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Tag: settlement
GM Settles With 19 Families In Ignition Deaths Case, More Expected

GM Settles With 19 Families In Ignition Deaths Case, More Expected

By Nathan Bomey, Detroit Free Press

DETROIT — The number of deaths from accidents caused by General Motors’ defective ignition switch is at least 19, the chief of GM’s victim settlement fund has determined.

Ken Feinberg has awarded settlements to 19 families whose loved ones were killed because of GM’s ignition-switch problem. That’s up from the 13 GM and federal safety regulators have identified — a figure that was expected to rise after more potential victims filed claims.

Families of people who died will get at least $1 million.

Feinberg, who began accepting applications Aug. 1, will take requests through Dec. 31. As of Friday, 125 people had filed applications seeking compensation for fatal accidents allegedly caused by the defective ignition switches. Feinberg said those applications were either still under review or had insufficient documentation.

GM had acknowledged 13 deaths connected to the defect, which can cause ignition switches to turn off when jostled, cutting off power to engines, air bags, and other features.

The faulty switches were installed in Chevrolet Cobalts, Saturn Ions, Pontiac G5s, Chevrolet HHRs, Pontiac Solstices, and Saturn Skys, mostly from the 2003-07 model years. GM has recalled up to 2.6 million of those models.

Feinberg also said he received 58 applications for compensation tied to accidents that resulted in debilitating injuries and 262 applications in cases the involved less serious injuries. He said that so far he had certified four serious-injury accidents and eight less-serious injuries for compensation.

GM’s decision not to recall the cars until early this year — despite evidence that some employees knew of the problem more than a decade earlier — triggered numerous lawsuits and investigations, including a criminal probe by the U.S. Justice Department.

The compensation fund is unlimited, but GM has estimated that it will cost between $400 million and $600 million to settle all eligible claims. That doesn’t include jury awards to victims who choose to sue GM instead of accepting settlements. It doesn’t include any potential government fines.

Feinberg has spelled out criteria for eligibility at GMIgnitionCompensation.com. If he determines the defect was the “substantial cause” of the accident, he will use actuarial tables and average medical cost data to calculate the size of a payout.

AFP Photo/Bill Pugliano

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Halliburton Pays $1.1 Bn For Gulf Of Mexico BP Spill

Halliburton Pays $1.1 Bn For Gulf Of Mexico BP Spill

New York (AFP) — Oil services company Halliburton said Tuesday it would pay a $1.1 billion settlement over its role in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil rig blowout that led to the United States’ most disastrous oil spill.

Halliburton said the money would be paid to the Gulf fishing industry and other victims of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, including some claims made in suits against oil giant BP.

Under contract with BP, Halliburton constructed the cement casing of the offshore deepwater Macondo well that blew out on April 20, 2010, killing 11 people.

The blast sank the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and sent millions of barrels of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico over 78 days, soaking shores in several states, killing wildlife, and shutting down the fishing industry on much of the U.S. gulf coast.

In 2013 Halliburton was fined for destroying evidence relating to the accident.

BP has been fined tens of billions of dollars for the oil spill, and Halliburton said some of the fine announced Tuesday was its share of the nearly $8 billion April 2012 settlement BP made with class-action plaintiffs.

Another portion was punitive damages against Halliburton, mainly from the gulf coast fishing industry.

Halliburton, based in Dubai and Houston, said it has already set aside $1.3 billion to cover potential damages in the case.

AFP Photo

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U.S. Judge Okays $1.8 Billion SAC Insider-Trading Settlement

U.S. Judge Okays $1.8 Billion SAC Insider-Trading Settlement

New York (AFP) – A federal judge Thursday approved an agreement between U.S. criminal prosecutors and SAC Capital to settle charges of insider trading in exchange for $1.8 billion in penalties.

Under the settlement, SAC pleaded guilty to criminal charges of insider trading and agreed to cease operations as an investment advisor. U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain approved the settlement at a hearing Thursday morning.

“Today marks the day of reckoning for a fund that was riddled with criminal conduct,” said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in a statement. “SAC fostered pervasive insider trading and failed, as a company, to question or prevent it.”

“Today’s sentence affirms that when institutions flout the law in such a colossal way, they will pay a heavy price.”

Approval of the agreement closes a chapter in the government’s years-long quest to crack down on SAC, once one of the biggest hedge funds on Wall Street, but a firm that Bharara called a “magnet for cheaters.”

The firm’s founder Stephen A. Cohen has renamed the company Point72 Asset Management. It will be run as a so-called “family office” to oversee Cohen’s personal fortune, estimated at $9 to $10 billion.

Government prosecutors alleged an “institutional” culture of corruption at SAC that encouraged insider trading. Prosecutors won convictions of eight former SAC employees, six of whom entered guilty pleas and two of whom were found guilty by juries in high-profile New York trials.

However, the government, despite years of investigation, has not criminally charged Cohen. Cohen faces a separate civil case with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which has alleged he failed to adequately manage employees.

The SEC has said possible penalties include a financial fine and a bar from future securities trading.

Bharara called the settlement “an appropriate punishment for the criminal conduct at SAC Capital,” according to an April 3 court filing.

The deal “provides a strong message of deterrence to other institutions which may be engaging in illegal insider trading or failing to institute procedures designed to identify and prevent insider trading by its employees,” Bharara said in the filing.

AFP Photo/Stan Honda

Company Agrees To Record Environmental Settlement

Company Agrees To Record Environmental Settlement

By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times

The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday announced that Anadarko Petroleum Corp. had agreed to pay $5.15 billion to clean up hazardous substances dumped nationwide — including radioactive uranium waste across the Navajo Nation — in the largest settlement ever for environmental contamination.

The operations of Kerr-McGee Corp. — which was acquired by Anadarko in 2006 — also left behind radioactive thorium in Chicago and West Chicago, Ill.; creosote waste in the Northeast, the Midwest and the South; and perchlorate waste in Nevada, according to U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

“Kerr-McGee’s businesses all over this country left significant, lasting environmental damage in their wake,” Cole said. “It tried to shed its responsibility for this environmental damage and stick the United States taxpayers with the huge cleanup bill.”

Last year, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Allan L. Gropper found that before the acquisition, Kerr-McGee had fraudulently conveyed its liability for cleanup at contaminated sites to Tronox Inc., a spinoff entity, while retaining its valuable oil and gas exploration assets.

As a result, Tronox was declared insolvent in 2009 and left unable to address environmental liabilities.

Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, described Kerr-McGee’s efforts to “keep its rewards and shed its responsibilities” as a “corporate shell game.”

In a statement, Anadarko Chief Executive Al Walker said the settlement “eliminates the uncertainty this dispute has created, and the proceeds will fund the remediation and cleanup of the legacy environmental liabilities and tort claims.”

Justice Department officials said $1.1 billion of the total would go to a trust charged with cleaning up two dozen sites, including the Kerr-McGee Superfund site in Columbus, Miss.

Another $1.1 billion will be paid to a trust responsible for cleaning up a former chemical manufacturing site that polluted Nevada’s Lake Mead with rocket fuel. Lake Mead feeds into the Colorado River, a major source of drinking water in the Southwest.

About $985 million will go toward the cleanup of roughly 50 abandoned uranium mines in and around the Navajo Nation.

In addition, the Navajo Nation will receive more than $43 million to address radioactive waste left at a former uranium mill in Shiprock, N.M.

About $224 million will cover thorium contamination at the Welsbach Superfund site in Gloucester, N.J., and about $217 million will go to the federal Superfund in repayment of costs previously incurred by the Environmental Protection Agency’s cleanup of the Federal Creosote Superfund site in Manville, N.J.

After a public comment period, the agreement announced Thursday must be approved by Gropper and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, hailed the settlement as a “huge win for public health and the environment.”

Karen Bleier via AFP