Dr Shezad Malik Law Firm has offices based in Fort Worth and Dallas and represents people who have suffered catastrophic and serious personal injuries including wrongful death, caused by the negligence or recklessness of others. We specialize in Personal Injury trial litigation and focus our energy and efforts on those we represent.
Sugar Land-based Imperial Sugar has reached a settlement with federal regulators seeking to fine the company for safety violations after a 2008 explosion at its Georgia refinery killed 14 workers near Savannah, GA.
The Feb. 7, 2008, explosion killed 14 workers and injured 36. Investigators determined that dangerous levels of sugar dust accumulated inside the plant and ignited like gunpowder. RUSS BYNUM , AP, Houston Chronicle 07/07/2010
Read Article: Houston Chronicle
TXI will permanently shut down its four oldest, highest-polluting cement kilns in Midlothian and will stop burning hazardous waste as fuel, the company said Tuesday.
The Dallas-based company’s announcement ends an environmental battle that has raged in North Texas for decades.
Midlothian became a center for the cement industry because of extensive limestone deposits. Yet it also became the site of one of the country’s biggest environmental fights.
Federal law allows some cement kilns to burn hazardous waste as fuel to create the high heat required to make cement. TXI is the only company that has burned hazardous waste in Midlothian in recent years.
Environmentalists across the country and in North Texas said burning massive volumes of chemical waste needlessly endangered the public.
The 2005 BP plant disaster in Texas City has taken on new relevance, because the investigations that were done in its aftermath reveal so much about the company that is responsible for what’s happening now in the Gulf. Government probes, court filings and BP’s own confidential investigations paint a picture of a company that ignored repeated warnings about the plant’s deteriorating condition and instead remained focused on minimizing costs and maximizing profits.
According to a safety audit BP conducted just before the 2005 blast, many of the plant’s more than 2,000 employees arrived at work each day with an “exceptional degree of fear of catastrophic incidents.” What BP has — or hasn’t done — to improve conditions at the Texas City plant since the explosion is also laid out in the documents. Ryan Knutson, ProPublica’s Lisa Schwartz, Nicholas Kusnetz and Sheelagh McNeill contributed to this report., ProPublica 07/06/2010
Read Article: ProPublica
Natural gas utilities might have to dig up neighborhoods across Texas to replace hundreds of thousands of steel service lines to prevent explosions.
The Texas Railroad Commissioner will propose that utilities replace the lines, which bring natural gas from pipelines under neighborhood streets to homes.
Texas has at least 525,000 steel lines, maybe a million. Regulators targeted the service lines after several deadly home explosions. The problem is that the old service lines are made of rigid steel, which can shift and corrode. ELIZABETH SOUDER , The Dallas Morning News 07/06/2010
Read Article: The Dallas Morning News
The New York Times (7/5) editorialized that the recent controversy over the diabetes drug Avandia — with “two major studies” saying it “raises the risk of cardiovascular ailments” and the third yet-to-be-published study that “seemed to exonerate” the drug — should probably lead patients to ask their doctors about alternatives.
The paper said that as expert advisers to the Food and Drug Administration work to deliver a more definitive judgment, it would throw its lot with the views of safety specialists, who focus solely on risks emerging after the drug is in use, rather than the opinions of those “who approved the drug as safe and effective in the first place.”
A man who accused a priest of sexually abusing him when he was 14 has settled his lawsuit with the Fort Worth Roman Catholic Diocese.
At the man’s request, terms of the settlement were confidential. The suit, filed last year in state district court, accused the Rev. Rudolf Rentería of abusing the boy in the rectory at St. Matthew Catholic Church in Arlington on Mother’s Day weekend 1981.
According to the suit, Rentería offered to let the boy spend the night at the rectory. There, Rentería fondled him and attempted anal intercourse, the suit says. An additional report of sexual misconduct dating to 1985 surfaced in 2000, according to the lawsuit, which accused the priest of having an “impulsive sexual attraction to boys.” DARREN BARBEE, Fort Worth Star-Telegram 07/02/2010
Read Article: Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Two Texas natural gas pipelines that exploded last month, killing three people, had not been properly marked, according to state records.
Incident reports filed with the commission by the pipeline operators and excavators involved in each event confirm that neither pipeline was properly marked before the digging.
State law requires that companies wanting to excavate call a national 811 number to state where they plan to dig and request information about pipelines and anything else underground that might be struck. AMAN BATHEJA, Fort Worth Star-Telegram 07/02/2010
Read Article: Fort Worth Star-Telegram
While most of the discussions about the environmental impact of natural gas drilling in the Barnett Shale have centered on air quality, questions are now being raised about its potential impact on water quality as well.
Drilling critics have expressed concern that a drilling process called hydraulic fracturing in which millions of gallons of water and sand laced with chemicals are pumped into the ground to free up natural gas — has the potential to contaminate groundwater supplies. ELIZABETH CAMPBELL and AMAN BATHEJA, Fort Worth Star-Telegram 07/02/2010
Read Article: Fort Worth Star-Telegram
The Los Angeles Times (7/1, Rick) reports that Avastin (bevacizumab) “can cause significant kidney damage in some patients,” according to a new study.
Researchers, “reporting in this month’s issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology…wrote that patients on Avastin were at increased risk of severe protein loss from the kidneys, which can lead to permanent damage.” Altogether, “patients on Avastin were at a fourfold risk for protein loss and kidney damage, depending on dosage and the type of cancer.”
Kidney problems are the second serious condition linked to the cancer drug. Last year it was found that some patients on Avastin were at elevated risk of intestinal perforations.
Utility provider PG&E has agreed to pay $5 million to the mother of a 20-year-old woman who was killed in a car accident involving one of the company drivers.
Mary Bernstein and a friend were killed in the wreck in 2006 when John Mayfield, a diabetic, blacked out a the wheel after forgetting to test his blood sugar. Under the terms of the agreement, PG&E agreed to record the resolution as a judgment, rather than a confidential settlement.
Mary’s mother Lisa has also said she will petition California legislators to pass regulations that require companies to more closely monitor their fleet drivers. Tracey Kaplan, San Jose Mercury News 07/06/2010
Read Article: San Jose Mercury News
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