Los Angeles 401 articles

A rise in reported health issues linked to various Rhino-branded male enhancement supplements has prompted the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to issue a warning to consumers that the products should not be purchased or used because they contain hidden drugs that can be dangerous to consumers’ health. The FDA has received reports of people experiencing chest pain, severe headaches and prolonged erections after taking a Rhino product that led to surgical intervention and hospitalization due to extreme drops in blood pressure. Since 2007, the FDA has identified more than 25 products marketed with variations of the name “Rhino” that ... Read More

A Los Angeles Fire Department whistleblower who allegedly faced severe backlash after speaking out against waste and fraud within his station has been awarded $2.75 million by a Los Angeles Superior Court jury. Stephen Meiche, who joined the Los Angeles Fire Department in 1980, said his LAFD colleagues ostracized him and subjected him to differential treatment that diminished not just his peace of mind but threatened his safety, NBC News Los Angeles reported. Mr. Meiche, a certified diver and diver instructor for the LAFD said his troubles started in March 2014 after he complained that members of the dive team ... Read More

Two women have filed a lawsuit against Riot Games accusing the League of Legends developer of violating California equal pay laws, sexual harassment, and discrimination against women. The proposed class action lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court by Melanie McCracken, who has worked with the company for five years, and Jessica Negron, who worked at the gaming studio from April 2015 to April 2017. The lawsuit accuses Riot Games of “creating, encouraging, and maintaining a work environment that exposes its female employees to discrimination and retaliation.” It also claims the company pays its female employees less than ... Read More

A Northrop Grumman subsidiary will pay the U.S. a total of $31.65 million to settle civil and criminal allegations that it intentionally overbilled the federal government for work on two U.S. Air Force contracts for battlefield communications technology. Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation admitted that its employees deployed to a Middle East air base defrauded the U.S. Air Force by overbilling time charged to the Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) contract. The Virginia-based company, which maintains operations in Los Angeles and San Diego, also inflated labor hours for employees working under the Dynamic Re-tasking Capabilities Contracts, according to the U.S. Attorney’s ... Read More

Three years after the worst gas leak in U.S. history forced the closure of Southern California Gas (SoCalGas) storage facilities at Aliso Canyon, nearly half the wells operating before the massive methane leak are closed after state regulators determined they are no longer safe to operate. Documents obtained by the Los Angeles Daily News show that of the 114 wells SoCalGas built to inject and withdraw natural gas at its Aliso Canyon site, 51 have been taken out of operation due to safety concerns, and another three wells have been permanently sealed. According to the Daily News, state records show ... Read More

There was something about Cate Guggino’s annual exam with University of Southern California (USC) gynecologist Dr. George Tyndall that didn’t feel right. The sharp pain when he inserted his fingers in her at the beginning of the exam didn’t seem normal. “Did that hurt?” he asked before repeating the move again. “Then he said, ‘I thought you told me you weren’t a virgin.’ I replied that I was not. ‘Well,’ he told me, ‘your hymen is still intact.’” The memory of the awkwardness and the physical pain still haunt Guggino 16 years later. As a woman’s health nurse practitioner, she ... Read More

E-scooters provide urbanites with a quick, convenient, and green form of transportation, but a class-action lawsuit filed in California last week alleges electric scooter companies and manufacturers are overlooking basic safety concerns in their race to populate city streets with the devices. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court by an initial class of eight plaintiffs, accuses e-scooter companies Lime and Bird and others of “gross negligence,” “aiding and abetting assault,” and “public nuisance,” among other allegations, for creating a significant uptick in personal injuries on city streets. E-scooters have proliferated in cities across the U.S. in recent ... Read More

Dash cam video of a bus crash on a busy Los Angeles County highway shows the Oct. 14 incident may have been the result of road rage. Forty people were injured when a white charter bus marked “Transit Systems” traveling in the right northbound lane of the 405 freeway in the San Fernando Valley suddenly veered left across multiple lanes of traffic. The bus crashed through a concrete divider and stopped splayed across the southbound lanes. At least two other vehicles were involved in the bus crash, which occurred just after 1 p.m. in the North Hills neighborhood of Los ... Read More

Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) knowingly exposed Los Angeles firefighters to cancer-causing chemicals while they were assisting Porter Ranch residents following the October 2015 Aliso Canyon gas leak, according to a 56-page complaint filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The lawsuit, filed by more than two dozen Los Angeles firefighters, alleges that the Aliso Canyon gas leak – the largest methane leak in U.S. history – released toxic amounts of carcinogens like benzene and formaldehyde into a neighboring community. Residents in the area became sick and many opted to evacuate. Firefighters who responded to the scene say they suffered ... Read More

California’s lack of a lead-poisoning benchmark for workers and the reluctance of state agencies to adopt tougher rules governing lead exposure in the workplace have become a serious occupational hazard, the Los Angeles Times reports. Unlike the majority of other states, California hasn’t adopted the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) standard for lead, which sets a “red line” of 25 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. Under the standard, any reading above that level automatically triggers an OSHA inspection of the workplace. California, however, lacks a lead-poisoning benchmark that would prompt an inspection by the California Division ... Read More