California
Oil company must pay $65 million over oil spills
SANTA MARIA, Calif. (AP) — A defunct company that spilled more than a million gallons of crude oil and wastewater in California must pay more than $65 million in penalties and cleanup costs, federal prosecutors announced Monday.
A federal court entered a final judgment last week against HVI Cat Canyon Inc., formerly known as Greka Oil & Gas Inc., a U.S. Department of Justice statement said.
The federal government and the state of California had sued the company, alleging that it was negligent and responsible for repeated crude oil spills into U.S. and state waterways along the central coast from ruptured storage tanks, corroded pipelines and overflowing injection ponds.
The judgment finalizes a Feb. 25 ruling by a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The judge found the company liable for 12 spills into federal waterways from 2005 through 2010 that dumped 26,584 barrels (about 1.1 million gallons) (4.2 million liters) of crude oil and wastewater.
“The spills evinced a pattern of reckless disregard for good oilfield industry practices, and a series of negligent acts or omissions by HVI concerning oil spill prevention, and pipeline and facility inspection and maintenance,” the judge wrote.
The firm also committed 60 violations of federal regulations at 11 facilities amounting to nearly 87,000 days of violation, the ruling held.
HVI Cat Canyon was held liable to the United States for $57.5 million in civil penalties and cleanup costs, along with $7.7 million to California in penalties in addition to nearly $200,000 for damage to natural resources and for cleanup costs.
The Santa Maria-based company, which owned and operated facilities in Santa Barbara County, filed for bankruptcy in 2019 and a spokesperson couldn’t immediately be found.
A message left for an attorney who at one point represented the firm wasn’t immediately returned.
However, when the lawsuit was filed in 2011, then-company president Andrew deVegvar told the Los Angeles Times that most of the spills were minor and none caused harm to the environment. He also said the company fully complied with federal regulations.
Arkansas
Tyson workers sue over lack of COVID protections
Thirty-four Tyson Foods employees, former employees and family members filed a lawsuit against the company Monday, saying it failed to take appropriate precautions at its meat-packing plants during the early days of the COVID pandemic.
In the lawsuit, filed in Pulaski County Circuit Court in Tyson’s home state of Arkansas, the plaintiffs said Tyson’s negligence and disregard for its workers led to emotional distress, illness and death. Several of the plaintiffs are the spouses or children of Tyson workers who died after contracting COVID.
A message seeking comment was left for Springdale, Arkansas-based Tyson.
Meat-packing facilities were early epicenters of the COVID epidemic in the U.S., with employees working closely together on the production line. At least 59,000 meat-packing workers contracted COVID-19 and 269 workers died in 2020, according to a U.S. House report issued in 2021.
The lawsuit claims Tyson knew about COVID as early as January 2020, when the virus was spreading through its facilities in China. On March 13 of that year, the lawsuit said, Tyson suspended all business travel and mandated that all non-critical employees at its corporate office work remotely.
But at the five Arkansas plants where the plaintiffs or their family members worked, Tyson didn’t provide masks or allow work modifications to allow for social distancing until late April 2020, the lawsuit said. The company also didn’t perform contact tracing or quarantine infected workers, the lawsuit said.
The plaintiffs are seeking monetary damages.
The lawsuit isn’t the first to target Tyson over its COVID protocols.
In late February, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition by Tyson to move a case in Iowa to federal court. Tyson argued that federal officials wanted it to keep the company’s plants running, citing an executive order signed by former President Donald Trump designating meat processing as essential infrastructure.
But a federal appeals court judge ruled last year that Tyson can’t claim it was operating under the direction of the federal government. The case filed by family members of Tyson employees who died of COVID __ has been sent back to Iowa state court.
Arizona
Ex-lawmaker sanctioned over ‘groundless’ election lawsuit
PHOENIX (AP) — A judge on Monday sanctioned former Arizona Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem over what the court called “groundless” claims about election fraud in the 2022 mid-tern election. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Iyer Julian also ordered the ex-Republican lawmaker and his campaign to pay the attorney fees of now Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and current Gov. Katie Hobbs in connection with last year’s dismissed election lawsuit. A judge dismissed Finchem’s suit in December and confirmed the election of Fontes. Julian said the court found Finchem’s allegations that Maricopa County didn’t hold a fair and secure election were “not brought in good faith.” The lawsuit also claimed that Hobbs as secretary of state abused her power by failing to have tabulation machines properly certified and threatened the boards of supervisors in Mohave and Cochise counties with criminal charges if they didn’t certify the election. It also said Hobbs should have recused herself from her position as secretary of state since she was running for governor at the time. The court ruling said none of Finchem’s allegations “even if true would have changed the vote count enough to overcome the 120,000 votes he needed to affect the result of this election.” It was the third time in the past year that sanctions were issued in lawsuits involving Finchem, who won the GOP primary last year but lost to his Democratic opponent in the general election.
Florida
Prosecutor calls XXXTentacion’s alleged killers ‘predators’
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida prosecutor told jurors during closing arguments Tuesday that three men on trial for the 2018 slaying of rapper XXXTentacion were “predators” who waited outside a motorcycle shop to rob and shoot the rising star, escaping with $50,000.
Prosecutor Pascale Achille played cellphone videos the defendants allegedly took hours after the killing that showed them smiling and dancing as they flashed handfuls of $100 bills. Michael Boatwright, Dedrick Williams and Trayvon Newsome are all charged with first-degree murder and face mandatory life sentences if convicted.
“This is who they are. This is their real character. Killers that within 24 hours after shooting the victim dead and stealing $50,000 from him, this is what they do,” Achille told the jury as she played the video. “Look at how happy they look. Look at how excited they look.”
She also played surveillance video from the motorcycle shop and from where two of them allegedly stashed an SUV that she says link the men to the killing.
Defense attorneys were to give their closing arguments Tuesday afternoon. The trial began a month ago.
XXXTentacion. whose real name was Jahseh Onfroy, had just left Riva Motorsports in suburban Fort Lauderdale on June 18, 2018, with a friend when his BMW was blocked by an SUV that swerved in front.
Surveillance video showed that two masked gunmen emerged and confronted the 20-year-old singer at the driver’s window, and one shot him repeatedly. They then grabbed a Louis Vuitton bag containing cash that XXXTentacion had just withdrawn from the bank, got back into the SUV and sped away. The friend was not harmed.
Boatwright, 28, is accused of being the shooter, while Newsome, 24, is accused of being the other gunman. Williams, 26, is accused of being the driver.
A fourth man who prosecutors say was in the SUV, 26-year-old Robert Allen, pleaded guilty last year to second-degree murder and testified against his former friends.
Prosecutors say the men set out that day to commit robberies and had gone to the motorcycle shop to buy Williams a mask. There they spotted the rapper and decided to make him their target. Allen and Williams went inside the motorcycle shop to confirm it was him. They then went back to the SUV they had rented and waited for XXXTentacion to emerge and ambushed him, according to prosecutors.
The rapper, who pronounced his name “Ex ex ex ten-ta-see-YAWN,” was a platinum-selling rising star who tackled issues including prejudice and depression in his songs. He also drew criticism over bad behavior and multiple arrests, including charges that he severely beat and abused his girlfriend.
Texas
Women sue over abortion ban, say it risked their lives
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Five women who said they were denied abortions even when pregnancy endangered their lives are suing Texas over its abortion ban, the latest legal fight against state restrictions since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.
The lawsuit filed Monday in state court said the Texas law, one of the strictest in the country, is creating confusion among doctors, who are turning away some pregnant women experiencing health complications because they fear repercussions.
Similar legal challenges to abortion restrictions have arisen in states across the country since the Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion. As clinics have shuttered in Republican-dominant states with strict abortion bans, some patients have had to cross state lines.
According to the Texas suit brought by the women and two doctors, one of the women was forced to wait until she was septic before being provided an abortion and four others were forced to travel out of state to receive medical care after their health was endangered by their pregnancies.
The group wants clarification of the law, which they say is written vaguely and has made medical professionals wary of facing liability if the state does not consider the situation a medical emergency.
In an email Tuesday, a spokesman for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he is “committed to doing everything in his power to protect mothers, families, and unborn children, and he will continue to defend and enforce the laws duly enacted by the Texas Legislature.”
Doctors in the state now face felony criminal charges if they perform an abortion in all but limited cases in which they life of the patient is in danger.
According to the lawsuit, one of the doctors, Damla Karsan, “has seen that physicians in Texas are even afraid to speak out publicly about this issue for fear of retaliation” and has witnessed how “widespread fear and confusion regarding the scope of Texas’s abortion bans has chilled the provision of necessary obstetric care, including abortion care.”
“As a direct result of Texas’s abortion bans, Texas is in the midst of a health care crisis,” the lawsuit said.
