Wozniak v. JBC Safety Plastic, Inc.

Citizen enforcer Paul Wozniak and settling party JBC Safety Plastic, Inc. (“JBC”) entered into an out-of-court Settlement Agreement on June 23, 2014, which resolved Wozniak’s allegations that JBC sold traffic cones containing the heavy metal lead in the State of California without providing the requisite health hazard warnings.

As part of the settlement, JBC agreed not to sell any traffic cones in California after July 1, 2014, unless the traffic cones meet the reformulation requirements outlined in Section 2.1 of the Consent Judgment or have Proposition 65 warnings provided pursuant to Section 2.3.  Additionally, by July 31, 2014, JBC agreed to notify its vendors of the reformulation standards and instruct them to either label the traffic cones currently existing in inventory or return them to JBC.  Should JBC provide written certification by December 1, 2014, and continuing into the future, that all traffic cones sold in California qualify as reformulated and also that JBC has administered its own independent testing of the traffic cones to ensure they are reformulated, Wozniak agreed to waive a portion of the civil fine that would otherwise be applied. 

The Settlement Agreement requires settlement payments of $40,000, divided therein between civil penalties, 75% of which are paid to California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, and compensation to whistleblower Wozniak and his counsel for their successful enforcement of this matter in the public interest.