Monthly Archives: <span>April 2020</span>

Lockdowns Cut Driving and Crashes, Bring Insurance Discounts

DETROIT — Interstates and city streets are empty and cars are quarantined in their owners’ garages, so consumer advocates argue that it only makes sense for auto insurance rates to reflect that. In the states of Washington and New York, …

Companies Walk Legal Tightrope as Earnings Season Kicks Off

WASHINGTON — U.S. companies are grappling with how best to provide guidance on their earnings outlook as the novel coronavirus takes uncertainty to new heights and exposes them to potential shareholder lawsuits if forecasts prove misplaced. Measures to contain the …

Amazon Fires Three Critics of Warehouse Conditions in Pandemic

Amazon.com Inc said on Tuesday it had fired three critics of the company’s pandemic response for workplace violations, dismissals that drew sharp words from U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and a labor coalition. The company on Friday fired two user experience …

As Coronavirus Empties Streets, Speeders Hit the Gas

NEW YORK — Empty roads in the United States and Europe are tempting drivers to go out and shift into high gear. From Los Angeles to New York, London and Berlin, coronavirus lockdowns have drained traffic from normally crowded roads. …

Auto Claims Decline 40 to 50% as Consumers Stay Home, Snapsheet Says

Insurers are reporting a 40 to 50 percent drop in claims volume for personal auto and a 30 to 40 percent reduction for commercial auto due to the coronavirus pandemic, an executive for claims-automation provider Snapsheet said Tuesday. Chief Operating …

Viewpoint: Why Physician Scoring Is a Win for Insurers, Employers, Workers – and Physicians

We live in a society ruled by rankings. Websites are devoted to them; YouTube careers have been built based upon them. Which players we select for fantasy teams, where our kids go to college, who can be trusted for a …

Pipeline Operator Sues Chesapeake Energy Over Payment Dispute

Pipeline operator Glass Mountain LLC is suing troubled oil and gas producer Chesapeake Energy Corp for allegedly defaulting on an oil transportation contract that had been renegotiated weeks earlier. Chesapeake, a shale gas pioneer, borrowed aggressively to buy and drill …

McDonald’s Faces Class Action Over ‘Pervasive Sexual Harassment’

McDonald’s Corp has been hit with a class action lawsuit accusing it of subjecting female employees in its corporate-owned fast-food restaurants in Florida to widespread sexual harassment. The lawsuit, filed on Friday in federal court in Chicago, says the company …

North America Meat Plant Workers Fall Ill, Walk Off Jobs

At a Wayne Farms chicken processing plant in Alabama, workers recently had to pay the company 10 cents a day to buy masks to protect themselves from the new coronavirus, according to a meat inspector. In Colorado, nearly a third …

Get Ready for More, Longer Blackouts

By mid-Monday morning, storms sweeping north from the Gulf Coast had left more than 1.3 million out of power in the U.S. Under normal circumstances, this would have called for the mass mobilization of crews to get the lights back …