Union County, NC. Citizens Tie Wal-Mart Up In Court For Half A Decade

On August 8, 2002, Sprawl-Busters reported that residents in Monroe and Union County, North Carolina had successfully kept out a Wal-Mart supercenter by challenging their permit in Superior Court. But the retailer then sued Union County officials in a last ditch effort to get by litigation what they couldn’t get by regulation. Wal-Mart told the Charlotte Observer it had to sue. “It’s not something we were eager to do,” Wal-Mart spokesman Keith Morris said. “It was a very difficult decision, but we felt we had no other options.” Wal-Mart claims it filed suit because they weren’t receiving any response from the county on why a special-use permit was necessary. Fast forward five years, and the scene shifts to a North Carolina Court of Appeals in Raleigh. Citizens have spent more than $250,000 on a fight against the 206,000-square-foot superstore proposed for the Marvin-area. Union County Superior Court ruled in favor of the Wal-Mart opponents and the county, but now the case has come before three appeals judges, who will rule on the case in the next two to four months. If Wal-Mart loses, it could appeal again to the North Carolina Supreme Court. In March of 2006, a Superior Court judge ruled that the Union County Board of Adjustment had improperly awarded Wal-Mart a permit to build their store. The judge in that case found that the Wal-Mart plan approved by the board had been modified significantly from the original proposal, and thus required a new approval process. The Superior Court said the board’s decision to approve the permit “was arbitrary and capricious.” Now Wal-Mart is seeking to overturn that ruling. Wal-Mart claims that residents requested many of the changes made to the store plan, and that such changes did not affect the Wal-Mart’s “character and nature.” But a lawyer for Union County, which supports the residents in their fight against Wal-Mart, said that neither the county nor residents requested any changes. “We wanted the plans denied,” the county attorney said. “Almost everything on this plan moved,” he said. One Appeals court judge asked the county why it was against the decision of its own Board of Adjustment. The county explained that the BOA was an independent quasi-judicial board that made decisions the county itself could not overturn.

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Posted by Al Norman on Tuesday, April 03 | 0 comments | Permalink

New York, NY. Wal-Mart Finds A Worm In The Big Apple

Be careful what you bite off, Mr. Scott. It appears that Wal-Mart’s CEO has found a big worm in The Big Apple, and the retailer is ready to toss that market away. Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott told the New York Times yesterday, “I don’t care if we are ever here… I don’t think it’s worth the effort.” Exactly what opponents were thinking as well. Scott shared that glum view with the editorial board of the New York Times. The paper called Scott’s comments “a surprising admission of defeat, given the company’s vigorous efforts to crack into urban markets and expand beyond its suburban base in much of the country.” Wal-Mart clarified later that Scott was only referring to Manhattan. But organized labor has mounted a significant effort to stop Wal-Mart from locating anywhere in New York City. “We don’t care if they’re never here,” said the executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council. “We don’t miss them. We have great supermarkets and great retail outlets in New York. We don’t need Wal-Mart.” Thus far, every Wal-Mart attempt to enter New York City boroughs has failed: in Queens, and in Staten Island. In Queens, the developer unceremoniously dumped Wal-Mart from his project. Scott’s assessment was so downbeat, that the retailer’s spokesperson had to soften his statement around the edges. “Entering New York has been difficult, but not something we rule out,” a Wal-Mart spokesperson told The Times. “Lee said he personally didn’t care if we built stores there or not. It might be more trouble than it’s worth, but that he would leave that up to the real estate group that makes these decisions.” Scott apparently derided New Yorkers as “snobbish elites” the Times said, quoting Scott as saying, “You have people who are just better than us and don’t want a Wal-Mart in their community.”

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Posted by Al Norman on Thursday, March 29 | 0 comments | Permalink

Kittery, ME. Wal-Mart Slammed for Lobbying Against Port Security

Community activists this week charged that Wal-Mart and other retailers are placing their profits ahead of national security. The group Wake Up Wal-Mart, helped coordinate a national effort in more than 15 states called “Wal-Mart, Put America’s Security First.” The group held a press conference at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard on March 22, calling on Wal-Mart, America’s largest private importer of port containers, to stop lobbying against 100% scanning of port containers coming into this country. U.S. ports are considered to be a weak link in the chain of this country’s defense against terrorism, because only 5% of the port containers coming into the country are scanned for content. Wal-Mart has been aggressively lobbying against 100% scanning of port containers, despite the explicit threat to homeland security unscreened containers pose. The group says that another Wal-Mart container enters the U.S. every 45 seconds.

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Posted by Al Norman on Thursday, March 29 | 0 comments | Permalink

Site Fight Updates

Local site fight groups can claim victory on a few fronts this week, starting with the Livermore City Council in Livermore, CA, which unanimously approved a “supercenter” ordinance designed to stop large retail projects. The city council in Dayton, OH, passed a resolution supporting a union group’s efforts against Wal-Mart’s business practices. In addition, Wal-Mart opposition saw plans for one supercenter in Folsom, CA, scrapped, and another in Longview, WA, delayed:

Livermore Wal-Mart ‘supercenter’ denied [Contra Costa (Calif.) Times]
Add Livermore to the growing list of cities not interested in seeing a “supercenter” open up in its borders.

Resolution calls on Wal-Mart to do better [Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun]
Clark County Commissioners have joined Dayton in passing a resolution supporting a union group’s efforts against Wal-Mart’s business practices.

Wal-Mart scraps plans for new Supercenter [Folsom (Calif.) Telegram]
It looks like Folsom will stay a one-Wal-Mart town. Wal-Mart withdrew its application for a new Supercenter near Iron Point Road and Serpa Way this week.

Opponents win one round in Wal-Mart battle [Daily News (Longview, Wash.)]
Opponents of a proposed Wal-Mart SuperCenter won an appeal that will delay but probably not kill the project.

Posted by Corey Himrod on Wednesday, March 28 | 0 comments | Permalink

Wal-Mart v. Main Street USA

The United States Supreme Court could end up playing an unexpected role in the battle between Wal-Mart and local main streets across the country. The Court on Monday heard oral arguments in Leegin Creative Leather Products v. PSKS (PDF), a case involving a long-standing rule barring manufacturers from setting minimum retail prices.

The rule comes from the 1911 Supreme Court decision Dr. Miles Medical Co. v. John D. Park & Sons, and is one of the most famous and long-standing in antitrust law. The 1911 decision made it illegal for a retailer to agree to a deal with a manufacturer not to sell the manufacturer’s product below a certain price. Any changes to the law could have implications for larger retailers, including big-box stores such as Wal-Mart, keeping them from constantly slashing prices in a race to undercut the competition.

The size and immense buying power of stores such as Wal-Mart allows them to buy in large quantities, and then turn around and sell at low prices that smaller main street stores can’t match. Lawyers pushing for change in the current price-fixing rules argued that “the loss of competition on price would be more than made up for by the way a price floor would allow smaller retailers to compete on service rather than price.”

The justices appear split on the issue – Justice Stephen Breyer and other liberal justices questioned the wisdom of overturning a rule that has been instrumental in creating a highly competitive retail market in the U.S., while Justice Antonin Scalia and the more conservative justices agreed the old rule against price fixing was outdated and should be repealed. The Los Angeles Times noted that while the Justice Department under the Bush administration opposes the rule against price fixing, many state attorneys general say it is beneficial to consumers, and on Monday joined in the call to preserve the rule.

Posted by Corey Himrod on Wednesday, March 28 | 44 comments | Permalink

Major Victory for “Wal-Mart Free NYC”

From The New York Times:

Wal-Mart Chief Writes Off New York

Wal-Mart to New York: fuhgeddaboudit.

Frustrated by a bruising, and so far unsuccessful battle to open its first discount store in the nation’s largest city, Wal-Mart’s chief executive said yesterday, “I don’t care if we are ever here.”

H. Lee Scott Jr., the chief executive of the nation’s largest retailer, said that trying to conduct business in New York was so expensive — and exasperating — that “I don’t think it’s worth the effort.”

Mr. Scott’s remarks, delivered at a meeting with editors and reporters of The New York Times, amounted to a surprising admission of defeat, given the company’s vigorous efforts to crack into urban markets and expand beyond its suburban base in much of the country. In recent years, Wal-Mart has encountered stout resistance to its plans to enter America’s bigger cities, which stand as its last domestic frontier.

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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, March 28 | 0 comments | Permalink

Wal-Mart to New York: Drop Dead

From the New York Times:

Wal-Mart Chief Writes Off New York

Wal-Mart to New York: fuhgeddaboudit.

Frustrated by a bruising, and so far unsuccessful battle to open its first discount store in the nation’s largest city, Wal-Mart’s chief executive said yesterday, “I don’t care if we are ever here.”

H. Lee Scott Jr., the chief executive of the nation’s largest retailer, said that trying to conduct business in New York was so expensive — and exasperating — that “I don’t think it’s worth the effort.”

Mr. Scott’s remarks, delivered at a meeting with editors and reporters of The New York Times, amounted to a surprising admission of defeat, given the company’s vigorous efforts to crack into urban markets and expand beyond its suburban base in much of the country. In recent years, Wal-Mart has encountered stout resistance to its plans to enter America’s bigger cities, which stand as its last domestic frontier.

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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, March 28 | 27 comments | Permalink

Athens, GA. Wal-Mart Warned: Stop Selling Contaminated Cypress Mulch

An environmentalist in Georgia has warned big box retailers with garden centers to stop selling contaminated ‘cypress’ mulch, or face legal liability for doing so. Environmental scientist Dr. Sydney Bacchus of Athens, Georgia, sent a note this week to the legal departments of Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Lowe’s and Publix, informing them of the “significant corporate libability” they face for distributing and selling mulch made from cypress trees. “Your stores are selling stacks of cypress mulch in plastic bags,” Bacchus told Wal-Mart. “Cypress is a native wetland tree in the southeastern United States. Redbay, another tree native to the southeastern United States, occurs in areas where cypress trees grow. Redbay trees are being infected with a lethal fungal pathogen transported by the Asian beetle, Xyleborus glabratus. That invasive alien beetle initially was documented in 2002 near the Savannah, Georgia port, presumably arriving in contaminated material imported from Asia...In its native lands, that beetle is known to attack all species in the redbay family, in addition to tress in the oak/beech and wax myrtle family...After trees are infected by the pathogen, the leaves ‘wilt’ and the trees die.” According to Bacchus, redbay trees are logged and chipped together with cypress trees and sold as ‘cypress’ mulch. The chiping process does not kill the lethal pathogen or the Asian beetles in the infected trees. The beetles and the pathogens are “too small to be noticed” during the chipping process, and the bagged materials sold at these big box stores have the beetles and pathogens in them. “Your corporate liability from distributing and selling ‘cypress’ mulch is not restricted to the potential contamination of the mulch with the Asian beetle and lethal fungal pathogen it carries,” Bacchus notes. “During my researh on cypress in the southeast, I documented other fungal pathogens in cypress trees that do not require an insect vector and are capable of infecting many different species of trees and non-woody species.” Bacchus says these mulch products are a threat to valued landscape trees and other plants, and that trying to treat this mulch with fungicides and pesticides would only create a hazardous product for customers. The legal liability from selling contaminated ‘cypress’ mulch is that unsuspecting customers may kill their tress and other plants by using this mulch. Bacchus says the cypress tree is a “critical nesting habitat” for the federally protected wood stork, and the continued harvesting of cypress trees is a “taking” of the wood stork’s habitat. “In addition to the extensive corporate liability,” Bacchus concludes, “the ruinous practice of selling ‘cypress’ mulch carries a considerable anti-green stigma that a corporation concerned about its future would choose to avoid.” Bacchus gives the big box companies an out: there are environmentally sound alternatives to ‘cypress’ mulch, such as the chipped melaleuca, which is an alien invasive species. “Hopefully your prompt action to discontinue the distribution and sale of ‘cypress’ mulch at all of your stores will spare you from legal action arising frm damage caused by this mulch.”