In response to the CPSC warning, Infantino LLC, the company behind one of the most controversial baby slings, has announced a recall of over one million baby slings that have been sold throughout North America.

“It does not matter how old your baby is at this point with the Infantino sling,” CPSC’s Scott Wolfson told ABC News. “Do not use it. This sling places the baby in a very deep part of the product. What is so dangerous is when the fabric covers nose and mouth or when baby is turned into the body of the mother and the airway is restricted.”

At least 13 babies have died while resting in the sling, including three this year, according to news reports. According to the CPSC, a child can suffocate when a sling’s cloth is covering its nose and mouth. Because of babies’ weak neck muscles, they are not always able to turn their head free.

In a statement, Infantino said, “We appreciate the actions by the CPSC today, and are committed to working with them as well as parents and caregivers to address concerns they may have with baby slings.”

Beginning April 6th, employers must take reasonable steps to curb harassment if they are aware that at least two incidents had already occurred. As Stuart Chamberlain, an employment law expert, told the Guardian, “Shops or bars may be able to put up notices explaining that staff harassment is not tolerated. However, professional services companies who encourage staff to socialize with clients may find it difficult to convey that message.”

The article describes a related study:

A Canadian study of retail workers 10 years ago found that a majority had been sexually harassed by customers in their job but were reluctant to confront them or complain because the work environment emphasized customer satisfaction. They were likely instead to avoid male customers and be less friendly, which could affect their job performance.

The law came about after a ruling that the British government wasn’t doing enough to protect workers from “any unwanted conduct related to their sex which violates their dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.”

Polyvinyl Chloride is an extremely profitable substance for the chemical industry. Although there are fears that PVC releases toxins like mercury and dioxins – far traveling chemicals that can lead to immune system disorders or cancer – PVC is still commonly used by the construction industry because of its low cost and high durability.

Several companies have already eliminated PVC from their products, or are in the process of phasing it out. Microsoft addressed the problem a couple years ago and Wal-Mart has recently eliminated PVC from its in house brand products as well.

In the late 90′s, a former employee blew the whistle on the company and cited “dangerously high levels of estrogen” in the Ortho Evra patch. Later, in 2005, the FDA announced that the patch exposed women to about 60 percent higher levels of estrogen than the average daily oral contraception pill. High levels of estrogen can result in strokes, blood clots and heart attacks – which, as a matter of fact, are the very reasons that 2,400 other women have sued J&J. Most complained of blood clots in the legs and lungs, according to one Bloomberg report.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, the Associated Press obtained information from the FDA revealing that women on the Ortho Evra patch are three times as likely to experience a blood clot or die compared to those using oral contraceptives. Although not admitting guilt, J&J has required signed confidentiality agreements from each of the plaintiffs in the settlements.

U.S. District Judge Terence Kern determined that the law contradicts federal workplace safety requirements established in the 1970 Occupational Health and Safety Act.

The suit was initially filed by Whirlpool Co in 2004. Later Williams Co. and ConocoPhillips joined the suit, however both Whirlpool and Williams eventually dropped out, leaving ConocoPhillips as the sole plaintiff.

Soon after the suit was filed, the National Rifle Association (NRA) spearheaded a protest against Conoco Phillips by urging members to boycott Conoco gas stations. Conoco Phillips responded by reminding the NRA that retail gas stations that sell Conoco gasoline are not owned by the company, and therefore the boycott is affecting innocent businesses.

Similar gun laws have passed in Alaska, Kansas, Kentucky and Minnesota. All were created after eight Oklahoma employees were fired by Weyerhauser Corp. in 2002 after leaving guns in their cars parked in company parking lots. Although an appeal is likely, similar suits are expected to be filed in those states following Kern’s decision.

The recall, one of the largest beef recalls in U.S. history, was initiated because the meat was potentially contaminated with E. coli. It was the first recall for the company, founded 67 years ago.

Although only 87 employees officially worked for Topps, it was considered one of the largest suppliers of frozen hamburger patties in the country. Ten of the employees will stay on to assist the USDA in its investigation, the company said.

Thirty people are believed to have become sick from eating Topps’ meat, although none have died.

Commentary: You can’t get a more blatant example of why quality controls are a necessity.

Topps Meat, Co. recalled the meat, which included ground beef and those packages that have either a “sell by” or “best if used by” date between September 25, 2007 and September 25, 2008 on the casing.

Additionally, all recalled products will have a USDA establishment number of EST 9748, according to a press release issued by the company. The number can be found on the back panel of the package and/or in the USDA legend.

This marks the ninth E. coli related outbreak in the United States since 1990.

Commentary: Topps Meat made sure to note in their press releases that the recall was voluntary. All in all the company has done a good job of handling the issue by taking such steps as posting information about E. coli on their website and listing the UPC codes of at-risk products.

Of the fine imposed, $8 million will go to pay a criminal fine, $2 million to a state fund that deals with hazardous materials and $2 million dollars to Henry’s children.

Read the story in Yahoo News.

Judge Sue Pullen said the company had “insufficient” safety conditions in place and lacked adequate training for its employees. The court took into account the company’s guilty plea as well as its cooperation with the investigation, Pullen said.

Read the story as presented The Daily Telegraph.

The study began in 2004 by the University of Southampton and tested the effect of specific additives on children aged 3-4 and 8-9 years old. One of the additives brought into question is known as sodium benzoate which is found in “soft drinks, jams and salad dressings.”

Check out Financial Times for the full article.

When first implemented in 2005, the law was unclear on whether web-based training seminars were permitted. The new law permits online training so long as the coursework is created by “experts” – which, in this case, includes attorneys with two or more years experience with California or federal anti bias laws, HR professionals, and professors.

Newly hired supervisors must receive their training within six months of entering their post.

Read more about the development here.

Commentary: An important update for all California employers. The use of web-based training will greatly increase the efficiency of the legislation and the accessibility of the training, sparing supervisors from giving up their time to travel to and from training centers.

After officers arrived at the crossing, Sims fled into the woods, leaving behind his luggage and medication. Records show that Sims’ phone was last used in Litchfield Park, Arizona, which is 180 miles from Williams.

Commentary: Diabetes is on the rise in the U.S. and we suspect that incidents like these (mistaking diabetic shock, when blood sugar goes too low and causes slurring and potentially death, as drunkeness) will only be on the increase. A similar event happened back in April when police in Redwood City, California arrested Mr. Universe for assault when mistaking his diabetic shock as unruly, drug-induced behavior. The charges were later dropped.

Fortunately for Amtrak, Mr. Sims was later found alive. We would expect a lawsuit all the same. It’s unfortunate that these misdiagnoses by untrained personnel could ultimately result in the death of a diabetic. The liability cost to the municipality or corporation involved would undoubtedly be enormous.

A team of Australian scientists from the Queensland University of Technology found that almost a third of all business laser printer models emit dangerous levels of toner particles into the ambient office air. In an open office environment, this resulted in a 5x increase in particulates in the air during office hours.

Read more about it over the BBC.

Commentary: We wonder if any lawyers are ‘starting their engines’ over this one.

The worldwide recall affects 967,000 Nickelodeon and Sesame Street toys, including such popular items the Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego characters.

In an interview with the Associated Press on Wednesday, David Allmark, general manager of Fisher-Price, said the problem was detected by an internal investigation and self-reported to the consumer product safety commission (CPSC).

Under current U.S. regulations, children’s products found to have more than .06 percent lead accessible to users are subject to a recall.

Commentary: Understandably, Fisher-Price spun the positives hard to this: an internal probe discovered the contamination and they were able to ‘quarantine’ two-thirds of the toys before they reached store shelves, and that the company would use the recall as an opportunity to put even better monitoring systems in place.

Police confirmed the deaths which were caused when at least twenty billboards collapsed as heavy winds pounded different parts of the city…

Another massive-size billboard on Korangi Road fell on a rickshaw, injuring three persons. Eyewitnesses said that the billboard didn’t fall down right under its location but due to the high pressure of wind, it fell about 30 ft far away from where it was actually fixed…

The City District Government Karachi (CDGK) had banned oversized billboards for a year but allowed them following intense pressure from advertisers…

At the same time, citizens have expressed extreme annoyance with the city’s statement that has asked the citizens to stay in their homes. “I am sure no where in the world citizens have had experienced what we did today,” said one, adding that the citizens of this mega city feel threatened from the ‘mega’ hoardings that have covered the whole city like monsters who can kill anyone, anywhere, and anytime.

Commentary: Now that’s reporting (cover the whole city like monsters who can kill anyone, anywhere and anytime)! Hey Hollywood… see anything interesting here as a movie plot?

Sometimes we are just plain happy for simple things… like not living in Kararchi. Life is complex enough without having to worry about attacking billboards. On a serious note, the pressure from advertisers is real as the Pakistani economy has been on fire over the past few years (growing at nearly 10% annually) – in part due to the ‘global war on terror.’

According to the International Herald Tribune (read an interesting background piece about this story here), Mr. Zheng had talked tough during his tenure…

“The crimes of making and selling fake drugs haven’t been uprooted,” he said in a speech in 2001. “And criminals and corrupt officials in the system should be severely punished according to the law.”

But in reality, according to a confession he wrote while in prison this March, through a series of dealings he was actively soliciting bribes. Under one arrangement, he set up his wife and son into a consulting business that firms would have to contract with in order to gain government approvals.

Going forward, to try and cut down on fraud the Chinese government has announced that it will begin carrying out surprise inspections on the more than 4,700 drug manufacturers in China, as well as increasingly rotate officials in key posts to prevent them from becoming too close to companies.

Commentary: Well, there are plenty of executives here in the U.S. who are thanking their lucky stars that updated Federal Sentencing Guidelines don’t include ‘execution’ for fraud, graft and general incompetence.

The “victim”, Victoria McArthur of Romero, Mich., says that Starbursts should come with a warning label and that she does not want to see someone else suffer like her.

“I don’t want to see anybody else have to go through what I have gone through from eating a piece of candy that was supposed to be soft chew” she said.

Commentary: Dear Ms. McArthur: Some other warnings for you… Jolly Ranchers are hard; there are no men inside of a package of Three Musketeers; and despite their lack of obvious warning labels, knives are indeed sharp.

Perhaps the most widely-known incident is the lawsuit filed two weeks ago by the Connecticut Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, alleging that Best Buy was deceiving customers. According to the suit, Best Buy maintained discrepancies between promotions found on the Best Buy Internet website and “deals” found at in-store kiosks. Blumenthal described instances when employees of the country’s largest consumer electronics retailer charged higher prices for items by using its look-alike internal website.

In a comment to the Associated Press, Blumenthal stated, “Best Buy gave consumers the worst deal – a bait-and-switch-plus scheme luring consumers into stores with promised online discounts, only to charge higher in-store prices.”

Another headache for Best Buy was the April arrest of one of its “Geek Squad” employees for allegedly trying to tape a customer as she showered while the employee was in her home setting up equipment. The family, of course, filed a lawsuit, on the premise that they had relied on the company to screen and train agents before sending them into people’s homes – as their Geek Squad brochure promises to provide “agents you can trust.”

To top things off, one of the attorneys for Best Buy, Timothy Block, admitted last week to committing one of the ultimate sins in the legal profession: falsifying e-mails and a memo before turning them over to plaintiffs in a nationwide class-action lawsuit. This stems from a 2003 lawsuit against Best Buy and MSN which accused the companies of signing up at least 100,000 customers for trial subscriptions to Microsoft Corporation’s MSN Internet service from 1999 to 2003, in many cases without the customer’s knowledge

King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North Jr. has previously scolded Best Buy for not being forthcoming with documents related to the case. This new revelation will make it hard for Best Buy to dismiss the case, and in all likelihood will tack on tens of millions of dollars in damages to any judgment.

Commentary: We are surprised at these series of events surrounding Best Buy. Our analysis of Best Buy’s operations has historically suggested a relatively strong commitment to compliant and ethical business practices. Are these isolated problems, or symptoms of a larger, systemic cultural and business issue? Time will tell. Our advice would be to try and get these cases settled as soon as possible rather than letting them drag on through the courts and continue to damage the company’s reputation.

As 29-year-old Christopher Woods told the New York Post…

“It gave me a lot of energy — too much energy,” Woods said of the protein drink. “It was unbearable and embarrassing.”

“It was awful. It was painful. I would always wear jeans but it was hard to go out, so I had to buy some sweatpants,” he added.

Mr. Woods had to undergo a pair of medical procedures to ease the pressure, and he is suing now claiming partially impotence and emotional distress.

Commentary: We are no marketing pros here – nor conspiracy theorists. However, could this suit actually help boost sales of this nutritional drink? Or could Novartis have a secret investment in a sweatpants company? Hmmmmm… so many investigative angles to pursue here.

Last week the Yukon Workers’ Compensation, Health and Safety Board filed six charges of negligence under he territory’s Workers’ Compensation Act against Yellowknife-based Aurora Geosciences over an incident last April when an employee was attacked by a grizzly sow after coming within five metres of a bear den that contained two cubs.

The head of the local association of mines, John Witham, was outraged by the charges and was refreshing blunt in his response commentary…

“It’s easy to sit back in your big blue office and dictate that the bush will be a workplace, like a plastic office in Whitehorse,” Witham said. “It’s not a plastic office in Whitehorse. …The bush will always be the bush. And it doesn’t matter what kind of a bureaucrat you are, you cannot regulate the behaviour of wild animals in the bush in the Yukon.”

Commentary: This story reminds of an earlier case this year when California’s OSHA issued a highly critical report to San Diego’s SeaWorld over the fact that working with KILLER WHALES was potentially dangerous and that was “only a matter of time before a trainer was killed by one of the park’s killer whales.” O RLY? At least someone ultimately talked some sense into Cal OSHA as they later largely reversed their report and apologized when people pointed out that (1) the park has handled millions of interactions over the past 40 years with the killer whales without a single fatality; and (2) OSHA doesn’t know a sprocket about whales. To quote from their February 27th release… “Cal/OSHA acknowledges that many of the statements made in the [original report] require expertise in animal behavior, which Cal/OSHA does not have. Also, some of the expressions of opinion and other statements contained in the report stray from describing the evidence and are clearly inappropriate…In issuing the [original report] Cal/OSHA violated its own policies and procedures. This error is being addressed and Cal/OSHA regrets the difficulties it may have caused Sea World, its staff, and its patrons. “

Realogy is the real estate brokerage spin-off from Cendant, and includes the brokerages Coldwell Banker and Century 21. It is currently in the process of being bought out by the LBO firm, Apollo.

Mr. Cardwell, along with several other executives (and the company/Cendant itself) are being sued by the former General Counsel of Cendant’s Coldwell Banker Real Estate division, Lisa Biase, over alleged sexual discrimination. According to Biase, she was marginalized by other executives after complaining several times about sexual harassment in the office. Furthermore, she was terminated just days before the Realogy spin-off, which cost her millions of dollars in forgone compensation.

According to the NY Post…

The former chief ethics officer at real estate brokerage giant Realogy Corp. allegedly consumed more wine than he acknowledged under oath in a deposition for a $40 million sex discrimination suit, according to a letter to the company’s outside counsel obtained by The Post.

On the evening of March 14, a private detective claims he followed Pat Cardwell, who’s also the company’s general counsel, as he drove 89 miles through several New Jersey towns in his Mercedes SUV while drinking bottles of white wine he had purchased at a Super Saver liquor store in Cedar Knolls.

The next day, at a deposition in the discrimination case brought by former Realogy executive Lisa Biase against Realogy’s former parent Cendant Corp., Cardwell stated under oath that he only had one glass of wine at home the previous night, according to the letter.

In a sworn deposition, the investigator, who was hired by Biase as part of her case, claims he observed and videotaped Cardwell making similar drinking trips around New Jersey over the past year.

On March 19, two days after the letter was sent to Realogy’s attorney in the case, Cardwell left the company, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Commentary: When Chief Ethics Officer/General Counsel lies under oath = board must fire. Ms. Biase’s attorneys’ “matlock moment” certainly was…

There is plenty of weird stuff in this case. Driving around all alone from town to town in New Jersey, drinking bottles of wine? Who recommended that brilliant plan? Even creepier is to think that a detective was following along to videotape. What was the detective hoping to capture? Live harassment?

In her complaint, Lacey Hindman says that David Prange picked her up and threw her during a jitterbug… saying that Prange grabbed her arms without any warning and tossed her in the air.

Commentary: Based upon past IP infringement cases that we have tracked in China, Nokia has a tough road ahead on this one. Even if they win, the most they can hope for is to get the copying company to cease production of similar handsets, as Chinese courts award ludicrously small damages, if any. All the same, it’s important for Western companies to file these cases in hopes of setting precedent and reform over time.

Commentary: Even the broadest “we are not negligent for negligence” clause is not necessarily going to hold up in court when you are indeed negligent.