Settlements

In a settlement ending five years of litigation, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed Tuesday to pay $885,000 to the owners of 16 Malibu homes damaged by the Big Rock Mesa landslide. Three months ago, in a first round of settlements, the supervisors agreed to pay $35 million as the county's share of a $97-million award to 240 other owners whose homes were damaged or destroyed during the 1983 slide. The state and insurance companies have agreed to pay the rest. The amount awarded Tuesday, about $52,000 per home, was less than the $146,000 per home the county agreed to pay in January because the houses involved were not as severely damaged, officials said.

A South Bay woman who sued the Transportation Security Administration over the way agents treated her for trying to bring breast milk on a plane said she won a settlement. The woman, Stacey Armato, said the TSA agreed to pay her $75,000 to settle the suit, as well as retraining all screeners to better treat travelers carrying breast milk. "That's a big deal," she said in an interview. "I expect a lot of changes. " TSA officials declined to comment, saying the settlement has not been finalized and the agency still has 30 days to request a dismissal.

Kevin Green, a Tustin man who was wrongly convicted of raping his pregnant wife and causing the death of their unborn daughter 20 years ago, on Tuesday settled a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by his ex-wife, who continued to hold him partially responsible for the crime. The settlement brings closure to a two-decade-long legal ordeal for Green, who was set free in 1996 after authorities linked the crime to another man.

University of California regents agreed to pay $10 million to the former chairman of UCLA's orthopedic surgery department, who had alleged that the well-known medical school allowed doctors to take industry payments that may have compromised patient care. The settlement reached Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court came just before closing arguments were due to begin in a whistleblower-retaliation case brought by Dr. Robert Pedowitz, 54, a surgeon who was recruited to UCLA in 2009 to run the orthopedic surgery department.

Television actress Alyssa Milano recently won several legal skirmishes in her crusade to stop Internet sites from posting nude pictures of her. Two operators of nude celebrity Web sites have agreed to remove the pictures of Milano and settle suits she filed against them, according to Milano's attorney, Mitchell Kamarck. He declined to specify how much money the sites agreed to pay except to say that the total is "in the five figures."

When Halina Douglas and her family gathered at a Sizzler's restaurant five years ago to celebrate her certification as a paralegal assistant, it was a poignant measure of how far she had come from the days when she was forced to flee war-torn Ukraine during World War II. But Douglas' moment of victory turned to disaster when a large menu sign fell from the wall and slammed into her head.

Manville Corp. has agreed to make additional payments of as much as $520 million over seven years to the trust set up to benefit asbestos victims. A comprehensive settlement disclosed Monday also will revamp the way claims are paid, giving priority to the most gravely ill. The plan is meant to settle about 150,000 pending claims by people injured by Manville-produced asbestos.

Apria Healthcare Group Inc. will pay $1.65 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging that the company made illegal kickbacks to doctors in exchange for referrals of home health-services patients, the Justice Department said. The company, which had tentatively accepted the agreement in December, admitted no wrongdoing. Apria said it is settling the case to avoid a costly legal battle.

Seeking to resolve a tortuous and costly legal battle, Dow Corning Corp. reached a tentative agreement with negotiators for women with silicone breast implants Wednesday to pay $3.2 billion to settle claims by more than 170,000 women that the implants harmed their health. The settlement would compensate women based on the seriousness of injury they claim, providing up to $300,000 for those who have a severely debilitating illness.

The family of a man who was killed in 2003 when a wheel assembly fell off a locomotive on Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and caused it to crash settled a lawsuit Friday against the Walt Disney Co. for an undisclosed sum. While the settlement's terms are confidential, Marcelo Torres' parents said they were giving $500,000 of it to Brooks College in Long Beach to provide scholarships to aspiring animators. Their 22-year-old son was a graphic artist.

When she was 4, Doris Pilkington Garimara was uprooted from her home in western Australia and sent to a camp for "half-caste" aboriginals, where she grew up believing she had been abandoned and forgotten by her mother. Decades passed before she learned the full story - one that would not only answer painful questions about her past but help Australians understand one of the ugliest chapters in theirs. Pilkington Garimara and her mother belonged to "the stolen generations" - the estimated 100,000 children of mixed aboriginal and white ancestry who by government edict were snatched from their homes and reared in desolate settlements.

A federal judge in Philadelphia declined Wednesday to approve a proposed $765-million concussion settlement between the NFL and a group of retired players. [UPDATED, 4:30 p.m. PDT, April 16:  Although this was originally characterized as a setback for those pushing for a concussion settlement, attorneys for the plaintiffs clarified Wednesday afternoon that U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody's ruling was more of a procedural housekeeping item. The ruling was submitted electronically late Tuesday and was announced Wednesday.

Weakness in the mortgage and bond-trading businesses socked JPMorgan Chase & Co. with disappointing first-quarter earnings, a signal that the start of this year was a tough time for the banking industry. JPMorgan, the nation's largest bank, is trying to regain momentum after making record legal settlements in late 2013. It reported Friday that it earned $5.27 billion, or $1.28 per share, down 19% compared with $6.53 billion, $1.59 per share, in the first quarter of last year. Revenue fell 8% to $23.9 billion.

Anthony Wardlaw was fresh out of foster care three years ago when he went on general relief, Los Angeles County's $221-a-month welfare program for the destitute. When he tried to use the money to buy his mother a hamburger, his government debit card didn't work. And he had no idea why. According to a $7.9-million settlement agreement announced Tuesday, Wardlaw was one of thousands of people who were knocked off the welfare rolls without proper notice when applications swelled during the Great Recession.

Matthew Vella certainly doesn't look like a troll. Vella is the regular-guy chief executive of Acacia Research Corp., which calls itself a patent outsource licensing company. The Newport Beach firm links up with inventors who fear that others are elbowing in on their patents or whose patents aren't making the money they could. "Our clients often can't afford to hire specialists that will help turn those patents into money," Vella said. "They are not looking to sell them necessarily, but if they are looking to get money because people are infringing their patents, we want to be their partner.

The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday announced that Anadarko Petroleum Corp. had agreed to pay $5.15 billion to clean up hazardous substances dumped nationwide - including radioactive uranium waste across the Navajo Nation - in the largest settlement ever for environmental contamination. The operations of Kerr-McGee Corp. - which was acquired by Anadarko in 2006 - also left behind radioactive thorium in Chicago and West Chicago, Ill.; creosote waste in the Northeast, the Midwest and the South; and perchlorate waste in Nevada, according to U.S. Deputy Atty.

Electronics retailer Sharper Image Corp. agreed Friday to stop selling personal breathalyzers and pay $1.2 million in restitution as part of a settlement regarding the devices. The company incorrectly claimed the digital breath alcohol testers were accurate to 0.001 of a percentage point of blood-alcohol content, according to tests by San Diego's Consumer Protection Unit. Sharper Image also agreed to pay $100,000 in penalties for inaccurately advertising the effectiveness of the testers.

A former gang member who won a $15 million judgment after he was shot and framed by corrupt Los Angeles police officers more than a decade ago was arrested Sunday night after leading Glendale police on a high-speed chase, his second arrest in a week, authorities said. Javier Francisco Ovando, 31, was arrested about 8:15 p.m. Sunday after leading police on an hour-long chase that reached speeds of up to 90 mph on local streets and freeways, said Sgt. Tom Lorenz of the Glendale Police Department.

SACRAMENTO - Electricity customers in Southern California would receive $1.4 billion in refunds on their bills over the next eight years as part of an agreement between two utilities and ratepayer organizations over the closing of the San Onofre nuclear power plant. The proposed settlement, announced Thursday, still needs approval from the California Public Utilities Commission. Both ratepayer advocates and executives at Southern California Edison Co. and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. said they were satisfied with the deal.

Putting to rest one of its biggest remaining headaches, Bank of America Corp. has agreed to pay $9.5 billion to settle claims by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The government-sponsored mortgage finance giants had demanded compensation from the Charlotte, N.C., bank for losses on securities backed by faulty loans issued during the housing boom. The bank said the settlement, announced Wednesday, resolves all claims against BofA by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the agency that regulates Fannie and Freddie.