BUSINESS BRIEFS
Starbucks payout lessened in claim
Associated Press
NEW YORK — Starbucks Corp., the world's largest coffee-shop chain, won a reduction in a New York jury's award to a lawyer who said she suffered second-degree burns and permanent nerve damage from hot coffee spilled on her by a barista.
Alice Griffin won a $300,000 jury verdict in March 2006, saying her left foot was permanently damaged after a Starbucks employee spilled the coffee on her at a shop on West 49th Street in Manhattan on Feb. 10, 2004.
A Manhattan jury awarded Griffin, who was working as a lawyer at Commerce Bank at the time of the incident, $50,000 for past pain and suffering, $250,000 for future pain and suffering and $1,000 for medical bills.
A panel of appeals court judges in Manhattan reduced Griffin's award to $75,000, ruling yesterday that the jury's decision on future pain and suffering "deviates materially from what would be reasonable." Griffin will get $25,000 for future pain and suffering and $50,000 for past pain and suffering, the judges said in a unanimous ruling.
DELTA TO RECORD $103M IN CHARGES
ATLANTA — Delta Air Lines Inc. said yesterday it will record an additional $103 million in charges related to job cuts and discontinued use of airport facilities.
The Atlanta-based company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the charges will be recorded in the second quarter, which ends June 30.
Delta said it expects to record a $95 million charge linked to workforce reduction programs and an $8 million charge related to the discontinued use of certain airport facilities.
UNITED ATTENDANTS AGREE TO BUYOUT
CHICAGO — United Airlines and its flight attendants union have agreed to a buyout plan that will enable up to 600 flight attendants to leave the company voluntarily.
The plan announced yesterday applies to flight attendants who are at least 45 and have spent 15 or more years with United. Participants will be entitled to severance payments and retiree travel benefits.
United vice president Alex Marren says the agreement will mitigate the impact of its recently announced domestic capacity cuts of 14 percent by the end of this year and another 11 percent in 2009.
Chicago-based United is working on alternatives to layoffs with its other unions.
ICAHN SUGGESTS YAHOO SALE PRICE
SAN FRANCISCO — Hoping to negotiate a compromise, activist investor Carl Icahn urged Yahoo Inc. to declare it is willing to accept a takeover offer of $49.5 billion — about $2 billion above Microsoft Corp.'s last bid for the Internet pioneer.
Icahn recommended the price tag, which works out to $34.375 a share, in a letter he sent yesterday to Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock.
It marks the first time that Icahn has publicly indicated what price he has in mind as he tries to force Yahoo's sale before the Sunnyvale-based company's annual meeting on Aug. 1.
If a deal isn't done before August, Icahn will try to replace Yahoo's board with a slate of his own directors and then fire company co-founder Jerry Yang as chief executive.
SLOWDOWN SEEN IN BORROWING
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve said yesterday that consumer borrowing increased at an annual rate of 4.2 percent in April, slower than the 6.2 percent increase of March.
The slowdown reflected the fact that borrowing in the category that includes credit cards rose at an annual rate of just 0.4 percent, the weakest performance since borrowing in this area actually declined at a 1.8 percent rate in May 2005.
The slowdown in growth in credit cards and other revolving debt was offset somewhat by a surge in borrowing for auto loans and other types of non-revolving credit, which jumped at an annual rate of 6.5 percent, up from the March rate of increase of 5.5 percent.
