Court: Wal-Mart to face massive class action suit

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

By PAUL ELIAS, Associated Press Writer

Monday, April 26, 2010


A sharply divided federal appeals court on Monday exposed Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to billions of dollars in legal damages when it ruled a massive class action lawsuit alleging gender discrimination over pay for female workers can go to trial.

In its 6-5 ruling, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said the world's largest private employer will have to face charges that it pays women less than men for the same jobs and that female employees receive fewer promotions and have to wait longer for those promotions than male counterparts.

The retailer, based in Bentonville, Ark., has fiercely fought the lawsuit since it was first filed by six women in federal court in San Francisco in 2001, losing two previous rulings in the trial court and again in the appeals court in 2007.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/04/26/financial/f103905D28.DTL&type=business#ixzz0mEOfeBoX




Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/04/26/financial/f103905D28.DTL&type=business

of the evidence in this case, I would nevertheless suggest that if the claimants' case has merit, I hope Wal-Mart is ground to fine powder in a court of law.

I mostly see women working in our local Wal-Mart.

You ask to see the manager! At my local Walmarts (Plural, they are everywhere!) I see almost nothing but women except when I have asked to speak with a manager! I never even thought about it until know!

If Walmart is guilty then I also hope to see them ground into powder!

And i hope they have to pay!!!!!!!!!!

The plaintiffs allege that less qualified men were promoted ahead of women. The statistics show that a far lower % of managers are women at WM compared to the % at other firms in the industry.

There are also many pay issues.

I know some people involved and would not be surprised if you see a HUGE settlement in the next few months because it sounds as if they have a pretty good case. That's a key reason why WM fought so hard against getting the class certified.

In a class action lawsuit, the attorneys get most of the money..

the lawyers have been working on this case since 2001 and haven't gotten paid a dime (I'm assuming, that's how it typically works in class action/contingency fee cases). So yes, if they win, the lawyers will be taking a fair chunk of change. However, if they lose, the lawyers also walk away with nothing, despite spending many, many billable hours on it since 2001.

My problem lies with the fact that usually we see the (maybe one dozen) lawyers walk away with millions for their fee's, while the people who had to suffer through the realities of their positions (many times it is people dying, not in this case), walk away with a couple of hundred dollars for their suffering. I do not think that is right. I don't think "tort reform" is the answer. Maybe a judgment that guarantees lawyers fair fees which is separate from the defendants compensation?

that would limit the amount of money the employees could get in damages, not the percentage of the damages the lawyers could claim.

The thing that most people don't understand is how much time and resources lawyers spend on cases like this. Think about it...they've been fighting this for 9 years already and there's no end in sight. A class action certification just means that now the case can be filed. They're still going to have to go back and have a trial, the results of which will certainly be appealed...potentially up to the Supreme Court. They're easily looking at spending 12-15 years on this case. Now do the math...let's conservatively say there are 10 lawyers working on this case, in varying capacities. Each lawyer normally bills at, say, $250/hour (in California, that's dead cheap). So each hour, these 10 lawyers would otherwise be making a total of $2500, were they getting paid at their regular rate. How many hours do you think they could have billed over 12 years? Multiply that by $2500 and you're into the millions EASILY. Now figure in the paralegal's salary, the research costs (which enters the thousands of dollars daily, easily, between the cost of Westlaw and/or Lexis and the salary of the librarian if they're lucky enough to have one), plus all of the other overhead a law firm has (rent on a suite or building in California, etc), the costs associated with filing the paperwork, etc. and their "windfall" starts to look reasonable in a big hurry.

I get that when it's taken out in one big chunk it looks like the lawyers are walking away with a windfall, but that's typically not the case. They're risking not getting paid ANYTHING for 12-15 YEARS of work, should they lose...or getting paid very little, should they not get a large settlement. Meanwhile, the Wal-Mart lawyers are getting paid their normal hourly rate, so they have absolutely not problem dragging this on for well over a decade.

for the same things, and they lost those!

Since corps. of now persons, I say we enforce the 3 strikes your out law on them. Remove their current management, and disolve the company into say 4 quarters, north, south east & west, and change to Regional stores.

:hi:

a woman with a computer engineering degree and stick her with a cashier job, then when she threatens to quit, shove her into cleaning fucking fish tanks at 7 fucking AM every day of the week with no breaks.

Perhaps, they'll think of that next time they keep shoving full time down a woman's throat, with no days off ever, when she clearly told you she was looking for a part time job, because she had another job already and SPECIFICALLY asked for part time.

Gee Golly, Wally World, wonder why that didn't last long? Guess, you'll have to "roll back" your stupid, sexist practices now, huh?

Dig deeper. You owe. You owe. So, off to court you go.

:rofl:

having worked in retail, it sure is amazing that those who WANT full time get only part-time hours, with (as you said) no days off!!!! And with no set schedule, no set shift, working such odd hours that you can never get a chance to find "real" employment, or even go back to college.

Set up for failure? Wal-mart, go fuck yourself.

as a cost of doing business in today's world.

Wal-Mart can probably tie this up in court for years, and eventually wear down the plaintiffs. The judicial system is still loaded with Reagan-Bush-Bush era judges. The Clinton era didn't help any since Hillary was once on Wal-Mart's Board, and being from Arkansas the Clintons had a soft spot for Sam Walton.

I hope the plaintiffs cash in -- and I hope their victory results in some modicum of justice for all retail workers, not just those at Wally-World. But this is David and Goliath with a vengeance, and I'm willing to bet that the worst case scenario for Wal-Mart is that they settle for paying a small fraction of what they owe. Most of what the plaintiffs would get in that scenario would eaten up by legal fees -- and if worse comes to worse for Wally World, they might have to lean on Mr. Justice Scalia to help them out.

I do hope I am wrong in this assessment . . .

I was wondering why I hadn't seen anyone else thinking that Walmart has nothing to worry about; just wait till the Supreme Court gets the case, even if it somehow isn't dismissed by one the more than 100 ( if I'm not mistaken) graduates of Regent University's fine law school that our beloved Dubya appointed to the federal judiciary (R.U. is Pat Robertson's contribution to American higher learning). And I'm gonna really go out on a limb and guess that Messrs. Scalia ,Roberts and their fellow repub appointees would somehow manage to find in favor of Walmart. Just a wild guess of course.

Celebrations are way too premature! Wal-Mart has way too much ammunition on its side! Don't save the best Champagne -- it'll turn to vinegar before justice is done!

You're already correct :D

country - can't imagine it would take much for Scalia to persuade enough of the Supremes to shoot this down

Paul Secunda, an associate professor of law at Marquette University Law School, called the ruling.

"Wal-Mart has potentially huge liability," he said. Given the number of employees involved and many years of pay at issue "the amount of liability can be many billions of dollars."

Wal-Mart had argued that it would be too unwieldy to bring the case forward as a class action -- a premise the appeals court dismissed.

"Although the size of this class action is large, mere size does not render a case unmanageable," the court wrote.

Seligman called Wal-Mart's argument "a version of too big to fail."

'we lowered the price of billions of items' .... lowered some items,cut brands from the selves and replaced those brands with "great value" items,and raised prices on the rest.

this IS the lawsuit that Wally World most feared.

who worked retail (Not WalMart, a department store), I would have to say that this is a lawsuit retail in general should fear. In my day there were 8 department managers, 6 women, 2 men. The Numbers 2 and 3 highest paid were the two men. More experience? Not so much. One of the guys had the least experience of everybody and the other man had more experience (at another store) than two of us ladies, not including the totally inexperienced male. When this was complained about, the female store manager got mad at us because we weren't supposed to talk about salaries.

and I think a previous Miss/Ms. America was working on the case. So now it's a Class Action...so what did this Ledbetter Legislation that Obama signed actually do for women????

Thankfully Walfart has the Supreme Court to appeal to...bunch of Catholic men that want 51% of the population home and pregnant. :sarcasm:

Next time around, I'm going to a Unisex Planet just for a rest.

out of business . . .

hmmm

because we did a case study of this 'corporation/slave labor camp' while I was in school...long before '01. But since then, I REFUSE to go there. REFUSE. And every time they get negative press, I applaud. We must stop this monster!

I'll pay a few more pennies for my made-in-china products elsewhere, thank you very much.

I make it a point to frequent my locally owned small businesses. I don't mind paying extra.

don't have any extra to pay . 19 out of 22 rulings made by the 9th circuit were over turned last year and 100 % of rulings the 9th circuit passed by 6 to 5 like this one were over turned .

2) there are some people who can't afford to pay more. I give them a pass. But many people who buy colas or meat more expensive than hamburger, fashions when they already have enough clothes, jewelry, fun shoes, video games, etc., can afford to use their principles to shop at a more ethical store than Wal-Mart. There are a lot of those people.

more people do. Those shopping at wm for groceries may be slammed. Those shopping for clothes... they do. Because they are going to have to buy 2-5 sets of clothing to last as long as one set bought elsewhere. Same with many of their consumer goods. Buying the more expensive item elsewhere has often proven to be the affordable option.

and was offered but refused being trained to be manager of that department, she was running the layaway department and was never offered manager training or given the title or anything. eventually she said she'd quit if they didn't move her out of layaway and they moved her to customer service but kept trying to send her back to layaway which she refused to do.

by the corporate court.