Short of a global lobster die-off, just about the last thing Red Lobster and parent company Darden Restaurants (DRI) needs right now is news of a customer lawsuit alleging a serious health and safety problem.

Like finding lye in its beer lines.

Though it's an isolated incident, a man from Panama City, Fla., claims he was on the receiving end of Red Lobster's worst nightmare when he was scorched with potassium hydroxide -- lye -- from a Budweiser he drank during a business lunch in Dallas in May 2011. According to The Dallas Observer, Justin Grogg took a sip of his beer and immediately felt his throat, esophagus and stomach starting to burn.

 

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) for years enjoyed the highest credit rating possible, the prized "AAA" that's viewed as the gold standard in the business world. But Warren Buffett's company lost that rating in 2010 and saw a second cut Thursday.

Standard & Poor's said it has cut Berkshire's rating to "AA" from "AA+." That's the same rating the company has received from Moody's, but Fitch has taken a dimmer view and rated it one notch lower.

Buffett has long been a champion of buying stocks, but that attitude may have hurt Berkshire's credit rating. In handing down its cut, S&P cited the riskiness of Berkshire's stock holdings, according to Bloomberg. The agency also doesn't like the way the company retains less capital than its competitors to support its insurance operations. 

Updated at 10:50 a.m. EST.

Hundreds of thousands of parents have validated Walt Disney's saying "All dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them." 

In this case, Disney (DIS) has listened to the more than 210,000 petitioners who complained about the sexy makeover given to the fiery-haired Merida, heroine of "Brave." The media giant on Wednesday restored the original, more realistic version (pictured, left) to its official princess Website. On late Thursday, Disney told MSN moneyNOW that the makeover had been designed as a "one-time effort."

As reported Friday, parents were up in arms over Merida's sexy makeover (pictured, right) to get her ready for her coronation into the Disney princess lineup. 

 

Shares of Wal-Mart (WMT) slumped in early trading Thursday after the world's largest retailer posted earnings that lagged analysts' estimates and issued guidance that fell short of consensus forecasts -- yet again -- because of what CEO Mike Duke described as "considerable headwinds." Its rivals, though, seem to be doing better.

Among Wal-Mart's lackluster data points, first-quarter net income rose 1.1% to $3.78 billion, or $1.14 per share, versus $3.74 billion, or $1.10 per share, a year earlier. Sales increased 1% to $113.4 billion. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expected profit of $1.14 per share on revenue of $116.1 billion. U.S. comparable-store sales, a key retail metric measuring revenue at stores open at least a year, fell 1.4%. 

Does your office ever make you want to scream at ashtrays, shove people out of doorways and glare at your co-workers for eight hours straight?

In just about any workplace in America, these would be considered unchecked hostility issues worthy of a visit with the human resources rep and, maybe, a bump in the company medical plan's mental health coverage.

At Florida's Dynamic Medical Services, that's just part of the Scientology-based status quo, according to a complaint filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission earlier this month.

Rommy Sanchez, whom Dynamic is accused of firing after she stopped attending the Church of Scientology, completed enough company-mandated courses to be taken to the church by a fellow Dynamic employee. Those "courses" are where all the shoving, prolonged staring and ashtray screaming came in.

 

It's just some non-MBA's quack theory that the market strips away all humanity and transforms people into commodities and resources rather than sentient beings whose welfare must be taken into account. There's no quantitative truth to that, right?

Well, maybe just the research of a couple of German economists.

According to a release from the universities of Bamberg and Bonn, a study by economists Armin Falk and Nora Szech released in the journal Science found that markets erode people's morality and help them make decisions that look outright awful without the thin veil of commerce. In short, capitalism makes us do some not-so-nice things.

 

A scandal continues to unfold in Washington surrounding Internal Revenue Service employees who inappropriately targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

But there's another issue here, one that's getting significantly less attention though it's also important: Why are tax-exempt groups spending tens of millions of dollars on political advertising? And why has the IRS turned a blind eye to this practice for years?

That's the subject of a few pointed articles lately after news emerged that the IRS was overly aggressive in handling the requests of conservative groups that desired the tax-exempt status classified as 501(c)4.

Groups with this status are supposed to be "social welfare" organizations that serve their communities, writes Michael Hiltzik of The Los Angeles Times. 

The restaurant and beer industries are balking at a National Transportation Safety Board proposal to toughen the legal definition of drunken driving, arguing that it would penalize moderate social drinkers.

The NTSB has recommended that lawmakers lower the legal threshold for drunken driving, from a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08% down to 0.05%.

The American Beverage Institute, a restaurant trade association with 8,000 members, denounced the NTSB proposal, which isn't binding on state legislatures responsible for passing the laws, as "ludicrous."

"Moving from 0.08 to 0.05 would criminalize perfectly responsible behavior," said Sarah Longwell, Managing Director of ABI, in a press release. "Further restricting the moderate consumption of alcohol by responsible adults prior to driving does nothing to stop hardcore drunk drivers from getting behind the wheel."