Declarations
“Siskiyou County residents have endured wildfire emergencies over the past three years and protecting their insurance is essential to recovery.”
— California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara in mid-August ordered insurers to preserve residential insurance coverage for 8,500 affected homes following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s emergency declaration as wildfires in Siskiyou County threatened homeowners.
“Never in my life have I seen anything quite like this.”
— A captive insurance expert comments on alleged fraud schemes led by Ambassador Captive Solutions and its principals. Lawsuits by Lexington Insurance Co., State National Insurance and others allege that the principals forged insurance carriers’ signatures and created thousands of fake insurance policies for youth sports teams and others around the country, using offshore captive cells to provide reinsurance for the bogus policies.
“We were living in ashes. The kids were filthy constantly from that black ash. … We didn’t have any community left. All our friends had either moved to (nearby) Chico or … somewhere across the country. There was nothing left that we loved. There were no trees, no forest.”
— Ellie Holden describes the experiences she, her husband, James, and their family suffered after their house was reduced to ashes in the 2018 Paradise, California fire. Unable to find a home in the area for the family of seven, the Holdens looked farther afield for a place that, unlike California, did not seem under constant threat from wildfires, droughts and earthquakes. They found a new home in Vermont.
“As part of a worldwide portfolio assessment, we have made the commercial decision to transition to an all cornstarch-based baby powder portfolio.”
— Johnson & Johnson said it will stop selling talc-based baby powder globally in 2023, more than two years after it ended U.S. sales of a product that drew thousands of consumer safety lawsuits. It added that cornstarch-based baby powder is already sold in countries around the world. The company faces about 38,000 lawsuits from consumers and their survivors claiming its talc products caused cancer due to contamination with asbestos, a known carcinogen. J&J denies the allegations.
“Everyone deserves to feel safe at work and no one should be pushed out of her workplace by pervasive jokes about sexual violence.”
— Alexa Lang, a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) attorney, comments on allegations that SkyWest Airlines violated federal law by subjecting a female parts clerk to sexual harassment. In a lawsuit, EEOC alleges explicit sexual conversations and conduct were a daily feature of the work environment at the overwhelmingly male Parts and Maintenance Divisions of SkyWest’s Dallas operation. Multiple employees and at least one manager made crude sexual comments, including the suggestion that the female employee make money via prostitution, according to the EEOC.
“You blend the mixture to a consistency, a nice sort of chicken salad, is our joke, consistency.”
— Grassroots Development sustainability consultant Sydney Glup on a one-of-a-kind construction and research project in Fargo, North Dakota, that uses hemp material to build a house. The walls of the experiment house are built with a raw material called hurd, which is the inner woody core of the hemp plant, chipped into small pieces. Hemp is touted as a healthier alternative to insulation, reducing mold by creating walls that breathe, providing excellent insulating properties and serving as thermal mass, storing heat. The material is also flame resistant.