Uber Loses Bid To Force Arbitration On California Driver
by Joel Rosenblatt, Bloomberg
Uber is appealing the San Francisco federal court decision in a case that might force the startup to change its business model and erode its $50 billion valuation. … “I’m not going to fly in the face of a stark inconsistency in order to massage this into arbitrability,” [Judge Ernest Goldsmith] told lawyers during a hearing Monday. … “I can’t imagine that they’re going to continue with a contract like this,” Goldsmith said, referring to Uber. “It’s not a close case. It starts with the clearest contradictory language and just goes on and on and on.” Read More ›
Volkswagen Test Rigging Follows A Long Auto Industry Pattern
by Danny Hakim and Hiroko Tabuchi, The New York Times
The universe of automotive scandals has been a broad and often tragic one, including Ford’s 1978 recalls of 1.5 million Pintos after evidence emerged that its gas tanks were prone to catch fire during impacts. The Chrysler Corporation was indicted in 1987 on charges of disconnecting the odometers of 60,000 cars used by executives and then selling them as new. The Ford-Firestone scandal that started in the late 1990s was linked to 271 deaths. And more than 23 million cars have been recalled by 11 automakers over airbags made by Takata that could violently rupture in an accident. Read More ›
Consumers Can Check Medical Prices, Quality Scores On New State Website
by Chad Terhune, Los Angeles Times
California and 44 other states received a failing grade in an annual report card that measures how much access patients have to actual prices for medical care. The new online tool seeks to remedy that. … Consumers could use the website to check whether the price they were quoted for a routine lab test or procedure is out of line with the average cost in their community. Armed with that information, a patient could shop around or negotiate for a lower fee. … Researchers said the data also show a wide variation on the quality of care that patients receive from different providers.
Read More ›
Comcast Must Pay $33M To Settle Charges It Listed 75,000 Unlisted Phone Numbers
by Ashlee Kieler, Consumerist
The problem arose after Comcast implemented a new process for producing and disseminating listing information for its residential phone customers in late 2009. Under the system, Comcast sent non-published listings to a third-party company, while placing a “privacy flag” on the non-published listings. However, the flag was never attached to approximately 75,000 non-published/non-listed subscribers. As a result, that information – for which customers paid between $1.25 and $1.50 per month to keep unlisted – appeared in certain county phone books for the years of 2010 and 2011.
The issue came to light in 2012 … Read More ›
CPUC Reform Bills On Governor’s Desk
by Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle
SB660 implements the reforms the law firm called for and closes a loophole that allowed for secret meetings as long as they were one-sided and the commissioners did all the talking. Leno said he is hopeful that Brown will sign the bill. “We took some amendments and we stood our ground on others” in talks with the governor’s office, he said. The resulting bill was passed unanimously by both the state Senate and Assembly. “It is clearly a quality product on a very timely and important issue,” Leno said, adding that the bill would make a difference “to a commission suffering systemic problems.” Read More ›
See How A Huge Utility Stonewalled Regulators After Its Fatal Pipeline Disaster
by Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times
[PG&E’s] safety performance, which long ranked toward the bottom of the utility industry, has gotten worse. … This is a company that not only provides all utility service to almost everyone in Northern California but manages California’s only operational nuclear power plant. If PG&E staff couldn’t find it in themselves to act like grownups when its policies had caused the death of eight people and the destruction of an entire neighborhood, is there anything that would make them straighten up and fly right? Read More ›
For-Profit Colleges Lead The Way On Loan Defaults: Report
by Ashlee Kieler, Consumerist
The current student loan debt crisis is largely concentrated among nontraditional borrowers who attended for-profit schools and other non-selective institutions. … For-profit college students represent a relatively small fraction of consumers seeking higher education – just 11% – but they represent about 44% of all federal student loan defaults. The authors say these rates lead them to believe it’s ultimately the quality of education at these schools that drive students to default, as they aren’t prepared to find employment that would allow them to pay their loans. Read More ›
Five Years After Deadly San Bruno Explosion: Are We Safer?
by Rebecca Bowe and Lisa Pickoff-White, KQED
The explosion and fire killed eight people and injured 58 while destroying 38 homes and damaging 70 others. The community is still recovering from the trauma. … “Really the most shocking part of this is the extent to which the [CPUC] was complicit in the negligence that led to the disaster here in San Bruno,” says San Bruno City Manager Connie Jackson. “You had the leadership of the California Public Utilities Commission essentially in bed with the utility. Dining, drinking, vacationing — and making deals behind the scenes. Californians should be vitally concerned … ” Read More ›
It May Be A Long Time Before Many Corinthian Students Get Debt Relief
by Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, The Washington Post
[A U.S. Education Department] team is reviewing claims where the “facts and law are clear,” such as the ones from students who attended Corinthian’s Heald Colleges in California, Hawaii and Oregon. Those schools were at the heart of a $30 million fine the Education Department levied against Corinthian in April for lying about job placement rates to students. Read More ›
Students Ask Education Department To Discharge College Debt
by Anne Flaherty, Associated Press
Almost 12,000 students are asking the federal government to discharge their college loan debt, asserting that their school either closed or lied to them about job prospects, according to government data released Thursday. … In the report released Thursday by the Education Department’s new “special master” for debt relief, Joseph Smith called the collapse of Corinthian [Colleges] a “landmark event” that triggered an immediate 1,000 “borrower’s defense” claims and contributed to a claims list that now surpasses 4,000. Most of the claims are from Corinthian students, although some are from other schools. Read More ›
Uber Drivers Granted Class-Action Status In Legal Battle
by Tracey Lien, Los Angeles Times
Uber now stands to lose far more than if the case had proceeded as a suit involving only three plaintiffs. In addition to potentially being on the hook for back wages, sick leave, expenses and benefits, the company could be ordered to pay gratuities owed to thousands of former drivers. “We’re talking about millions of dollars,” said Lonnie Giamela of labor and employment firm Fisher & Phillips. And that doesn’t even touch on what a loss would mean for Uber’s independent contractor-reliant business model, which has earned the company a $50-billion valuation. Read More ›
Plan To Require Unaccredited Law Schools In California To Disclose Dropout Rates OKd
by Jason Song and Corina Knoll, Los Angeles Times
A panel of the State Bar of California approved a plan on Friday to require unaccredited law schools to disclose their dropout rates, in an effort to improve transparency for prospective students. … California is one of a handful of states that allow students from unaccredited law schools to take the bar, the state’s legal licensing exam. About 1 in 5 of them pass the bar, according to state records. Read More ›
PUC Launches PG&E Probe As Agency Fails To Comply With Search Warrant
by Ivan Penn, Los Angeles Times
Meanwhile, the commission – beset by criticism that its officials have a too-cozy relationship with the utilities they regulate – failed to respond to a search warrant for records related [to] the California attorney general’s investigation of agency operations. A court document filed Aug. 7 states that “after multiple requests, and two months after the search warrant was served on CPUC, no records have been produced.” … The attorney general is investigating secret talks between the commission and Southern California Edison, the state’s second largest investor-owned utility. Read More ›