Wal-Mart Class Action Plaintiffs Get a Little Help From Their Friends

Wal-Mart is currently involved in multiple lawsuits across the country, and this story from the Kansas City Star shows how they’re all connected.

Philadelphia verdict against Wal-Mart good for KC plaintiffs [Kansas City Star (Mo.)]

A Philadelphia judge’s award of an additional $62 million to Wal-Mart workers was more good news for plaintiffs in similar actions against the company in the Kansas City area.

The award last week by Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Mark Bernstein came atop a $78.5 million verdict last year in a case alleging that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. forced workers to work through rest and meal breaks.

Although Bernstein awarded the additional money under Pennsylvania’s wage payment and collection law, Kansas — where an analogous “off the clock” suit against Wal-Mart is pending in Wyandotte County — has a comparable law.

The law comes into play when a company, without cause, withholds pay for more than 30 days.

Missouri, where another off-the-clock case is pending in Jackson County, does not have such a law. But the Missouri Court of Appeals recently upheld that case as a class action, and the Missouri Supreme Court last week rejected Wal-Mart’s motion to transfer the case to the high court.

Both cases allege that Wal-Mart committed “acts of wage abuse” against its hourly employees by forcing them to work off the clock, failing to pay them overtime wages and preventing them from taking rest and lunch breaks.

“What makes the Pennsylvania case analogous is that the violations spring from the same corporate practices that we’re complaining of in Missouri and Kansas,” said attorney Steve Long of Shughart Thomson & Kilroy, who represents the plaintiffs in both the Kansas and Missouri actions. “It’s the whole notion that Wal-Mart, as a matter of corporate policy, understaffs its stores systematically in order to save money, which results in people having to do work without pay.”

Wal-Mart has consistently denied that it withholds pay from employees. It has fended off some legal actions, but has lost or settled others. Besides the verdict won by workers in Pennsylvania, workers in California obtained a $172 million verdict. Another case in Colorado was settled by Wal-Mart for $50 million.

Two years ago, Jackson County Circuit Judge Sandra Midkiff certified the suit against the company by former and current employees in Missouri as a class action. Estimates put the number of class members at 225,000, meaning a verdict against Wal-Mart could result in a damages award in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

In upholding Midkiff’s ruling, the Missouri Court of Appeals in June actually broadened the plaintiff class.

Midkiff had certified workers who were allegedly forced to work through breaks as “opt out” plaintiffs, meaning they automatically become plaintiffs unless they affirmatively opt out of the case. But she certified workers who were allegedly forced to work off the clock as “opt in” plaintiffs.

The court of appeals rejected that distinction and made both categories of workers opt-out plaintiffs.

With the Supreme Court’s rejection last week of Wal-Mart’s transfer motion, the case is expected to go to trial next year or in 2009.

Meanwhile, the plaintiffs in the Wyandotte County action are awaiting word from District Judge George Groneman on whether he will certify their case as a class action. The issue has been before Groneman for five years.

Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, October 09, 2007

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