Liability

Kimberly Young has recurring nightmares. She is rolling over and over and over, helpless, pinned inside a car. Outside Manteca, Calif., last August, the 43-year-old accountant was driving to dinner with her daughter to celebrate a promotion. Her memory of the accident is fuzzy, but she believes she swerved to avoid something, then tried to correct. She remembers hearing a horn. Her 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee rolled over three times. The roof caved in, and her neck snapped.

The Air Force is reviewing decades-old contracts to determine whether manufacturers of U.S. fighter jets bear responsibility for a defect that caused one of the planes to break apart in flight late last year, officials said Thursday. An investigation of the November crash of an F-15 showed that one of several support beams in the plane was thinner than design specifications required. That faulty part caused a failure that split the plane in two.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sharply limited the reach of securities fraud lawsuits by shielding bankers, accountants and others from being held liable for participating in a scheme to inflate a company's stock. The 5-3 ruling came in a case involving Charter Communications and Scientific Atlanta, but it has broader implications for securities litigation. It is a big win for Wall Street investment bankers accused of aiding other schemes such as those that brought down Enron and WorldCom.

How much should a company's culture reflect its chief executive, especially one who prides himself on being a blunt and innovative -- some might say abrasive -- businessman? If you're new Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell, the answer seems to be: A lot. At least that was the feeling workers got Wednesday with the distribution of a new employee handbook, a document that's nothing like the mind-numbing, lawyered gobbledygook in most corporate manuals. Consider the opening: "Rule #1: Use your best judgment."

A scuba diver abandoned off the coast of Newport Beach for four hours in 2004 can go forward with a $4-million lawsuit against the trip's organizers, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has ruled. Dan Carlock of Santa Monica was 46 when he signed up for the dive organized by Ocean Adventures Dive Co. aboard a boat operated by Sun Diver Charters LLC of Huntington Beach.

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that because of its "negligent acts," the city cannot limit its liability to $14.4 million, the value of the Staten Island ferry that crashed in October 2003, killing 11 people and injuring more than 70. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the city "did not act with reasonable care" when it allowed assistant Capt.

As 14-year-old Brandon McInerney prepares to be arraigned today inthe slaying of 15-year-old Lawrence "Larry" King at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, his lawyer is advancing a defense that at least partly blames school officials for the tragedy. Educators should have moved aggressively to quell rising tensions between the two boys, which began when King openly flirted with McInerney, said William Quest, the Ventura County assistant public defender representing the eighth-grader.

Buoyed by the success of a six-month program to reduce graffiti in Pico Rivera and unincorporated Whittier, Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina will ask her colleagues today to approve a measure that would allow authorities to hold taggers -- and their parents -- liable for civil damages.

The top staff regulators who oversaw the approval of new drugs in this country objected to the Bush administration's drive to shield drug makers from being sued, according to internal documents released Wednesday by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The regulators said the White House and top administration officials were operating under the "false assumption" that warning labels on new drugs were adequate and up-to-date.

Seeking to hold Chevron Corp. accountable for its practices overseas, an attorney for 19 Nigerian villagers urged a federal jury Tuesday to find the oil company responsible for the killing and wounding of four Nigerians during a protest at an offshore oil platform.