One Dead And Three Injured In PG&E Natural Gas Line Explosion Southwest Of Bakersfield
by Steven Mayer, J.W. Burch IV, James Burger and John Cox, The Bakersfield Californian
“Unfortunately the vehicle and house (near the blast) were all but gone and a hay barn also was burning,” [an eyewitness] said in a text. “I don’t see how anyone still in the house could’ve survived once the flames got there.” The push of gas and flames threw trees into the air, she said. … [PG&E] said automatic valves initiated a shutoff, but that assertion was contradicted by local fire officials. Read More ›
New California Data On Ride Services Reveal Rise In Collisions And Incidents
by Bryan Goebel, The California Report
“If it’s normalized by miles driven, you’d expect the number of incidents to be somewhat stable over time,” [UCLA transportation expert Juan Matute told the CPUC]. “That would be indicative of TNCs being less safe as they scale up.” … In 2013, an Uber driver was charged with vehicular manslaughter for hitting and killing 6-year-old Sofia Liu as she and her family were walking in a crosswalk. … [Uber] was threatened in July with suspension and a $7 million fine by an administrative law judge for failing to meet all the [CPUC] reporting requirements. Read More ›
One Dead And Three Injured In PG&E Natural Gas Line Explosion Southwest Of Bakersfield
by Steven Mayer, J.W. Burch IV, James Burger and John Cox, The Bakersfield Californian
“I don’t see how anyone still in the house could’ve survived once the flames got there,” said an eyewitness. The push of gas and flames threw trees into the air, she said. PG&E said automatic valves initiated a shutoff, but that assertion was contradicted by local fire officials. Read More ›
This Smart TV Takes Tracking To A New Level
by Andrea Peterson, The Washington Post
Vizio, a top television maker, automatically tracks the viewing habits of Smart TV owners and shares that information with advertisers in a way that could connect those preferences to what those customers do on their phones or other mobile devices. … There are laws that limit how companies share information about video watching habits, including the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA). However, Vizio says that those laws do not apply to its tracking service because the company associates IP addresses with the data rather than a person’s name or other “personally identifiable information.” Read More ›
CFC Saved Drivers Over $15 Million On Insurance In 2015
Hartford and Safeco had both sought to boost auto insurance rates by almost 7%, but CFC challenged the rate hike proposals. The result: $5 million in auto policy savings for Hartford customers and $10 million for Safeco customers. In August, GEICO agreed to pay $6 million to settle CFC’s complaint alleging the insurance giant violated civil rights and insurance law by targeting women and unmarried, lower-income motorists with deceptive and inflated automobile insurance rate quotes. It is difficult to calculate motorists’ potential savings resulting from the settlement, but CFC estimates it may reach several million dollars annually. Read More ›
PG&E’s Profit Culture Is Key Element In San Bruno Explosion Trial
by George Avalos, San Jose Mercury News
PG&E faces a fine of up to $1.13 billion if convicted on the federal criminal charges. The case includes 27 allegations that PG&E violated pipeline safety regulations and one charge that it obstructed a follow-up investigation into the explosion. … The state Public Utilities Commission in April levied a record-setting penalty of $1.6 billion against PG&E for causing the explosion. … Federal investigators believe a combination of PG&E’s shoddy maintenance and flawed record keeping, nurtured by lazy oversight by the state PUC, were the three primary factors that led to the explosion. Read More ›
CPUC Reform Veto Vexes Brown Backers
by Jeff McDonald, San Diego Union-Tribune
Richard Holober, executive director of the Consumer Federation of California, has praised Brown in the past for action on privacy, food safety, credit reports and residential care facilities for the elderly. Holober is not happy with the vetoes of CPUC bills. “Until we saw the vetoes, we were keeping our fingers crossed that he would make the Governor’s Office part of the solution,” Holober said. “Now we are really scratching our heads. The loss of public trust, the scandalous collusion is troubling.” Read More ›
Beware The Fine Print: Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking The Deck Of Justice
by Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Robert Gebeloff, The New York Times
The move to block class actions was engineered by a Wall Street-led coalition of credit card companies and retailers, according to interviews with coalition members and court records. Strategizing from law offices on Park Avenue and in Washington, members of the group came up with a plan to insulate themselves from the costly lawsuits. Their work culminated in two Supreme Court rulings, in 2011 and 2013, that enshrined the use of class-action bans in contracts. The decisions … upended decades of jurisprudence. Read More ›
Call Kurtis Investigates: Some Jeep & Dodge SUVs Are Catching Fire After Recall Repairs
The Hanson family brought their 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee into the dealer for a recall repair expecting to take away the danger. Instead, the family is just one of at least nine that have had fires after the recall repairs. … Stacie Hanson says she and her two kids were just sitting down to eat at Taco Bell, when her daughter yelled, “mom your car has smoke coming out of the whole inside of it,” said Stacie. Eric points out his family was sitting in the SUV just minutes earlier. Read More ›
Utilities Spend Lots Of Public’s Money To Influence State Politics
by Teri Sforza, The Orange County Register
“Your No. 1 example, PG&E, is textbook!” [said Chapman University political science professor Mark Chapin Johnson.] “They answer to the state through the PUC, not their shareholders. … Whenever PG&E wishes to contribute vast sums of ratepayers’ monthly payments to the political process, all PG&E needs do is gain permission to raise rates with the PUC to cover such contributions. Public shareholders or ratepayers have no say in the process. Is this a great system or what? Talk about incestuous!” Read More ›
FBI Hits Nursing Home With Search Warrants
by Marjie Lundstrom, The Sacramento Bee
California’s largest nursing home owner is facing a new round of government scrutiny as the FBI served search warrants last week at his Riverside facility. … The latest investigations shine the spotlight again on [Shlomo] Rechnitz, a 44-year-old Los Angeles entrepreneur whose facilities have been the focus of multiple local, state and federal probes, along with stepped-up scrutiny by health officials. The Bee found that homes he owned for all of last year were tagged with nearly triple as many serious deficiencies per 1,000 beds as the statewide average in 2014. Read More ›
Corinthian College Students Sort Through Confusion, Bureaucracy After Company’s Fall
by Katy Murphy, Contra Costa Times
The Department of Education created a special claim form for students who as far back as 2010 attended Heald programs it found to have inflated job-placement numbers – about 80 percent of all of the chain’s offerings. Roughly 6,100 such claims had been filed as of mid-October compared with only a handful in the past. … The department has estimated that roughly 40,000 former Heald students alone were defrauded because of their programs’ phony job placement rates and are eligible for the relief. Read More ›
A Fiat Chrysler Discount Will Cost You Your Right To Sue
by David Lazarus, Los Angeles Times
Until now, experts say, no major car manufacturer has sought to encourage customers to forgo their right to sue. … Many large businesses prefer arbitration because settlements are limited and because professional arbitrators often favor the corporate side. Arbitrators’ fees are typically paid by the company in a dispute. A 2007 report by Public Citizen found that over a four-year period, arbitrators ruled in favor of banks and credit card companies 94 percent of the time in disputes with California consumers. Read More ›