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Amazon fined nearly $6 million for violations at Inland Empire warehouses

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Amazon fined nearly  million for violations at Inland Empire warehouses

California has fined Amazon nearly $6 million for violating a law meant to protect warehouse workers from misuse of production quotas, state officials announced Tuesday.

The $5.9 million in penalties, which were issued last month, stem from demands that the behemoth e-commerce company placed on thousands of workers at two of its Inland Empire fulfillment centers. The California Labor Commissioner’s Office found that managers at the facilities failed to provide employees with adequate explanations of quotas that they were expected to meet as they prepared orders for shipment.

Mindy Acevedo, staff attorney with the Warehouse Worker Resource Center, an advocacy group, said in a statement released Tuesday that “these citations show Amazon failed to follow fundamental parts of the law.”

The law, AB 701, went into effect at the beginning of 2022 and requires that companies explain in writing the speed at which warehouse workers are expected to complete a certain amount of work as well as the discipline the company may impose for failure to meet the quotas. Under the law, an employee cannot be required to meet a quota that prevents them from taking meal or bathroom breaks and rest periods.

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Amazon spokesperson Maureen Lynch Vogel said in an email that the company plans to defend itself against the citations.

“We disagree with the allegations made in the citations and have appealed. The truth is, we don’t have fixed quotas. At Amazon, individual performance is evaluated over a long period of time, in relation to how the entire site’s team is performing,” Vogel said. “Employees can — and are encouraged to — review their performance whenever they wish. They can always talk to a manager if they’re having trouble finding the information.”

The citations include penalties of more than $1.2 million at a warehouse in Redlands and nearly $4.7 million at one in Moreno Valley.

The fines imposed on Amazon are among the first issued by the Labor Commissioner’s Office for failing to provide written quota descriptions to its workers. Since September 2023, the office has handed down $7.8 million in penalties — a total that includes the Amazon fines, according to the Warehouse Worker Resource Center.

The enforcement comes after years of scrutiny over working conditions inside Amazon’s warehouses, including investigations by state and federal agencies into the company’s safety practices. They also come as California has come under fire for failing to enforce labor laws around wage theft and other violations.

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Lilia Garcia-Brower, the California Labor Commissioner, said Tuesday at a news conference in Ontario that Amazon had not been singled out for enforcement. Her office, she said, sent out hundreds of letters notifying companies of possible violations and followed up with inspections on companies that failed to respond or comply.

“We are not playing the game of gotcha here,” Garcia-Brower said.

Garcia-Bower said her office will defend the Amazon citation at an appeal hearing. She encouraged workers to reach out to worker centers and other community organizations for help.

“It is so important for workers to come together, understand it is the bad-faith employer who wants you to feel isolated and alone and unfamiliar with your rights.”

At the news conference, Veronica Kern, who has worked at Amazon for seven years, and currently sorts products and loads them onto conveyor belts at the Moreno Valley warehouse, said it “can be a stressful and intense place,” with managers publicly chastising workers when they decide they aren’t working fast enough.

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She described her manager telling her she needed to work faster and that she was performing in the bottom 5% of workers. He would stand outside the bathroom and get workers to hurry back to work, she said.

“They started treating us like a number rather than humans,” Kern said.

Kern recalled how managers would show workers real-time productivity data that they said showed them falling short of production targets, but often would not tell workers what those targets were, she said.

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Tractor-trailer crosses center divider in Irwindale, killing 1 and injuring 30

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Tractor-trailer crosses center divider in Irwindale, killing 1 and injuring 30

A big rig crossed the center divider on the 210 Freeway in Irwindale on Saturday morning, killing one and injuring 30, authorities said.

The mass accident took place before 9 a.m. west of Irwindale Avenue, where emergency personnel arrived to find the truck had collided with several vehicles, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said in a social media post.

One person was pronounced dead at the scene and two were critically injured. Eight minors were taken to the hospital and 22 other crash victims declined treatment, the department said.

The California Highway Patrol temporarily shut down all westbound lanes of the freeway, diverting traffic onto Irwindale Avenue, before opening up one lane.

The CHP issued a SigAlert warning of traffic delays on the westbound lanes, with two lanes on the eastbound side of the freeway also temporarily closed.

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The cause of the crash is under investigation.

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Ford sues L.A. lemon law firm alleging ‘utter fabrications’ inflated fees by 7,000%

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Ford sues L.A. lemon law firm alleging ‘utter fabrications’ inflated fees by 7,000%

Ford Motor Co. is suing a prominent Los Angeles lemon law firm for allegedly inflating their fees by as much as 7,000%, the company’s latest attempt to crack down on California attorneys who it says are exploiting the state’s unique law to protect consumers from defective cars.

Quill & Arrow, a personal injury firm that represents drivers suing over so-called “lemons” — vehicles with significant, unfixable manufacturing flaws — has long been a thorn in the side of Ford. Since 2021, Ford said its has paid them more than $100 million, roughly half in attorney fees.

That profit, Ford alleges in a federal lawsuit filed Thursday, came from billing records that were “utter fabrications.”

Quill & Arrow used an overseas “army” of low-paid, non-lawyers to help file thousands of lemon lawsuits and then pretended the work was done by California attorneys, who billed as much as $950 per hour, Ford alleged in its complaint.

Ford claims that the bulk of the work was actually done by non-lawyers in countries such as Mexico and the Philippines, who got paid as little as $13 per hour.

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Quill & Arrow was founded in 2019 by attorneys Kevin Jacobson and Jonathan Shirian, according to the firm’s website, which touts recovering $500 million in lemon law payouts. The partners called Ford’s lawsuit “nothing more than an attempt to silence firms who would dare to hold them responsible and seek justice for consumers.”

“It grossly mischaracterizes the facts and the claim that Quill & Arrow created fabricated attorney billing records is absurd,” the firm said in a statement.

California’s lemon law, considered one of the strongest consumer protections in the nation, allows drivers to get a refund or replacement of a broken car if the manufacturer can’t fix it. If the driver is not satisfied, they can sue.

If the driver wins, the law allows attorneys to collect their fees from the car maker — rather than take a percentage of the client’s winnings, as is common in personal injury cases. This fee structure, Ford argues, has turned the law into a bonanza for plaintiff attorneys. The longer the case drags on, the company argues, the more the law firm can reap in profit.

Ford alleges the firm intentionally slowed down its clients’ cases to drive up their billable hours, instructing drivers not to communicate with Ford and pushing them toward filing a lawsuit.

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“California’s Lemon Laws are in need of reform and the courts need to exercise more oversight, given the fraud we continue to expose,” said Doug Lampe, counsel at Ford, in a statement. The law is “being blatantly abused by the lemon law plaintiffs lawyers, the bar is not policing its own and the courts need to monitor fee awards with far more skepticism and scrutiny.”

The cases, he said, “have become about the lawyers for the lawyers.”

Lemon law cases have exploded in California in the last decade from about 4,500 cases in 2015 to roughly 30,000 in 2024, according to an analysis from the Assembly Judiciary. These cases, officials warned, “are poised to cripple the entirety of California’s civil justice system.”

In 2024, the legislature tightened the state’s lemon law, requiring additional steps before a driver could sue. The bill seems to have put little dent in the caseload: Lemon lawsuits surged to record levels the following year.

Ford’s lawsuit marks the second attempt by one of America’s largest car manufacturers to go on the offense against lemon law attorneys in Southern California.

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Ford sued a cohort of local lemon law firms in May 2025, accusing attorneys of collecting at least $100 million in “phantom legal fees” by billing for hours they never worked. The case, which was brought under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, alleged lawyers worked together to file a flurry of fraudulent cases with billable hours that defied logic.

A partner at Knight Law Group, an L.A.-based lemon law firm, once billed an “ostensibly heroic but physically impossible” 57.5-hour workday, Ford alleged.

Knight Law Group denied inflating their billing, calling the suit a “thinly veiled attempt to silence firms who would dare to hold them responsible and seek justice for consumers.”

A judge threw out the suit in March on the grounds that lawyers were protected under the 1st Amendment from being sued for the content of their lawsuits unless the case was proved fraudulent. Ford says it plans to appeal.

After Quill found about the Knight Law Group case, Ford alleged, Quill dedicated a team to “scrubbing” their own timesheets of “impossible time entries.”

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Ranch lovers can soon travel with a TSA-friendly kit of the popular American dressing

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Ranch lovers can soon travel with a TSA-friendly kit of the popular American dressing

Ranch dressing is having a moment thanks to the World Cup and Kraft is ready to meet it.

The company said Thursday that it is working on a “TSA Compliant Ranch” for those looking to travel with the quintessentially American condiment. The announcement follows the influx of social media videos showing international soccer fans sampling the dressing for the first time.

“Some visitors leave with souvenirs. Others leave with America’s favorite dressing,” Kraft wrote in a caption accompanying an AI image of a TSA-approved clear bag packed with ranch dressing packets posted to social media. The image showed the bag — complete with a luggage tag resembling a ranch dressing bottle — placed in an airport security screening bin along with other travel essentials.

Additional details will be announced later, the company said.

TSA has also leaned into ranch’s apparent newfound popularity among international travelers, providing some helpful tips (and warnings) on social media.

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“If you’re visiting for a very large sporting event & you happen to discover RANCH while you’re here… pls pack it in your CHECKED BAG on your way home,” the agency posted on Instagram Tuesday. It also asked travelers to “avoid chugging your ranch outside security” lines.

“Who knew dip-lomacy could be achieved through addressing the obvious: ranch is the king of condiments,” TSA wrote in the caption accompanying its carousel of humorous ranch-related quips. “If you’re traveling within the U.S., make sure to keep your carry-on sauces to 3.4 oz or less and place any larger containers in your checked bags.”

“Some heroes wear capes. Others bring ranch,” it added.

According to 1987 Times reports, ranch dressing was invented by Steve Henson, who opened the Hidden Valley Guest Ranch in Santa Barbara in the mid-1950s with his wife, Gayle. The unnamed condiment originally mixed herbs and spices with buttermilk and mayonnaise and its popularity with guests led to it being jarred so they could take some home. The more travel-friendly powdered form followed.

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