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Harley settles state suit for hogging refunds

Written By Unknown on Minggu, 08 Juni 2014 | 00.49

The financing arm of U.S. motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson Inc. reached a settlement with the state after allegedly hogging customer refunds.

Harley-Davidson Financial Services will pay $228,133 to 600-plus Massachusetts consumers, according to Attorney General Martha Coakley's Office. It also must pay $25,000 to the cover the cost of the state's investigation.

"We are pleased that this finance company stepped forward to reimburse Massachusetts customers and promptly adopted changes to its procedures," Coakley said in a statement.

Harley-Davidson Financial Services was accused of not correctly refunding optional financing contract enrollment fees paid by customers in exchange for special loan terms. Customers often are entitled to pro-rated refunds of the fees when they pay off their loans early.

Borrowers eligible for refunds will be mailed notices and payments in July.

A Harley-Davidson spokesman said the facts of Coakley's announcement "speak for themselves."


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Large lot adds appeal to Milton home

This Milton home, built in 1995, sits on two acres that back up to 26 acres of conservation land and is also near the entrance to the Blue Hills Reservation.

The four-bedroom hip-roof Colonial at 3 Green St. has a blue clapboard exterior with black shutters and white trim. The home is built for entertaining as well as family living, with more than 5,600 square feet of finished living space and the potential for even more.

The refinished oak-floored living spaces on the first floor, with nine-foot ceilings and recessed lighting, are made for large gatherings. The spacious entry foyer has a grand reverse staircase with a large chandelier and this space, along with an adjacent fireplaced living room, have French doors leading out to a covered patio overlooking a large backyard. Across the hall, a formal dining room with paneled wainscoting will seat a large party.

The adjacent kitchen features lots of white-painted cabinets, white appliances and Uba Tuba granite counters and island, with newly added beadboard wainscoting, pendant lights and marble backsplashes.

But the house is also built for raising a family. There's a vaulted family room with a wood fireplace and a front porch that connects the main part of the house to an attached three-car garage with a nanny/in-law suite above that has a living room, bedroom and full bathroom completed in 1997-98.

There's three other bedrooms on the second floor, including a large, newly carpeted master bedroom suite with a newly redone marble-lined glass shower and granite-topped vanity, a walk-in closet and a home office area. The other two newly carpeted bedrooms are ideal for children and there's a second full bathroom. There's also a laundry closet with a Maytag washer and dryer.

Upstairs is an 800-square-foot unfinished attic that could be converted to additional living space, as could a large unfinished basement where one small area is a carpeted exercise room. The basement also holds a three-zone oil heating system; there's two zones of central air conditioning.

The first 40 feet of a long driveway leading to the home is an easement through a neighboring property.

HOME SHOWCASE

• Address: 3 Green St., Milton
• Bedrooms: Four
• Bathrooms: Two full, one half
• List price: $1,449,000
• Square feet: 5,664
• Price per square foot: $256
• Annual taxes: $17,424
• Location: Off Route 138 on Milton 
Canton line near Blue Hills Reservation; 1.8 miles to the Readville commuter rail station and supermarket.
• Built in: 1995; updated 1997-98 
and 2013
• Broker: Eileen Cain of William Raveis Real Estate at 508-254-6865

Pros:

  • Living dining/foyer areas are built for entertaining
  • Two-acre site with 26 acres of conservation land behind
  • Finished nanny in-law suite over three-car garage
  • Large master suite with walk-in closet, home office area

Cons:

  • Has septic system
  • Easement with neighbor for stretch of driveway

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The Ticker

New Balance sues 
Karl Lagerfeld

First Louis Vuitton, now Karl Lagerfeld. New Balance filed a trademark infringement lawsuit this week against the Paris-based, high-fashion German designer.

The Boston athletic footwear brand alleges that one of Lagerfeld's sneakers is so similar to New Balance's trademarked design that it would cause customer confusion.

New Balance filed the lawsuit to "protect our intellectual property rights related to our iconic lifestyle footwear designs," according to spokeswoman Amy Dow.

"Although we cannot comment on the specifics of the case, we believe it is vital to actively and vigorously defend our brand," she said.

In 2009, New Balance sued LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, which then discontinued its sneaker at issue, leading to the lawsuit's dismissal that same year.

Green Line gets 
$100M from feds

The United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development has included $100 million in funding for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation's and Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's Green Line Extension Project in its fiscal year 2015 appropriations bill, federal and state officials announced yesterday. The project would connect a relocated Lechmere Station in East Cambridge to Union Square in Somerville and College Avenue in Medford.

L Goodwin Procter announced that Robert E. Puopolo has joined the firm's life sciences practice as a partner in the Boston office.


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Clammers see red over ban

The state's decision to close shellfish beds on the North Shore due to the worst red tide bloom there in three years has dealt a devastating blow to the industry at its peak time of year and could jack up prices as worried restaurateurs go elsewhere to buy clams.

State officials have not ruled out the possibility that the microscopic algae, which contain red pigments and harmful neurotoxins, could spread farther south.

"We're hoping not," said Jeff Kennedy, regional shellfish supervisor at the Division of Marine Fisheries. "It's not typical, but it has happened before."

The division has prohibited shellfishing along the Massachusetts coast from the New Hampshire state line to the south side of Cape Ann since Wednesday, when red tide turned up in shellfish there.

The prohibition will likely remain in effect for at least three weeks, Kennedy said, because the division samples shellfish weekly throughout the season and needs three descending counts of the marine biotoxin before it reopens an area to shellfishing.

Until it does, full-time clammers like Brenda and Steve Turner of Ipswich have no income.

"How would no paycheck affect you, especially when you don't know for how long?" she said. "I appreciate what the state is doing to protect people. But we have felt robbed."

Like Ipswich, Essex is one of the state's largest producers of soft-shell clams and was closed to shellfishing as a precaution.

"I understand (officials) don't want to let clams on the market and then have to recall them," said Edward Lane, who has been a clammer there for 30 years. "But financially, it hurts. Once people hear 'red tide,' they stop buying everything."

That's why Marina "Chickie" Aggelakis posted signs yesterday at the Clam Box, reassuring customers that all of the seafood at the Ipswich restaurant she has owned for 28 years is harvested from state and federally approved areas.

"The quantity and the quality aren't affected because we're getting our clams from upper Maine, although I'd prefer to get them from Ipswich," Aggelakis said. "But I pay the top price. Every day, it creeps up."

And it's passed on to customers, who now pay from 6 percent to 8 percent more for shellfish at the eatery, she said.


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Deval defends his Middle East trip

Gov. Deval Patrick, fresh off of his week-long "innovation mission" to Israel and the United Arab Emirates, lauded partnerships established on the trip, but declined to offer any hard figures regarding the number of new jobs his junket is expected to generate.

"The results will come when the people we've opened doors for walk through them," Patrick said, adding that the previous trip in 2011 resulted in "200 companies with Israeli roots generating $6.5 billion in revenue and employing more than 7,000 people."

This week's mission included some major announcements for local companies, Patrick said, including Desalitech Inc., a Newton-based high-efficiency water treatment company that relocated its headquarters from Israel after the mission in 2011, which announced a deal with the Israeli city of Ra'anana to erect a new municipal water facility.

The state-of-the-art facility will utilize an innovative reverse osmosis technique to provide clean water to some 18,000 residents daily, Rachael Dane Neff, Patrick's deputy press secretary said.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev agreed to establish a seed fund in support of a broad base of new research opportunities at both colleges.

As for the cost of the trip, Patrick went on the defensive.

"People are going to criticize this based on the fact that in the past these trips had one moving part," Patrick said. "Our trips are very purposeful and will yield many tangible results for economic growth in the commonwealth."


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Key ways the US job market has changed since 2007

WASHINGTON — Six and half years later, nearly everything about the job market is different.

When the Great Recession hit in December 2007, 138.4 million people were working at U.S. businesses, nonprofits and government agencies. By February 2010, that figure had cratered to 129.7 million. Fifty-one months later, the economy is back to 138.5 million jobs, the government said Friday.

Yet consider what's changed.

FEWER WORKING OR SEEKING WORK

The economic storms of the past several years have driven many people to the sidelines. Just 62.8 percent of those 16 and older are part of the workforce, which includes people who either have a job or are looking for one. That's down from 66 percent in December 2007 and is the lowest level in 35 years.

Economists estimate that about half the decline is related to demographics: The leading edge of the baby boom generation has started to retire, a trend that will likely intensify in coming years. And Americans 24 and younger are more likely to be in school than they were 6½ years ago.

But much of the exodus has occurred because more Americans have become discouraged about their job prospects and have stopped looking. The government doesn't count people as unemployed if they aren't actively looking for work. Nearly 700,000 people were classified by the government as "discouraged" in May. That's far below the 1.3 million peak in December 2010. But it's still about twice the total when the recession began.

WHITHER THE PRIME-AGE WORKERS?

Economists are worried about an exodus among those ages 25-54. Those are prime working years, when employees typically start to reap the wage gains that come from greater skills and experience.

Yet the percentage of those ages 25 to 54 in the workforce fell to 80.8 percent in May, down from 83.1 percent in December 2007. In October, the figure fell to 80.6 percent, the lowest since 1984, when women began entering the workforce in greater numbers.

The biggest drivers of the decline, according to researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta: A jump in the number of people receiving government disability aid and an increase in those who have left the workforce for schooling or training.

WHEN WILL THEY RETURN?:

All this matters because it sets up a big question for the economy and the Federal Reserve: How many of those people will resume their job searches as the economy strengthens?

If many people flood back, it would likely keep wages low. But if most don't resume looking for work, pay could climb because of a shortage of qualified job-seekers. If sustained, widespread pay raises could fan inflation. That could eventually force the Fed to raise interest rates to prevent an inflationary spiral.

Some economists think retirements will offset the return of those who'd grown discouraged about the job market. That would leave the percentage of adults in the workforce largely unchanged.

Americans who have been receiving education or training will likely return to the workforce once the economy picks up. Those on disability are much less likely to do so, the Atlanta Fed said.

The federal disability rolls jumped from 7.1 million in 2007 to 8.9 million last year. But the gains slowed in 2013. And they fell in the first three months of this year.

LOWER-PAYING JOBS:

Job-seekers now have fewer higher-paying jobs to choose from than in 2007, while lower-paying ones have replaced them.

There are about 2 million more jobs in low-paying industries such as restaurants, temporary help agencies and retail than at the start of the recession, according to the National Employment Law Project. Meanwhile, middle- and high-wage industries have shed nearly 900,000 jobs each.

While low-paying jobs typically return faster than others after a recession, the disproportionate gains have lasted longer this time than after the last recession in 2001, NELP found.

FEWER GOVERNMENT JOBS

A big reason it's taken so long for the workforce to return to its pre-recession level is that governments continued cutting jobs even after businesses started to hire.

Tax revenue shrank after the recession, forcing state and local governments to lay off workers. Property taxes are a key source of revenue for localities, and the collapse of home prices forced cuts in school systems. There are 500,000 fewer government jobs now than when the recession began. About half those losses have been teachers and other local education jobs.

Another source of middle-income jobs has taken a huge hit: The U.S. Postal Service has slashed its payrolls by a quarter since December 2007.

MORE TEMPS AND PART-TIMERS

Compared with when the recession began, nearly 2.5 million more people are working part time. And there are still 2.9 million fewer people working full-time jobs. That means a chunk of the new jobs don't provide paychecks as large as those they replaced.

That trend has started to reverse. The number of part-time workers has fallen 500,000 in the past 12 months, while full-time workers have climbed by more than 2 million.

But about 10 percent of jobs added since February 2010, when employers started hiring again, have been at temp agencies. Nearly 2.1 percent of all jobs now are at temp agencies, a record high. Temp jobs typically pay less and offer fewer benefits than full-time jobs.

___

Contact Chris Rugaber on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/ChrisRugaber .


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Billionaire seeks to help climate-change victims

FRESNO, Calif. — An environmentalist billionaire who has pledged to spend tens of millions of dollars targeting Republicans who reject climate change announced Friday that he is now creating a fund to help victims of extreme weather disasters, starting with wildfires in the American West.

Tom Steyer and his wife, Kat Taylor, launched the Climate Disaster Relief Fund with profits from withdrawing all of the couple's investments in Kinder Morgan, one of the largest energy companies in North America. Steyer's NextGen Climate confirmed that the couple made an initial contribution of $2 million.

Climate change leads to warming temperatures, drought and insect outbreaks, which exacerbate costly wildfires, Steyer said in a statement.

"Climate change is the defining issue of our generation," he said. "We can no longer afford to wait to address this very real threat."

A retired hedge-fund manager and longtime Democratic donor, Steyer has pledged to spend up to $100 million this year in political campaigns nationwide to shape climate policy — half his money and the rest raised from likeminded donors. The money will be used to back Democrats and attack Republicans running for Senate in New Hampshire, Iowa, Colorado and Michigan, and for governor in Pennsylvania, Florida and Maine.

Steyer cited studies that predict climate change could double the threat of wildfires in the southern Rockies and increase that threat by 74 percent in California.

Firefighters and nurses on the front lines of these disasters will be among the first to receive money from Steyer's fund, which will be managed by the San Francisco Foundation. The fund will also provide relief to victims of oil spills, droughts, floods and other disasters related to extreme weather or climate change, Steyer said.


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Engineer's 'switch from hell' began GM recall woes

DETROIT — Inside General Motors, they called it "the switch from hell."

The ignition switch on the steering column of the Chevrolet Cobalt and other small cars was so poorly designed that it easily slipped out of the run position, causing engines to stall. Engineers knew it; as early as 2004, a Cobalt stalled on a GM test track when the driver's knee grazed the key fob. By GM's admission, the defective switches caused over 50 crashes and at least 13 deaths.

Yet inside the auto giant, no one saw it as a safety problem. For 11 years.

A 315-page report by an outside attorney found that the severity of the switch problem was downplayed from the start. Even as dozens of drivers were losing control of their vehicles in terrifying crashes, GM engineers, safety investigators and lawyers considered the switches a "customer satisfaction" problem, incorrectly believing that people could still steer the cars even though the power steering went out when the engines stalled. In safety meetings, people gave what was known in the company as the "GM nod," agreeing on a plan of action but doing nothing.

"The decision not to categorize the problem as a safety issue directly impacted the level of urgency with which the problem was addressed and the effort to resolve it," wrote Anton Valukas, the former federal prosecutor hired by GM to produce the report.

Some experts applauded the transparency in the GM report, but not everyone is buying its narrative, including family members of people killed and some lawyers suing the company.

Laura Christian, whose daughter Amber Marie Rose was killed in a Maryland Cobalt crash, still questions whether GM leaders knew about the problem — even though Valukas found that top executives, including CEO Mary Barra, didn't know about the switch problem until last December. Christian said the internal investigation is a start, but she hopes the Justice Department goes deeper and holds some employees criminally liable.

"Negligence is a criminal charge," she said.

The Valukas report makes no mention of negligence. But it says plenty about incompetence throughout GM.

THE NEW SWITCH

In the late 1990s, GM patented a new ignition switch designed to be cheaper, less prone to failure and less apt to catch fire than previous switches. But in prototype vehicles, the switch worked poorly. Veteran switch engineer Ray DeGiorgio had to redesign its electrical system.

The switch had mechanical problems, too. It didn't meet GM's specifications for the force required to rotate it. But increasing the force would have required more changes. So in 2002, DeGiorgio — who made several critical decisions in this case — approved the switch anyway. He signed an email to the switch supplier, "Ray (tired of the switch from hell) DeGiorgio."

Almost immediately, GM started getting complaints of unexpected stalling from drivers of the Saturn Ion, the first car equipped with the switch. The complaints continued when the switch was used for the Cobalt, which went on sale in 2004. Yet it wasn't seen as a safety issue. Even if the engine stalled and the power steering went out, engineers reasoned, drivers could still wrestle the cars to the side of the road.

As more complaints came in, GM kept viewing the problem as "annoying but not particularly problematic," Valukas wrote. "Once so defined, the switch problem received less attention, and efforts to fix it were impacted by cost considerations that would have been immaterial had the problem been properly categorized in the first instance," his report said.

In a critical failure to link cause and effect — and one that Valukas references often in his report — engineers trying to diagnose the problem didn't understand that the air bags wouldn't inflate in a crash if the engines stalled, failing to protect people when they needed it most.

In the meantime, GM customers, most unaware of the switch problem, kept buying the compact cars. Sales topped 200,000 in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

COMPANY INVESTIGATIONS

From 2004 to 2006, multiple GM committees with convoluted acronyms considered fixes without a sense of urgency, Valukas wrote. Crashes and deaths mounted, catching attention from company lawyers and engineers. Yet no one at GM figured out that the bad switches were disabling the air bags.

Fixes were rejected as too costly. Instead the company sent a bulletin to dealers explaining the problem and telling them to warn customers not to dangle too many objects from their key chains. GM elected not to use the word "stall" in the bulletin, saying that was a "hot" word that could indicate there was a more serious safety issue.

A Wisconsin State Patrol Trooper named Keith Young proved better at diagnosing the problem than GM employees, the report said. While investigating a 2006 Cobalt crash that killed two teen-age girls, he checked the wreckage and found the ignition switch in the "accessory" position; the air bags weren't deployed. Going further, Young found five complaints to government safety regulators about Cobalt engines stalling while being driven. Three drivers reported their legs touched the ignition or key chain before the engine quit.

Young also found the 2006 GM bulletin to dealers that detailed the switch problem. He determined that the Cobalt's ignition slipped into accessory before the crash, causing the air bag failure. A team from Indiana University that probed the crash in 2007 also made the connection. "Yet GM personnel did not," Valukas wrote.

They might have — if they read Young's report. An electronic copy was in GM's files in 2007, but no engineer investigating the switches reported seeing it until 2014, according to Valukas.

THE SECRET FIX

In 2007, John Sprague, an engineer working with GM's liability defense team, began tracking Cobalt air bag problems. He noticed a pattern and theorized a link to the ignitions. He also saw that the air bag problems stopped after model year 2007 and wondered if the ignition switch had been changed, Valukas wrote.

He was right, though he didn't know it at the time. In 2006, DeGiorgio had signed off on a change that increased the force needed to turn the key. But when asked in 2009 and later under oath, DeGiorgio denied making a change. "To this day, in informal interviews and under oath, DeGiorgio claims not to remember authorizing the change to the ignition switch or his decision at the same time not to change the switch's part number," Valukas wrote.

Keeping the same number prevented GM investigators from learning what happened for years, according to Valukas.

A 'BOMBSHELL' AND FINALLY A RECALL

By 2011, GM's outside lawyers were warning that the company could be facing costly verdicts for failing to fix the air bag problem. Company lawyers sought another investigation, but the engineer assigned to the case discounted the ignition switch theory.

The probe became stuck after two years with no results.

Then came what GM's outside lawyers called a "bombshell." An expert working for a law firm that was suing GM X-rayed two switches from separate model years and discovered they were different — GM's first knowledge of DeGiorio's change to the switch. Even so, GM's recall committee wasn't immediately told about the fatal accidents, so it waited for several months before it started recalling the cars in February, Valukas wrote.

Barra told GM employees Thursday that Valukas' report was thorough, tough and "deeply troubling." She said 15 people — including Ray DeGiorgio — were dismissed from the company and five others disciplined, and she outlined changes to make sure such a problem doesn't happen again.

But some have their doubts.

"If GM operated in the manner described over a full decade, then there are many more safety problems out there today," said Jere Beasley, an attorney who is suing GM on behalf of victims.


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`Star Wars' fans pressure Disney into selling Princess Leia toys

At least one rebellious alliance has convinced a far-reaching, influential empire to bow to its whims.
"Star Wars" fans were thrilled to learn that Carrie Fisher would be reprising her role as Princess Leia in Disney's upcoming sequels to the original trilogy, alongside series mainstays Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford. They were less thrilled, though, when Disney tweeted that they were not planning to sell Leia-themed merchandise through their online store.
A viral #WeWantLeia Twitter campaign was launched, knocking Disney for neglecting the space epic's female followers.
Finally, according to the above video from Buzz60, Disney caved, and has agreed to make Princess Leia products available through their retail outlets in the coming weeks.


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MGM poised to become state's 1st casino operator

BOSTON — MGM Resorts International is nearing a final ruling on its bid to become Massachusetts' first licensed casino operator, with a proposed $800 million project in Springfield.

Starting Tuesday, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission will hold a series of meetings in Springfield and Boston leading up to a Friday vote in Springfield on who receives the western region casino license.

MGM, which owns the Mirage, Bellagio, MGM Grand and other casinos, is the lone operator standing in a once-crowded field.

Plans by Penn National Gaming and Ameristar Casinos never went before Springfield voters, while proposals by Mohegan Sun in Palmer and Hard Rock International in West Springfield were defeated in local referendums.

MGM's plan for a casino, hotel, shopping and entertainment complex on 14 1/2 acres straddling the city's downtown and South End neighborhood was approved by Springfield voters last July.

Still, commission members have been reluctant to describe MGM as a shoe-in, noting the panel has reserved the right to not issue a license now or to impose stipulations or conditions on issuing the license.

Stephen Crosby, chairman of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, said recently he doesn't expect the five-member commission will need all four days to make its decision. Each commission member is expected to present findings on one of five areas of MGM's 236-page application that they have been tasked to review.

Crosby, for example, will give an overview of the proposal, including how it "manifests an appreciation" for the Massachusetts "brand," ''leverages Massachusetts' existing assets" and enhances the state's existing tourism and leisure venues, according to the commission's evaluation guidelines.

Other commissioners will look at the project's finances, economic impacts, building and site design and impacts on local traffic patterns, gambling addiction and the state lottery.

One open question is whether the commission will take up MGM's request to delay formal "awarding" of the license at least until early July, when the state Supreme Judicial Court decides whether a voter referendum to repeal the casino law outright should be allowed on the November ballot.

Michael Mathis, CEO of MGM Springfield, has said the Las Vegas-based casino giant is concerned about some $200 million in fees and payments that effectively come due if it is awarded the license.

Those payments could be lost if the casino law is ultimately repealed.

Crosby and other commissioners have declined to say whether they support the delay. But MGM Springfield spokeswoman Carole Brennan says the casino is hopeful.

"The license isn't going to be awarded, we hope. We will be designated the licensee," she said.

The western region casino license is one of three authorized under the 2011 casino law.

In the eastern region, Mohegan Sun is proposing a more than $1 billion casino on the Revere side of the Suffolk Downs horse racing track, and Wynn Resorts has proposed a $1.6 billion casino on a former chemical plant in Everett. The commission anticipates awarding that license by the end of August, at the earliest.

In the southeastern region, Foxwoods and other casino operators have expressed interest, but no proposal has yet been put before local voters. The commission will likely not award that license until February.

The commission has already awarded the state's sole slot parlor license to Penn National Gaming. That slot facility, located at the Plainridge harness racing track in Plainville, is expected to open by June 2015.


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