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jury ruled against chemical giant Monsanto on Monday, awarding a California couple $2 billion in damages after determining their cancer was caused by the weedkiller RoundUp. The decision in Alameda County Superior Court comes on the heels of a recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) statement that said there were no serious public health risks associated with glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp. But a growing number of juries disagree with the EPA's position. Monday's ruling marks the third case since August in which a jury found that glyphosate caused cancer. More than 13,000 similar lawsuits have been filed against Monsanto...

Roundup does cause cancer, a jury has declared in an unprecedented trial into the health dangers of Monsanto's weedkiller. After three days of deliberations, jurors on Friday sided with terminally-ill groundsman Dewayne Johnson, 46, who has just weeks to live, awarding him $250 million in punitive damages, plus nearly $40m in compensatory damages, bringing the total to $289m.

Starbucks has been accused of racism yet again after a Latino customer at a Los Angeles area store found a racial slur scribbled on his cup. The man, who would only be identified as Peter, told CBS Los Angeles he received a drink with the word “BEANER” on it at the Starbucks in La Cañada, California. “En español es ‘frijoleros,’ ‘beaner,’ you know, in English,” said the victim’s friend Miguel Acosta. “He went to Starbucks, and they asked for his name, and his name is ‘Peter,’ and they wrote this ‘beaner,’ And he’s saying that’s not fair.” Acosta added that...

A California judge on Friday threw out a $417 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson in a lawsuit by a woman who claimed she developed ovarian cancer after using its talc-based products like Johnson’s Baby Powder for feminine hygiene. The ruling by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Maren Nelson marked the latest setback facing women and family members who accuse J&J of not adequately warning consumers about the cancer risks of its talc-based products. The decision followed a jury’s decision in August to hit J&J with the largest verdict to date in the litigation, awarding California resident Eva Echeverria $70...

<p>The family of a Canadian filmmaker and conservationist who died during a shark filming excursion off the Florida Keys filed a wrongful death lawsuit Tuesday.</p> <p>Rob Stewart, 37, of Toronto, Canada, died while diving in January off the coast of Islamorada, Florida, to film a follow-up to his 2006 documentary "Sharkwater," which examined the impact of shark hunting on the ocean's ecosystem. He also made a 2013 documentary "Revolution" about environmental collapse and was a wildlife photographer.</p>

Two days after toxic black smoke from the Chevron refinery fire enveloped Richmond, a second phenomenon swept through the city: the rush for money. More than 1,000 residents claiming to have coughs, nausea, scratchy throats and psychological trauma visited a downtown law office Wednesday in hopes of receiving a payout for their suffering. Another 1,000 contacted Chevron directly. Chevron was so overwhelmed, it set up a storefront downtown to accommodate the claims and answer questions. But what claimants are likely to receive - at the most, a few thousand dollars each - is not enough to buy a long-term solution...

Santa Clara County agrees to pay $1 million in lawsuit over Naked Guy's suicide To many, Luis Andrew Martinez was simply the Naked Guy — a Berkeley fixture who gained national notoriety in the 1990s for refusing to wear clothes. About 10 years later, on May 18, 2006, isolated and alone in a Santa Clara County Jail cell, Martinez — a diagnosed schizophrenic — tied a plastic bag around his head and killed himself. Today — on the third anniversary of his death — lawyers for his family plan to announce a $1 million settlement reached with Santa Clara County,...

WICHITA, Kan.—A federal judge on Friday denied a request by a patient-advocacy group to sue the federal government on behalf of patients of a physician who is charged with running a "pill mill" linked to 56 overdose deaths. U.S. District Judge Wesley Brown urged about 40 of Dr. Stephen Schneider's patients, some of whom had come to the hearing on crutches, to seek care at the emergency room, not the court. "If someone can prevent a criminal prosecution by filing a civil suit, there would be a flood of civil suits," Brown told the courtroom. The judge said the patients...

The industry's VIPs mingle at political galas and Super Bowl parties. Their product is available on cell phones, podcasts, and particularly the Internet _ there it's an attraction like no other, patronized by tens of millions of Americans. It's pornography. And if you're a consumer, John Harmer thinks you're damaging your brain. Harmer is part of a cadre of anti-porn activists seeking new tactics to fight an unprecedented deluge of porn which they see as wrecking countless marriages and warping human sexuality. They are urging federal prosecutors to pursue more obscenity cases and raising funds for high-tech brain research that...

We wrecked our 2001 Dodge caravan 3-7-06 going only about 35mph, frontal crash, my daughters (12yrs. old) rear shoulder strap didn't catch and her face slammed the handle on back of the drivers seat, she suffered a concussion with blood from eye, nose and mouth. NHTSA or IIHS has never done a FRONTAL crash test with rear occupants and (ALL) Daimlerchryster Dodge caravan and durango rear shoulder straps do not catch when you jerk them and caravan didn't catch in our crash. Test for yourself, jerk the front then jerk the rear shoulder restraints, obviously something is wrong and children...

Anderson Urrutia, 8, complained of a headache on Sunday night. Then his tummy started hurting. At 2:15 a.m., he walked into his parents' bedroom and asked if he had to go to school. "I don't want to get in trouble again," he told his mother. Anderson, a second-grader at Occoquan Elementary School, went to school on Monday with 5-year-old kindergartner Joseph Soriano after the two were not allowed to attend class Friday for wearing T-shirts that were deemed potentially disruptive by the principal. Printed in large blue letters with red trim, the T-shirts stated in Spanish "Latino Forever" on the...

ROGERSVILLE - The mother of a Rogersville boy who was injured in an accident last year on a new bicycle has filed a $900,000 lawsuit against the bike manufacturer and Wal-Mart, where the bike was purchased. Elizabeth Burton, 625 S. Armstrong St., Rogersville, is the mother of Eric Burton, who was injured in an accident on Jan. 9, 2005. The boy's sister had received the Roadmaster Mountain Sport bicycle as a Christmas present from their father. According to the lawsuit filed on behalf of the Burtons by Morristown attorney Gary E. Brewer, on Jan. 9 of last year Eric Burton...

Widow Of Slain Trooper Sues Makers, Sellers Of Meth Ingredient WALTERS - The widow of a slain trooper filed a wrongful-death lawsuit Tuesday against those who make and/or sell pseudoephedrine. Linda Green claims in the Cotton County lawsuit that drug companies and suppliers -- including Pfizer, Wal-Mart, Walgreen, Dollar General and United Supermarkets -- knew methamphetamine addicts were buying the drug to get high and not to treat a cold. She also charges makers knew how to make the pseudoephedrine tablets without allowing drug addicts to extract the ingredients needed to make methamphetamine. "The reason for filing this suit is...

Nickelodeon Employee Arrested In Teen Molestation Production Assistant Is Convicted Sex Offender BURBANK, Calif. -- A convicted sex offender who worked as a production assistant at Nickelodeon Animation Studios was arrested on suspicion of molesting a boy at the studio, police said. Ezell Channel, 36, was arrested Thursday at the studio's parking lot and charged with two felonies. The mother of the victim, a teenage boy, became suspicious of Channel when he began spending time with her son, said city police department Sgt. Jay Jette. She later checked his name on the state's Megan's Law Web site and found he...

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - The judge in the second Vioxx product liability trial delivered a stunning blow to Merck & Co. Friday when she struck the testimony of its first defense witness from the record. With the jury outside, Superior Court Judge Carol Higbee said she felt misled and sickened upon rereading the transcript of Thursday's testimony by a Merck researcher who said studies by the company in the late 1990s showed the pain reliever would not cause heart damage. Higbee struck the testimony of Merck researcher Dr. Briggs Morrison from the record because she said he was not an...

Medical statistics expert: Vioxx can double heart attack risk September 22, 2005 9:56 PM EDT ATLANTIC CITY, New Jersey. - Even short-term use of the painkiller Vioxx can double the risk of heart attack, a medical statistics expert testified Thursday in a product liability trial, a finding that manufacturer Merck & Co. misrepresented. Testifying on behalf of a postal worker suing Merck, University of Washington biostatistician Richard Kronmal said patients who took the now-withdrawn painkiller in company-sponsored tests suffered serious side effects to blood vessels almost immediately. "It clearly is a drug that has severe effects on the vascular system,"...

A Colorado woman picked up $100,00 for two small bags of cocaine. It's all legal and you may not believe who wrote the check. It all started with a traffic stop more than two years ago and now, the admitted crack carrier has a check for $100,000. All criminal charges against her have been dropped and the city's police chief said they did nothing wrong. So how can this happen? Debi asked 7NEWS Investigators to protect her identity but she wants her story told.She admits taxpayers will probably not like that the city paid her $100,000 to settle a civil...

ANGLETON -- The Brazoria County jury in the nation's first Vioxx-related civil trial has found pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. liable for the death of a man who took the painkiller.Jurors awarded Robert Ernst's widow, Carol, $253.4 million in damages, which is a combination of his lost pay as a Wal-Mart produce manager, mental anguish, loss of companionship and punitive damages. Carol Ernst began to cry when the verdict was read while her attorneys jumped up and shouted, "Amen!" The plaintiffs team huddled and hugged and repeated, "Amen, amen," while plaintiff's lawyer Ben Morelli told Ernst, "It's your jury." "Anyone who said they...

ANGLETON, Texas (AP) -- A Texas jury found pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. liable for the death of a man who took the once-popular painkiller Vioxx in the first of thousands of lawsuits pending across the country. The case drew national attention from pharmaceutical companies, lawyers, consumers, stock analysts and arbitragers as a signal of what lies ahead for Merck, which has vowed to fight the more than 4,200 state and federal Vioxx-related lawsuits pending across the country. Merck said it plans to appeal. A seven-man, five-woman jury from a semi-rural county south of Houston deliberated for 10 1/2...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court said Monday that it will decide if states and counties can be sued for not accommodating disabled prisoners, setting up another legal showdown over the power of Congress to tell states what to do. The high court ruled seven years ago that a landmark federal civil rights law protects people being held in state prisons. Since then, however, lower court judges have disagreed over whether states can be sued for damages by prisoners under the Americans With Disabilities Act, a law meant to ensure equal treatment for the disabled in many areas of life....