European papers are reporting that Cadbury Schweppes has been ordered to pay over $2 million in fines for allegations that some of its chocolate had been contaminated with salmonella bacteria. The company, who pled guilty to charges that it violated food and hygiene regulations at an earlier hearing, was fined for selling an unsafe product [...]

Chief executives of 153 corporations from all over the globe pledged their commitment to actively combat climate change and called on governments to do the same in a statement issued at the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit this past week. The statement, “Caring for Climate: The Business Leadership Platform,” was signed by executives that committed [...]

McDonald’s, in one of its latest announcements centering around more eco-friendly practices, announced last week that it will start converting its cooking oil into biodiesel. The intention is to run all of its 155 UK delivery trucks on biodiesel made entirely from cooking oil collected from its restaurants by the end of this year. The [...]

According to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and subsequent media reports, New York-based Overseas Shipholding Group Inc. has agreed to pay $37 million and plead guilty to systematically dumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of sludge and waste oil into the ocean from 2001 to 2006. The company also admitted that it deliberately falsified the [...]

Quiz: How many liters of water does it take to produce a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola? Answer: 5.08 In response to criticism that the company contributes to water shortages in the emerging markets in which is operates, Coca-Cola announced a set of water-recycling and environmental initiatives with the goal of becoming “water neutral”. According to [...]

Coca-Cola has brought a lawsuit against it to a halt by agreeing to reformulate two of its popular soft drinks in the U.S. to ensure that they will no longer contain the cancer-causing chemical, benzene. Despite denying the allegation, the company said that it changed the Vault Zero and Fanta Pineapple drinks to minimize the [...]

British Airways (BA) has admitted that it has broken the law and knows that its going to be fined for illegal price-fixing. The company is now just trying to guess how much. The carrier said its £350m provision was the “best estimate” of the amounts that could be required to settle all known claims, including [...]

In April, an Indonesian court cleared the Newmont’s Indonesian subsidiary, PT Newmont Minahasa Raya, and its president Richard Ness of charges related to dumping toxic waste into a local ocean bay. Now the president of that unit is filing a lawsuit against the New York Times and a reporter over the environmental accusations made in [...]

Marks & Spencer has made quite a splash in announcing a detailed plan to do business “more ethically”. M & S’s announcement was met with a flurry of press, including a thorough piece from the BBC. At the core is a 100-point five-year plan to re-engineer itself to become a carbon neutral, zero-waste-to-landfill, ethical-trading, sustainable-sourcing, [...]

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. announced a purchase of solar power from three solar power providers, BP Solar, SunEdison, and PowerLight, a subsidiary of SunPower Corporation, for 22 combined Wal-Mart stores. The total solar power production from the stores is estimated at 20 million kWh (kilowatt-hours) per year, possibly becoming one of the world’s top-10 solar power [...]

In the “should have seen that coming category” of news, Burger King grabbed the mantle of ethical leadership in the fast-food industry and ran off with it. The company announced a series of food supply chain initiatives that could appeal to its customers, including: – increasing purchasing of eggs produced by free range chickens, with [...]

The Supreme Court recently handed down a decision that went against the Bush administration’s recommendation, and had whistle-blower advocates up in arms. The Supreme Court ended an 18-year legal battle by ruling that James Stone, an 83-year-old retired engineer and one-time Rockwell International employee, may not collect any money for his part in uncovering fraud [...]

Regional air-quality regulators have fined United Airlines nearly $400,000 for allegedly ignoring pollution requirements and failing to ensure properly functioning filtering equipment at its maintenance facility. According to the assistant counsel for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the $382,500 fine was meant to discourage “careless” behavior by United and other major companies. According [...]

At the end of the day, we at the Council represent both corporations and the societies/communities in which they operate. As part of this we can’t stand frivolous lawsuits against companies, and we do believe that corporations should aggressively enforce their own legal rights. However, at what point does “aggressively enforce” possibly go too far? [...]

This ‘call to government for legislation’, allegedly with the support of $4 trillion of investment money, is the latest drumbeat for carbon emissions reduction laws and regulations. The group, organized by Ceres and the Investor Network on Climate Risk, issued a Climate Call to Action at a press conference today in Washington DC. The 65 [...]

A jury awarded $4.2 million to a woman shot during a 2001 carjacking in the Riverdale, GA Wal-Mart parking lot. The victim, Katoria Lee, stopped by the Wal-Mart after work in 2001 to pick up party supplies. Her 9-year-old son was asleep inside her Ford Explorer, which she parked under a light pole close to [...]

Candy manufacturer Cambridge Brands Inc. has agreed to pay a $118,000 fine to the EPA for violations of the federal Clean Air Act. The company was charged by the EPA with failing to repair leaks in industrial refrigerators that allowed the release of more than 200 pounds of refrigerant into the atmosphere. Certain types of [...]

A jury ordered Harris Ranch Beef Co. and FedEx Ground Package System Inc. to pay $3.7 million for the injuries suffered by a Santa Rosa family during a car crash. The collision occurred after the Harris Ranch tractor-trailer rear-ended the FedEx Ground delivery van, which crossed the double yellow line and hit the car. In [...]

Occidental agreed to pay the state a $12 million settlement for the damage to Lake Ontario and fisheries caused by its Niagara Falls manufacturing plant. The settlement by Occidental to reverse lake damage is believed to represent one of the largest natural resource damage claims ever paid for damage to fisheries. When Occidental purchased the [...]

Aerojet-General Corp. has agreed to pay a $25 million settlement after a jury found the defense contractor responsible for the deaths of three former Rancho Cordova residents and the illnesses of four others who drank tap water contaminated with rocket fuel. Aerojet officials, faced with possible punitive damages, agreed to settle the case for an [...]

The family of an Algonquin man who was killed in a construction accident at Aurora Municipal Airport in 2002 has settled a lawsuit for $6.15 million. Daniel Hupe suffered massive chest injuries when the driver of a cement truck crushed Hupe under the front tire. The family sued Meyer Material Inc., the owner of the [...]

Kevin and Alecia Puckrein were killed when a tractor-trailer loaded with 79,000 pounds of recycled glass went through a red light. The uninsured, unregistered truck was owned by ATI Transport, which was a subcontractor of the primary contractor, World Carting, which was hauling the glass for Browning-Ferris Industries (BFI) of New York. ATI’s owner, John [...]

Three machinists suffering a potentially killer disease caused by asbestos exposure have won $16.4 million in a lawsuit against the Long Island Rail Road for flagrant worker-safety violations. The former workers charged that the LIRR exposed them to dangerous substances in hellish conditions without any warning or protection. The men said they had breathed air [...]

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration compared violations at the plant with those at BP’s Texas City, Tex., refinery, where 15 workers died and more than 170 were injured in a major explosion last year. OSHA cited BP for violations that included housing people in vulnerable buildings, failure to correct problems with gas monitors and [...]

A jury awarded $20 million today to the estate of a man who died at a Beverly Health and Rehabilitation of Frankfort nursing home after nurses allegedly failed to promptly respond to his cries for help. The suit also alleged that the home was understaffed because of companywide cost-cutting. In recent years, Beverly has been [...]