Wal-Mart slapped with another copyright infringement suit
Wal-Mart and rapper-turned-fashion-designer, Master P (Percy Miller) are being sued by a London-based jeans designer, Pepe Jeans London LLC, the latest in a long line of copyright infringement suits brought against the retailer. Hip hop site BallerStatus (which, by the way, gets the award for coolest publication we’ve ever referenced) has the full story: Pepe alleges that the stylized “P” logo used for Wal-Mart/Miller’s “P. Miller” jeans infringes on Pepe Jeans’ logo, which also features a stylized “P.”
Master P And Wal-Mart Sued By Pepe Jean [Baller Status]
In documents filed in a Manhattan federal court last week, the company alleges that the logo infringes on the Pepe Jeans P logo, which is a stylized P enclosed in a circle. They also cite the use of the logo on P. Miller jeans’ hangtags.
This isn’t the first time Wal-Mart has been sued over copyright infringement. Earlier this year, Wal-Mart settled a long-standing copyright infringement lawsuit with Adidas, says a September 4, 2008 article in Footwear News:
In the original lawsuit, filed in August 2005, Adidas accused Wal-Mart of violating and diluting its trademark. The athletic brand’s complaint derived primarily from the retailer’s sale of shoes and sandals with two stripes. Adidas claimed the designs aped its three-stripe trademark.
Wal-Mart has also been sued for selling ‘fake’ Fendi Purses and Tommy Hilfiger shirts. From a 2006 article in BusinessWeek:
In 1998, after many rounds in court over several years with Tommy Hilfiger [Wal-Mart] paid out $6.4 million to settle a lawsuit that it was selling fake Hilfiger brand T-shirts. And in 1999 it paid more than $1 million to Nike (NKE) after being sued on similar charges.
Posted by Luke West on Thursday, October 02 | 0 comments | Permalink
Tom Mars on Equality in the Workplace: A Self-Fulfilling Parody
Wal-Mart’s senior counsel, Tom Mars, gave a speech this week on diversity in the company’s legal department. Because Wal-Mart has never had any diversity-related legal issues.
Mars used a “luncheon honoring the winners of the second annual survey of best law firms for women” as a time to showcase Wal-Mart’s gender diversity and commitment to flexible schedules. (The survey also examined the best companies for working mothers, and Wal-Mart didn’t make the list.) The fact that Mars was invited at all seems like an unintentional joke: not only is Wal-Mart currently involved in the largest class action gender discrimination lawsuit in history, but the company’s scheduling policies have also been condemned as bad for working mothers and hard on families.
Mars’ speech reveals a dichotomy within Wal-Mart: store employees and corporate employees are separated by a wide gulf, and different rules, benefits and salaries are applied to each. Women may very well make up a significant part of Wal-Mart’s corporate legal department, as Mars insists, but women working in Wal-Mart’s stores still face discriminatory promotion practices and lower wages than their male counterparts. That’s not something ANY working mother should support.
Law Firms Get Rated on Female Friendliness [New York Times Shifting Careers Blog]
Two weeks ago, on the same day that Lehman filed for bankruptcy protection more than 300 corporate lawyers showed up at the Mandarin Hotel in New York City for a luncheon honoring the winners of the second annual survey of best law firms for women sponsored by Working Mother Magazine and Flex-Time Lawyers. The high attendance in the face of such economic turmoil suggested that work/life issues and the promotion of female lawyers has genuinely become a pressing business issue for the legal industry.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, September 30 | 18 comments | Permalink
WASHINGTON SITE FIGHT: WAL-MART MOVING FORWARD IN TUMWATER
Tumwater Wal-Mart clears another hurdle [The Olympian (Wash.)]
TUMWATER—A Thurston County judge Monday denied a community group and union’s appeal of Wal-Mart’s plans to build an 187,000-square-foot Supercenter at 5900 Littlerock Road S.W., clearing another hurdle for the retail giant.
Superior Court Judge Christine Pomeroy said the proposed project was in line with city regulations and that its environmental review was adequate. The proposal has been under dispute since 2004.
“We’re very pleased,” Wal-Mart spokeswoman Jennifer Spall said. “We’ve had great support from the city and staff all along.”
Spall said Wal-Mart had not been surprised by the appeal, but “we expected this outcome.”
The appellants, the citizens group Tumwater Liveable Community and United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 367, have 30 days to decide whether to continue to the state Court of Appeals.
Seattle attorney Claudia Newman, representing the appellants, could not be reached for comment.
Wal-Mart has other Thurston County stores in Yelm and Lacey.
Wal-Mart wins in court [The Olympian (Wash.)]
Thurson County Superior Court Judge Christine Pomeroy denied an appeal by citizen group Tumwater Liveable Community and United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 367 and upheld prior approvals by the city hearings examiner and the City Council.
“This court finds the environmental impact statement is adequate,” Pomeroy said in the four-page opinion. “The court finds the project is consistent with the Littlerock Road Subarea Plan and the general commercial zone.”
Also see: Tumwater, WA. After Four Years, Wal-Mart Gets Court Nod [Battle-Mart Blog]
Posted by Luke West on Tuesday, September 30 | 0 comments | Permalink
CALIFORNIA SITE FIGHT: PRO-WAL-MART SURVEY THOUROUGLY DEBUNKED IN ATASCADERO
Independence of Wal-Mart surveyor questioned [New Times (Calif.)]
The Atascadero Chamber of Commerce is flaunting a recent survey as proof that there is “overwhelming” support from the business community to bring a Wal-Mart into town. But the results came from a company with ties to the controversial retail giant, and the Wal-Mart debate is heating up again in Atascadero.
The chamber paid $1,500 for a survey of local businesses, which was conducted by Los Angeles-based Cardinal Communication Strategies. Cardinal Communication Strategies is a subsidiary of Meridian Pacific, a public relations firm that has done work for Wal-Mart.
John Peschong, one of the early partners in Meridian Pacific, is also a partner with Cardinal Communication Strategies. Peschong did not respond to a request for comment before press time.
Cardinal Communication Strategies President Debbie McCall said she would not answer any questions, when contacted by New Times.
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Posted by Luke West on Thursday, September 25 | 0 comments | Permalink
Weekly Update for Elected Officials: Sept. 24, 2008
Check out this week’s issue of the Wal-Mart Watch Weekly Update for Elected Officials – a compilation of Wal-Mart news from across the country and beyond.
This week’s issue begins with reports of price gouging on the part of Wal-Mart. What’s truly abhorrent about these reports, however, is that they are being made by the very people affected most by the recent cavalcade of hurricanes to batter the Gulf coast. The Arkansas News Bureau and The Consumerist have more on these stories.
You’ll also find major news on the legal front. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed its second lawsuit against Wal-Mart in less than three weeks. The first involves the Americans with Disabilities Act in Illinois; the second involves age discrimination against a 67-year-old optician in Missouri. In addition to the EEOC lawsuits, Wal-Mart will now have to face another class action wage/hour lawsuit. Salvas v. Wal-Mart was originally certified as a class action back in 2004. Since then the case has gone back and forth through the Massachusetts court system, eventually being decertified and winding up in front of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on appeal. Well, the SJC released its opinion this week, ruling that the decertification was improper and that the lawsuit should be reinstated as a class action. A trial is possible, which could cost Wal-Mart hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid wages and damages. The Boston Globe and Boston Herald have the story.
Also check out the Product and Food Safety Report, where you’ll find stories on BPA (and a class action lawsuit regarding the chemical that includes Wal-Mart), dangerous soccer goals and baby cribs sold at Wal-Mart, and a pet food recall involving Purina products sold at the retailer.
And finally, check out our “Stateside” and “Wal-Mart International” sections to find out what’s going on with Wal-Mart around the country and across the globe.
Wal-Mart Watch Weekly Update for Elected Officials [September 24, 2008]
Posted by Corey Himrod on Wednesday, September 24 | 2 comments | Permalink
Massachusetts Supremes Send Wal-Mart Back to Court in Wage Case
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court - the state’s highest court - has reinstated a lawsuit filed by Massachusetts employees claiming the Wal-Mart pressured them to work off the clock and denied them rest and meal breaks.
These wage cases are probably becoming a familiar thing for those that follow Wal-Mart in the news. In fact, at this point its becoming surprising when Wal-Mart doesn’t do something illegal...even the company’s “save money, live better” tagline probably breaks some sort of law (truth-in-advertising comes to mind?). This particular Massachusetts wage case is impressive though, if only because of the long and winding road it has taken just in order to get back essentially to where it started.
To summarize as briefly as possible: Salvas v. Wal-Mart was initially filed in 2001 in Middlesex (MA) Superior Court, alleging Wal-Mart of illegally altering timecards in order to decrease payroll expenses, including clocking employees out just one minute after they had clocked in. The suit also alleged that employees were deprived of their meal and rest breaks. The case was certified as a class action in January of 2004, and then again on December 30, 2004 (Wal-Mart successfully appealed in between), on behalf of 65,000 or so present and former Wal-Mart employees. After Wal-Mart appealed (again), the case ended up back in Superior Court, where a third judge decided that the plainffs’ expert testimony should be excluded and decertified the class on the basis that each associate’s situation was unique, and therefore class action certification was improper.
The case was appealed again (this time by the plaintiffs) and it made it all the way to the Supreme Judicial Court, which heard oral arguments in May of this year. Today, the SJC finally released its opinion, which included the following:
In essence we are asked to determine (1) whether the judge abused his discretion by (a) allowing Wal-Mart’s motion to exclude the testimony of the plaintiffs’ principal expert, Dr. Martin Shapiro, as unreliable, and (b) allowing Wal-Mart’s motion to decertify the class of approximately 67,500 current and former hourly workers employed by Wal-Mart in Massachusetts for more than a ten-year period; and (2) whether the judge erred in granting summary judgment to Wal-Mart on all of the plaintiffs’ claims concerning meal breaks, as well as certain of the plaintiffs’ claims under the payment of wages law, G.L. c. 149, § 148, for failure to compensate the plaintiffs for the time they worked.
For the reasons set forth below, we vacate the judge’s orders. We conclude, inter alia, that the judge abused his discretion in allowing Wal-Mart’s motions to exclude the testimony of the plaintiffs’ expert and to decertify the class. We further conclude that the judge erred in granting partial summary judgment to Wal-Mart. We remand the case for the entry of an order certifying the class and for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
So, there you go. The class has been certifed again. Good deal. The case now goes back to the trial court for certification, after which a jury trial may not be too far off. You can read more about Wal-Mart’s wage cases here. The SJC opinion is here, and it is not exactly complimentary of the superior court judge that decertified the case.
Mass. court reinstates lawsuit against Wal-Mart [Associated Press via Boston Herald]
Posted by Corey Himrod on Tuesday, September 23 | 57 comments | Permalink
EEOC Files Second Discrimination Lawsuit Against Wal-Mart In As Many Weeks
For the second time in as many weeks, Wal-Mart has been accused of violating federal law by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
In the first lawsuit filed earlier this month in Illinois, the EEOC accused Wal-Mart of violating employment provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This time around, the suit involves not disability but age discrimination. The ADEA - or Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 - prohibits employment discrimination against persons 40 years of age or older in the United States. After an investigation, the EEOC determined Yvonne Loskot was fired from the retailer’s De Soto, Missouri, store because she was too old and made too much money.
According to the EEOC complaint filed in federal court in Missouri’s eastern district, Loskot was 67 when she was fired. According to a story from the St. Louis Business Journal, Wal-Mart has claimed Loskot was let go for violating an unspecified company policy.
Loskot, who worked for Wal-Mart for a decade, earned $18 an hour as a certified optician, making her the highest-paid employee in the De Soto store’s optical department.
Agency accuses Wal-Mart of age discrimination [CNN Money]
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Posted by Corey Himrod on Tuesday, September 23 | 7 comments | Permalink
CALIFORNIA SITE FIGHT: ATASCADERO POLL RAISES RED FLAGS
Wal-Mart poll triggers complaint [San Luis Obispo Tribune (Calif.)]
Anti-Wal-Mart activist Tom Comar and the Yes on Measure D-08 Committee have filed a complaint with the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission over the Atascadero Chamber of Commerce’s recent survey of business owners asking whether they want a Wal-Mart Supercenter in town.
The complaint alleges that the chamber violated its nonprofit status by paying for the survey and by advocating for residents to vote against Measure D-08,the so-called Atascadero Shield Initiative, which will be on the ballot in November.
The measure would prohibit commercial buildings in excess of 150,000 square feet, now allowed under the city’s General Plan, and bar any store in excess of 90,000 square feet from having more than 5 percent of its gross floor area dedicated to nontaxable goods such as groceries.
Also see: Doubts cast on makeup of businesses in survey [San Luis Obispo Tribune (Calif.)] after the jump.
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Posted by Luke West on Friday, September 19 | 0 comments | Permalink
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