where the head from the statue of the Virgin Mary had been blown off.

“I know 30 port employees who died, two of them are my close friends and a third is missing,” said the 62-year-old, whose home was wrecked in the blast. His shin was bandaged.

“I have nowhere to go except my wife’s family,” he said. “How can you survive here, the economy is zero?”

A pressing challenge for the government is ensuring the nation has enough food, after he blast destroyed the country’s only major grain silo. U.N. agencies were working to hand out food parcels and deliver medical supplies.

Offers of immediate aid have also poured in from Arab states, Western nations and beyond. But none, so far, address the bigger challenges facing a bankrupt nation.

(Reporting by Michael Georgy, Ellen Francis and Ghaida Ghantous; Writing by Ghaida Ghantous; Editing by Edmund Blair)

In a first, Missouri sues China over coronavirus economic losses

By Jan Wolfe

(Reuters) – Missouri on Tuesday became the first U.S. state to sue the Chinese government over its handling of the coronavirus, saying that China’s response to the outbreak that originated in Wuhan city led to devastating economic losses in the state.

The civil lawsuit, filed in federal court by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, alleges negligence, among other claims. The complaint alleges Missouri and its residents have suffered possibly tens of billions of dollars in economic damages, and seeks cash compensation.

“The Chinese government lied to the world about the danger and contagious nature of COVID-19, silenced whistleblowers, and did little to stop the spread of the disease,” Schmitt, a Republican, said in a statement. “They must be held accountable for their actions.”

The lawsuit also accuses the Chinese government of making the pandemic worse by “hoarding” masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE).

U.S. President Donald Trump, also a Republican, initially lavished praise on China and his counterpart Xi Jinping for the official response to the outbreak, which has since spread to infect more than 2.5 million people worldwide. But he and other senior U.S. officials have also referred to it as the “Chinese virus” and in recent days have ramped up their rhetoric.

China is already facing similar lawsuits filed in U.S. courts on behalf of U.S. business owners.

International law experts told Reuters that efforts to hold China liable for the coronavirus in U.S. courts will likely fail.

A legal doctrine called sovereign immunity offers foreign governments broad protection from being sued in U.S. courts, said Tom Ginsburg, a professor of international law at the University of Chicago.

Ginsburg said he thought the recent flurry of lawsuits against China serve a political end for Republican leaders facing an election in November.

“We are seeing a lot of people on the political right focus on the China issue to cover up for the U.S. government’s own errors,” Ginsburg said.

Trump initially downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus, which has killed more than 43,000 people in the United States out of nearly 800,000 cases as of Tuesday.

The outbreak has also forced state governors to declare stay-at-home orders that have shuttered businesses and social activities, leading a record 22 million people to seek unemployment benefits in the past month.

“If the United States wants to bring claims against China, it will have to do so in an international forum,” said Chimène Keitner, an international law professor at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. “There is no civil jurisdiction over such claims in U.S. courts.”

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Charleston mass shooting victims can sue U.S. over gun purchase: court

FILE PHOTO: Dylann Roof sits in the court room at the Charleston County Judicial Center to enter his guilty plea on murder charges in state court for the 2015 shooting massacre at a historic black church, in Charleston, South Carolina, U.S., April 10, 2017. REUTERS/Grace Beahm/Pool/File Photo

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) – Survivors of a 2015 mass shooting at a South Carolina church can sue the U.S. government over its alleged negligence in allowing Dylann Roof to buy the gun he used to kill nine African-Americans, a federal appeals court said on Friday.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the government was not immune from liability under either the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) or the Brady Act to prevent handgun violence.

Friday’s decision by a three-judge panel revived 16 lawsuits that challenged lapses in how the government vetted prospective gun purchasers, including the FBI’s management of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

William Wilkins, a former chief judge of the 4th Circuit representing the victims, said Congress had charged the FBI with adopting procedures “to stop people like Roof who could obtain assassins’ weapons” from doing so.

“The government has to do what the law requires,” Wilkins said in an interview. “It failed to do that in this case.”

Roof, a white supremacist, had been admitted to a Bible study session at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston on June 17, 2015, where he then used his .45-caliber Glock semiautomatic pistol in the shooting.

Victims said a proper background check would have shown that Roof had recently admitted to drug possession, which would have disqualified him from buying the gun from a federally licensed dealer two months earlier.

Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote for the Richmond, Virginia-based appeals court that no one disputed that a proper check would have stopped Roof.

But he said U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel in Charleston was wrong to dismiss the lawsuits on immunity grounds in June 2018, even as Gergel faulted the government’s “abysmally poor policy choices” in managing the background check system.

Gregory said the case turned on the NICS examiner’s alleged negligence in disregarding mandatory procedures. “The government can claim no immunity in these circumstances,” he wrote.

Circuit Judge G. Steven Agee partially dissented, saying the government was not immune from Brady Act claims, but that Gergel properly dismissed the FTCA case.

Roof, now 25, was sentenced to death in January 2017 after being convicted on 33 federal counts related to the shooting, including hate crimes. He pleaded guilty three months later to state murder charges, and was sentenced to nine consecutive life terms without parole.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler and Alistair Bell)

Notre Dame fire may have been caused by power fault or cigarette: prosecutors

The Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral is pictured after the first mass since the devastating fire in April, in Paris, France, June 15, 2019. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

PARIS (Reuters) – An electrical fault or a burning cigarette may have been responsible for the fire that gutted Notre-Dame Cathedral, French authorities investigating the cause of April’s blaze said on Wednesday.

Paris prosecutors said that, while they were investigating the possibility of negligence, they currently had no reason to believe the fire was started deliberately.

It ripped through the medieval cathedral on April 15, destroying the roof, toppling the spire and almost bringing down the main bell towers and outer walls before firefighters brought it under control.

“If certain failings, which may explain the scale of the fire, have been brought to light, the investigations carried out to this date have not yet been able to determine the causes of the fire,” said a statement from Paris prosecutor Remy Heitz.

“For now, there are no indications of a criminal origin,” he added. However, nothing had been ruled out, with an electrical fault and a cigarette that was not properly extinguished two of several possible causes being investigated, he said.

President Emmanuel Macron has set a target of five years for restoring Notre-Dame, which dates back to the 12th century and is one of Europe’s most iconic landmarks.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Geert de Clercq and John Stonestreet)

Ex-deputy charged for not responding to Florida school shooting remains in jail: judge

Former Broward County sheriff's deputy Scot Peterson appears via video feed from the Broward County jail in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, U.S., June 5, 2019. Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun Sentinel/Pool via REUTERS

(Reuters) – The former Florida sheriff’s deputy criminally charged for his lack of response to the 2018 mass shooting at a Parkland high school that left 17 dead will remain in jail on $102,000 bond, a bail court judge ordered on Wednesday.

Scot Peterson, 56, was arrested Tuesday on 11 charges of neglect and negligence for remaining outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during the attack. He was booked into the Broward County jail.

Peterson, who lives in North Carolina, is the first police officer to be criminally charged for his response to an active shooter situation, his attorney, Joseph DiRuzzo, said.

Felony and misdemeanor charges against Peterson include seven counts of child neglect, three counts of culpable negligence and one count of perjury.

Peterson was a Broward County deputy on duty as a school resource officer when Nikolas Cruz, 19, allegedly entered the school building on Feb. 14, 2018, and opened fire. At the time, Peterson was the only armed guard on the campus in Parkland, Florida.

Seventeen students and staffers were killed and 17 were wounded.

Cruz, a student who had been expelled from the school, was arrested and is awaiting trial on multiple murder charges.

A lengthy investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement found that after hearing gunshots ring out, Peterson, who was trained to immediately confront an active shooter, failed to investigate their source and retreated to take cover, according to his arrest warrant.

“Had this individual done his job, lives would have been saved,” said U.S. Senator Rick Scott, who was governor of Florida when the shooting happened.

Three weeks after the shooting, Scott signed into law a bill imposing a 21-year-old legal age requirement and three-day waiting period on all gun purchases and allowing the arming of some school employees.

Peterson has insisted he responded properly by notifying police and assisting a school lockdown. He told the Washington Post, “It just happened, and I started reacting.”

Peterson resigned a week after the shooting. Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony said on Tuesday he had fired Peterson and another deputy, Brian Miller, saying they had neglected their duties during the shooting.

(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York; Editing by Scott Malone and Bill Trott)