Author: completebodyneeds

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating an incident at SpaceX’s South Texas facilities that resulted in the death of a worker. Jose Luis Bautista, a 25-year-old man from Donna, died Friday morning after falling 8 feet from scaffolding, according to Cameron County Justice of the Peace Mary Esther Sorola. Sorola said Bautista was transported from Starbase to Valley Regional Medical Center in Brownsville, where he was pronounced dead at 5:15 a.m. A preliminary autopsy report showed he died from blunt force trauma caused by the fall, Sorola said. The city of Starbase confirmed the worker’s death, who is…

The reddish-brown mud that smothered Bok Kongphan’s Hawaii farm has hardened in the tropical sun. Irrigation tubes lie in a tangle where his lemongrass, cucumber and okra once flourished. His niece, Jeni Balanay, lost her crops too—a mustardy green called choy sum, bitter melon, tomato. The leaves of her recently planted banana, coconut and mango have gone yellow, the trees unlikely to survive. Across Oahu’s North Shore, an area famed for its big-wave surfing, the small farms that help supply the island’s food are struggling after back-to-back storms in March brought the state’s worst flooding in two decades. Officials are…

This article appeared recently on Grindley’s Linkedin page. Republished here with permission. For those working in property insurance, adjusting, and forensic engineering, a proposed Florida rule may have unintended consequences for how claims are investigated and processed. The Florida Board of Professional Engineers (FBPE) has considered a proposed rule (61G15-38) that, if passed, will regulate how engineers document evaluations of allegedly damaged structures. At first glance, improving consistency in engineering reports sounds great. Heck, as a guy who has to review them myself, I know there are many ways they could be improved! But after reviewing the proposed rule carefully,…

The Florida Board of Professional Engineers this month considered but did not adopt new rules governing engineers’ ethical responsibilities in drafting damage reports, but the changes are likely to come up again. This guest article examines the need for those rules and the rising concerns about expert reports in insurance claims litigation that fail to meet professional standards. The Ethical Framework: Objective Truth vs. Zealous Advocacy The primary ethical dilemma in forensic engineering stems from the fundamental difference between the roles of an attorney and an expert witness. While an attorney is ethically bound to be a zealous advocate for…

North Carolina’s insurance commissioner announced his department will again offer webinars, starting this month, on the intricacies of flood insurance, with continuing education credit for insurance agents, adjusters, engineers, real estate agents and others. The WebEx sessions are free of charge and will delve into the National Flood Insurance Program as well as state-based flood programs. The need for more flood coverage in the state became painfully obvious after Hurricane Helene and other storms “devastated thousands of residents who didn’t have flood insurance because they relied on their homeowners’ policy, which does not cover damage from rising water,” Commissioner Mike…

Many insurers and the businesses they cover are treating AI risk as a cyber problem in a new costume. The early litigation is quietly explaining why that is a category error, and the companies that understand the difference first will be the ones ahead when the market corrects. You can feel the instinct in every boardroom conversation. AI looks like cyber. It chimes with cyber. The underwriting muscle memory reaches for cyber. That muscle memory is about to become expensive. Look at where the cases are actually landing. Not breaches. Not ransomware. Not exfiltration. The exposure is arising from an…

More than 3 million New York metropolitan-area homes are vulnerable to hurricane winds, the most of any region in the country, according to a report from Cotality, a property analytics firm. Roughly 3.27 million homes in the area face moderate or greater hurricane wind risk, representing nearly $1.93 trillion in reconstruction costs, according to Cotality’s 2026 hurricane risk report. Nearly 20% of those homes are also at risk of storm surge. Houston and Miami rank second and third at risk, according to the number of homes that are exposed to hurricane wind. Those metro areas have about $824 billion and…

Lilypad, the Sarasota-based, tech-centered property-casualty insurer that acquired Centauri Insurance, has named Rajiv Matta, a holder of patents in the field of machine learning, to harness artificial intelligence to help expand coverage in vulnerable coastal areas. Matta, with 20 years of experience with large carriers and reinsurers, will be chief innovation officer at Lilypad, the company announced. He most recently was chief innovation officer at Millennial Specialty Insurance, a managing general agent in The Baldwin Group. Before that, he led international property and specialty business at Assurant. Matta (Linkedin) “Lilypad is built on a conviction I’ve held for years: that…

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway announced that her office has resolved litigation with Liberty Utilities, a gas company that failed to properly mark a gas line in Lexington, leading to the death of a child, numerous injuries, and the destruction of a home. The State’s litigation, separate from any private actions filed by the victims of the explosion, concluded with a consent judgment requiring Liberty Utilities to pay the maximum civil penalty of $30,000 for violating the Missouri Underground Facility Safety and Damage Prevention Act and to engage in a remapping process of their gas lines to prevent future tragedies.…

A G Equipment Company, a Broken Arrow, Oklahoma compressor packaging manufacturer, will pay $4,250,000 to over 40 workers and provide other relief to settle a religious and disability discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced. According to the EEOC’s suit, in the fall of 2021, A G Equipment mandated that all employees receive a COVID-19 vaccination and told workers no exemptions would be permitted for any reason. Nonetheless, several employees requested exemptions based on their religious beliefs. One worker supplemented their request with a doctor’s note requesting an exemption due to a…