Defective Products

The final years of the U.S. housing boom and a disastrous series of Gulf Coast hurricanes created a golden opportunity for Chinese drywall manufacturers. With domestic suppliers unable to keep up with demand, imports of Chinese drywall to the U.S. jumped 17-fold in 2006 from the year before. That imported drywall is now at the center of complaints of foul odors seeping from walls.

CVS and Longs drugstore shoppers who find expired products lingering on California shelves will be able to claim a $2 coupon under a settlement announced Wednesday by the California attorney general's office. "CVS Pharmacy routinely sold expired baby formula, over-the-counter medication and dairy products long after the expiration date," Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said in a statement. The agreement also applies to Longs Drugs stores in California, which were bought by CVS Caremark Corp. in 2008.

Apple Inc., maker of the Macintosh computer and the iPhone, was sued over claims that display screens on the company's iMac desktop computer are defective and show unwanted vertical lines. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in San Jose, blames a faulty transistor or connection on the back of the screens. The suit, filed on behalf of consumer Aram Hovsepian, a Florida resident, seeks unspecified damages and class-action status. Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif.

Emily McCarthy thought the foul smell in her new Florida town house was coming from Samson, the family dog. McCarthy and her husband gave the English Springer bath after bath. But the stink wouldn't go away. And that wasn't all. Electrical outlets turned black. The air conditioner went on the blink. Then McCarthy, 33, started waking up with a bloody nose. It turns out the home was built with imported Chinese drywall.

In one of the nation's largest settlements in a whistle-blower case, Northrop Grumman Corp. has agreed to pay the federal government $325 million to resolve claims that TRW, which it acquired in 2002, provided defective parts for a spy satellite program in the 1990s.

The Air Force will probably order dozens of its F-15 fighter jets permanently grounded because of crucial structural flaws, significantly reducing the number of planes available to protect the United States, officials said Tuesday. After one of the jets broke apart during a simulated dogfight in November, Air Force officials grounded the entire F-15 fleet, nearly 700 planes in all, fearing such a defect.

Sears Holdings Corp. will install safety brackets on its stoves in millions of households or offer gift cards in settling an Illinois class-action lawsuit over the appliances' supposed propensity to topple. Under an agreement signed off on last month by a Madison County judge, Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based Sears will offer to fix all brands of its free-standing or slide-in kitchen ranges in as many as 3.9 million homes by bolting them to a wall or floor.

Owners of about 4.6 million Ford vehicles were warned Thursday to bring their cars and trucks to dealerships immediately so that cruise control switch systems that might cause engine fires could be disconnected. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued the consumer advisory to owners of certain unrepaired Ford, Lincoln and Mercury sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks, vans and passenger cars who have not responded to past recalls. The recalls have affected Ford Motor Co.'

A government watchdog said Wednesday that federal officials approved a new type of small jet despite problems with the plane's design and production, overruling safety concerns. The Transportation Department's inspector general, Calvin Scovel, told lawmakers that the Eclipse 500 won certification despite "unresolved design problems."

A costly, 20-month saga of futility and frustration came to a formal close Wednesday when the Los Angeles Unified School District announced that it had settled a dispute with the contractor that installed its payroll system, which overpaid and underpaid tens of thousands of teachers and other employees by tens of millions of dollars. The district said the company it had hired, Deloitte Consulting, agreed to pay $8.