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This piece originally appeared at The Huffington Post:

More bad headlines for Wal-Mart, the sexist employer. The company was nailed again by its own employees--this time in Kentucky.

In Wal-Mart’s Annual Report to shareholders there is a two page note simply called “Legal Proceedings.” In it, the company summarizes “a number of legal proceedings” which, “if adversely decided...may result in liability material to the Company’s financial condition or results of operations.” In addition to the well-known collection of wage and hour ‘off the clock’ class action lawsuits, are the gender discrimination lawsuits, including the massive Dukes v. Wal-Mart case which began 9 years ago. Damages sought by the women in the Dukes case could be so large that Wal-Mart admits, “the Company cannot reasonably estimate the possible loss or range of loss that may arise from the litigation.”

Less well known is another lawsuit that was originally filed in the summer of 2001, just two months after the Dukes case. This case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. The lawsuit, EEOC (Janice Smith) v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. was brought by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of Janice Smith and all other women who made application or transfer requests since 1995 at the Wal-Mart distribution center in London, Kentucky, and were not hired or transferred into the warehouse positions for which they applied.

The EEOC sought backpay for these women not selected for hire or transfer, and injunctive relief. According to Wal-Mart, the Kentucky complaint charges that the retailer based its hiring decisions on gender---which is a violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights act. Wal-Mart told his investors that it could not “reasonably estimate the possible loss or range of loss that may arise from this litigation.”

But this week the EEOC helped quantify that loss. The federal agency announced that Wal-Mart had agreed to pay $11.7 million in back wages and compensatory damages, plus its share of employer taxes, and up as much as $250,000 in administration fees.

According to the EEOC, Walmart’s London Distribution Center denied jobs to female applicants from 1998 through February 2005. Wal-Mart hired male entry-level applicants for warehouse positions---but excluded female applicants who were equally or better qualified. Wal-Mart routinely would tell female applicants that order filling positions were not “suitable” for women, and that they hired mostly 18- to 25-year-old men for these positions.

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Back in September the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Friends of Wilderness Battlefield, and six nearby residents filed a lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Orange County. They alleged that the country “supervisors failed to comply with the county’s comprehensive plan. The suit also claims the county’s zoning ordinance is invalid because it fails to comply with state laws requiring such ordinances to protect historic sites, and there were procedural defects in the approval process.”

Today, the court heard the first arguments of the case.

Here’s a quick excerpt from the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s press release outlining their central arguments (it was emailed to me, so I don’t have a link):

“The County has an affirmative responsibility to protect those historic resources under Virginia law and under the County’s own Comprehensive Plan for development. Yet, the Board ignored the concerns, objections and offers of assistance from the Governor and the Speaker of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the National Park Service, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 250 Civil War experts, and others.

The Battle of the Wilderness, where 26,000 men were killed or wounded in May of 1864, may not be as well known as Gettysburg or Antietam, but it marked a milestone in the Civil War. It was the first time generals Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant met in battle. The site of the proposed 140,000-square-foot Wal-Mart superstore, along with 100,000 square feet of additional big box commercial development, stands on unprotected land within the historic boundaries of this battlefield.  It is also immediately adjacent to the Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park, which was established by Congress in 1927. In a split vote, the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted to approve a special use permit allowing the 240,000-square-foot project to proceed on August 25, 2009. This project poses a considerable risk of destruction and increased commercialization of a nationally significant and highly vulnerable historic site.”

We’ll certainly keep our eyes on the case. In the mean time, you can check out the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s website here and read more about the case here.

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After years of litigation, 88,000 employees in Washington will finally have closure after Wal-Mart agreed to pay $35 million to settle their class-action lawsuit regarding “off the clock” labor violations.  The class-action lawsuit began when Wal-Mart was initially sued by three employees who claimed that their managers forced them to skip their lunches and breaks in order to work longer shifts.

It’s been a busy year for Wal-Mart’s legal department.

Wal-Mart settles lawsuit by Wash. workers for $35M

SEATTLE (AP) — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has agreed to pay $35 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that says workers at Washington state stores were forced to skip meal and rest breaks or work off the clock.

The Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer and lawyers for the workers jointly announced Wednesday that a King County Superior Court judge has given final approval to the deal. The settlement covers 88,000 people who have worked at Wal-Mart in Washington.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers will receive $10.5 million to cover eight years of legal fees. Three workers who brought the lawsuit will receive $10,000 each, and other workers will get varying amounts depending on how long they worked for Wal-Mart and how much detail they can provide about their claims.

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Image above from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

When Wal-Mart’s use of an intricate web of subsidiaries to avoid state taxes was discovered, the N.C. Secretary of Revenue famously sent tax lawyers and auditors after the world’s biggest retailer. With state economies strapped for cash, North Carolina is now looking to halt such shenanigans before they can start.

A proposed “combined-reporting” law would require companies with multiple subsidiaries operating in several states to file tax returns as a single business. Opponents of this legislation have given lawmakers the shivers...But in the face of the state’s biggest budget crisis since the Great Depression, combined reporting took a first step Tuesday toward becoming law. After a contentious House Finance Committee meeting, the Democrat-led committee voted along party lines to approve a larger tax package that includes combined reporting.

Combined reporting basically treats a parent company and its subsidiaries as one entity for tax purposes. A driving force behind the move was the public realization of just how much money North Carolina has been losing through loopholes in its tax laws.

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According to the Courthouse News Service, Wal-Mart has been using a sales tax loophole to swindle customers out of a full refund on returned merchandise. Basically, the lawsuit claims that when customers have purchased items at a store that charges a particular sales tax, and have returned the item at a store in an area with a lower sales tax, Wal-Mart has refused to return the difference in paid tax if the rate at the point of sale is higher than that at the store where the merchandise is being returned.

(Plaintiff John) Whitewall says he bought a Blue Ray disc player from Wal-Mart’s store in Collinsville, Ill. for $214.04, at an 8.1 percent sales tax rate. But when he returned the player to Wal-Mart’s store in Glen Carbon, Ill., he received only $211.56, because that store has a 6.85 percent sales tax.

This seems like such a small issue - $3.50 or $4 dollars on a sale - but multiplied over thousands of transactions it has the potential to add up. Wal-Mart has had similar issues with returns before - late last year the Connecticut Attorney General began looking into Wal-Mart after charges began surfacing that major retailers (most notably Wal-Mart) were violating state law by charging a second sales tax when merchandise paid for with cash was exchanged. You can refresh your memory on that story here and here.

The lawsuit was filed as a national class action, and we’ll continue checking for updates. You can read the complaint here. The lawsuit is seeking actual damages, plus any additional damages the court would deem appropriate - read: punitive damages in an amount high enough to make Wal-Mart consider changing its practices.

It’s unclear if the plaintiff has examples beyond his own - the complaint mentions only the Blu-ray player purchase - but I have to believe they have additional plaintiffs. A class action based on one case is, after all, not really in much danger of moving forward as a class action.

Class Sues Wal-Mart Over Returns Policy [Courthouse News Service]

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WAL-MART NOT GIVING UP ON CHICAGO
    

• Wal-Mart Not Giving Up on South Side [Chicago Public Radio]
  Chicago got its first Wal-Mart store, on the city’s West Side, just three years ago. Unions and grassroots activists fought the controversial big box coming within city limits.
  

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A consumer fraud lawsuit was filed by Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard back in 2006 after his office found that from 2001 to 2006, Wal-Mart consistently rang up the wrong prices on items scanned in at the cash registers. It also failed frequently to put prices on items on the shelves, leaving consumers in the dark about overcharges. Now, nearly three years after it was first filed, Wal-Mart’s pricing case in Arizona has concluded.

Wal-Mart Stores has agreed to pay $1 million and hire independent monitors to ensure price accuracy at its Arizona stores under terms of a settlement with the Arizona Attorney General’s Office…

Wal-Mart, which trumpets its low prices, racked up nearly a half-million dollars in fines for problems including discrepancies between posted prices and checkout prices and the lack of posted shelf prices on many products. Attorney General Terry Goddard said Wal-Mart never fixed the underlying problems, instead paying the fines as if they were the cost of doing business.

On top of the money Wal-Mart has already paid out, the $1 million fine will be used to pay for the independent monitoring, and a portion of it will go to the AG’s office to pay for consumer education. Goddard’s Office has maintained that while the pricing irregularities were bad, the biggest problem revolved around the consumer’s inability to tell the true cost of a product at the point of sale.

The Yuma Sun has more details on the settlement:

The deal requires Wal-Mart to hire and pay for an independent monitor to conduct random checks of compliance with state pricing laws at each of the company’s 93 stores in the state during the next three years. Any time compliance at any store dips below 98 percent - meaning more than two items out of 100 checked are not priced or improperly priced - the company will pay a $2,500 fine. Repeat failures each would result in $5,000 penalties.

Back in 2006, Wal-Mart entered into a $1.5 million settlement with the Michigan Attorney General for similar pricing errors.

Arizona AG reaches pricing lawsuit settlement with Wal-Mart [Yuma Sun]

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To sum up: Wal-Mart cheated on its taxes, got caught, appealed its fines, lost the appeal, appealed THAT loss, and now has been told to go home again. Wal-Mart’s tax avoidance case in North Carolina, the breakthrough case that spawned a huge Wall Street Journal series, caused several state governments to re-examine their tax laws, and made REIT a household name, has taken another turn against the retail giant as the North Carolina Court of Appeals has ruled against them again:

“The Secretary acted within his lawful authority when he assessed additional taxes against plaintiff as a result of the combination of plaintiff with two related entities,” wrote NC Court of Appeals Judge Donna Stroud in her opinion.

Earlier this year, at the trial court level, Judge Clarence Horton ruled against Wal-Mart in its case filed back in 2006. Wal-Mart was seeking a refund of the over $30 million it was assessed by the North Carolina Department of Revenue for its use of a “captive REIT” tax strategy. In denying Wal-Mart’s claims then, Horton wrote:

“[Wal-Mart does] not deny the facts demonstrating the circular journey taken by the ‘rents’ paid by these plaintiffs, but contend[s] that on each leg of the journey [Wal-Mart was] only taking advantage of a lawful deduction afforded them by then-existing tax law. Such a piecemeal approach exalts form over substance, however …”

That’s twice now - at the trial court level and in the appeals court - that Wal-Mart’s attempt to recoup its tax money has been denied. You can find more background on the REIT strategy on our blog here, or in our tax report here (which also lays out several other tax avoidance schemes used by the company).

Wal-Mart loses appeal to get $30M in North Carolina tax refunds [Triangle Business Journal]

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REPUBLICAN APPOINTEES BLOCKED FEC CHARGES AGAINST WAL-MART

• Republicans Block Election Complaint against Wal-Mart [AllGov]
  Republican appointees to the Federal Election Commission found nothing illegal in the actions by Wal-Mart during last year’s election when the giant retailer was accused of pushing its employees to vote against Barack Obama and other Democrats.

• FEC Dismisses Wal-Mart Complaints [CQpolitics]
  The Federal Election Commission deadlocked on whether Wal-Mart violated campaign finance laws during the 2008 campaign. Because of the tie vote, complaints against the retailer were dismissed, documents released Thursday show.
  

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A new lawsuit has been filed by the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) against Wal-Mart.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claims some Hispanic employees at a Fresno Sam’s Club were subjected to a hostile work environment. The suit filed yesterday in U.S. District Court against parent company Wal-Mart Stores Inc. alleges that managers failed to stop repeated verbal harassment, including the use of derogatory words, against employees of Mexican origin.

The EEOC attempted to reach a settlement, but when an agreement could not be reached, a lawsuit was filed. The EEOC filed two lawsuits against the company in 2008, and settled two more. The current suit is seeking compensatory and punitive damages and the creation of a formal complaint procedure.

EEOC sues Fresno Sam’s Club on behalf of Latinos [San Jose Mercury News]

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Wal-Mart has agreed to pay nearly $2 million and improve safety at its 92 New York stores as part of a deal with prosecutors that avoids criminal charges in the trampling death of a temporary worker. Jdimytai Damour, 34, was crushed as he and other employees attempted to unlock the doors of a Long Island, New York, store at 5 a.m. on Friday, November 28th.

The news comes months after Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice began a criminal investigation into the death of Damour, a seasonal worker from Jamaica, Queens, who it is now known died from “positional asphyxiation” that resulted from direct and intense pressure having been applied to his chest - a result to be expected when a human being is trampled by 2,000 on-rushing shoppers.

[Wal-Mart] has agreed to implement an improved crowd-management plan for post-Thanksgiving Day sales, set up a $400,000 victims’ compensation and remuneration fund, and give a $1.5 million grant to Nassau County social services programs and nonprofit groups.

Perhaps more importantly, however, is that Wal-Mart will escape criminal prosecution as a result of the agreement. A telling quote from the Chicago Tribune - “The agreement included no admission of guilt by Wal-Mart.”

This aspect is important, because while Attorney Rice points out that Wal-Mart would have been subject to only a $10,000 fine if convicted, that conviction would have been hanging like a cloud over Wal-Mart during plaintiffs’ civil cases. The $400,000 victims’ compensation fund isn’t nearly as much as Damour’s family would expect to collect in a civil suit if Wal-Mart were to be found at fault, and anyone who accepts money from the compensation fund will automatically waive their right to sue. And as we reported following the tragedy, many media outlets and labor officials from UFCW to the Wall Street Journal have heaped the majority of the blame squarely on Wal-Mart for being woefully unprepared and understaffed (though that hardly would make winning a civil suit a slam dunk). From the Tribune:

Earlier this year, Damour’s family announced plans to sue the county, retailer and others. The family’s attorney did not immediately comment on Wednesday’s announcement. Any victims who accept payment from the Wal-Mart compensation fund will be required to waive their right to a separate civil suit against Wal-Mart, Rice said.

A heartfelt move by Wal-Mart, or part of a strategic plan to gain some positive press and escape further liability? You decide...More on initial reaction to the stampede, and Wal-Mart’s settlement announcement, after the jump.

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This was actually a little nugget turned up by The Writing on the Wal - the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund has filed a friend of the court brief supporting the plaintiffs in a historic, nationwide sex-discrimination lawsuit filed against Wal-Mart Stores.

They filed their brief before the Ninth Circuit heard arguments in Wal-Mart’s en banc appeal last week. A snippet from the Wichita NAACP blog:

LDF argued in its friend-of-the-court brief that accepting Wal-Mart’s position is not only bad policy, but also would be a radical rewriting of civil rights law. “When Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the clear intent was to expand protections against workplace discrimination by extending the remedies available to victims of intentional discrimination to include money damages. Wal-Mart is attempting to undermine those protections,” said John Payton, LDF President and Director-Counsel.

LDF was joined on the brief by a broad coalition of civil rights non-profits, including the Asian American Justice Center, Latino Justice, PRLDEF, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Legal Momentum, NAACP, National Partnership for Women & Families, National Women’s Law Center, and Women Employed.

We’ll most likely be waiting for quite a bit of time while the Ninth Circuit decides whether to reverse its previous decision that allowed Dukes v. Wal-Mart to proceed as a class action. Still, it’s impressive to see such a broad group of civil rights groups stand up on the side of Betty Dukes.

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At 5 p.m. this afternoon, Eastern Standard Time, Wal-Mart will try for a third time to halt the Dukes v. Wal-Mart sex discrimination lawsuit, as a panel of 11 judges from the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear Wal-Mart’s latest attempt to stop this case from moving forward as a class action.

On initial review, the Ninth Circuit voted 2-1 to allow the case to proceed to trial as a class action. Wal-Mart appealed, however, and just about a month ago the federal court agreed to rehear the case en banc - that is, a hearing where all judges of a court will hear the case, rather than just a panel of three. In this Marketplace story, attorney on each side give their opinions as to why the case should (or should not) proceed:

Ted Boutros (Wal-Mart): We have a tradition in this country that individuals get their day in court. Class actions are an exception to that that need to be used carefully so as not to defeat people’s rights.

Debra Smith (Equal Rights Advocates): It’s exactly the type of case that the federal judiciary envisioned being a class action. It’s David versus Goliath, you know, it’s classic.

As of right now you can check out the en banc status page of the Ninth Circuit for updates. A California Legal blog, the UCL Practitioner, is providing updates as well, and has provided this nice tip:

This morning’s Daily Journal reports on the upcoming argument and provides the names of the eleven judges on the en banc panel...According to the article, seven were appointed by Democratic presidents.

So there you go, seven out of eleven judges on the panel appointed by Democrats...take that for what you may. And we’ve already learned which side the EEOC and the Obama Administration are pulling for. We’ll keep you updated as we find out more on the hearing.

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THE Wal-Mart lawsuit - Dukes v. Wal-Mart, the largest discrimination class action in U.S. history - now has a new advocate. And let’s just say, it’s kind of a big one.

The federal government (through the EEOC, or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) had to this point elected not to get involved in the Dukes lawsuit. Yesterday, however, despite retaining many holdovers from the Bush Administration, the Commission finally threw it’s opinion into the ring. The EEOC filed an Amicus Brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, saying it was filing the brief because “this court’s resolution of issues relating to punitive damages and back pay in class cases may directly affect the commission’s enforcement of Title VII” of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, “particularly its systemic litigation.” The staff in charge of deciding whether to intervene in the Dukes case is currently made up of two Democrats and two Republicans.

“If Wal-Mart’s arguments were accepted, it could effectively preclude a claim for punitive damages in most if not all Title VII pattern-or-practice cases including those brought by the Commission,” the EEOC wrote.

The EEOC isn’t actually taking a stand on the merits of the case itself - the Commission is only supporting the class action moving forward, deeming the issue important enough to its functions to intervene and assert its voice.

“If Wal-Mart’s arguments were accepted, it could effectively preclude a claim for punitive damages in most if not all Title VII pattern-or-practice cases including those brought by the Commission,” EEOC Attorney Barbara Sloan wrote. “It would be ‘nonsensical’ to prevent victims of particularly egregious discrimination from proceeding collectively.”

Needless to say, attorneys for plaintiffs welcomed the news, while Wal-Mart’s legal team and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce were less than pleased. The EEOC news comes about a month after the Ninth Circuit announced it would re-hear the class action certification decision en banc - when one party requests an hearing en banc, it means they are requesting a hearing where all judges of a court will hear the case, rather than a panel of them. That hearing is currently scheduled for March 24.

Obama Administration Sides With Wal-Mart Workers [Bloomberg]

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A federal judge in Nevada has halted a class action against Wal-Mart and dog food manufacturer Menu Foods before it even had a chance to begin. His ruling held that the need for individual factual inquiries made a class action untenable. This isn’t completely surprising - the lawsuit was filed based on deceptive trade practices and claimed Wal-Mart’s Ol’ Roy pet food products were misleading in their labeling in that they claimed to be made in the USA, when in fact many ingredients came from China. The Judge argued that this meant everyone in the class would have had to purchase the food based on the misleading labeling, something that would have to be determined on a case-by-case basis. You can read the entire court order here.

While the decision wasn’t surprising, the timing might have been:

The judge’s decision was unusual in that he denied class certification before any substantial discovery had been performed. Indeed, the court noted that so-called preemptive motions are generally disfavored, since “the shape and form of a class action evolves only through the process of discovery.” However, the court determined that the class was untenable as a matter of law, and “it would be a waste of the parties’ resources and judicial resources to conduct discovery on class certification.”

So, not only will the class action not move forward, but no discovery will be done unless individual cases are filed - which means many of the facts as to how we ended up with such a far-reaching pet food scare will remain a mystery until then.

The Ol’ Roy suit was originally filed in 2007 and eventually consolidated with a class action in New Jersey which alleged that tainted food distributed by Menu Foods and others led to the death of hundreds of pets. That action consisted of over 100 suits that grew out of the largest pet food recall in U.S. history, and settled in April of last year for $24 million. The Ol’ Roy suit, however, was severed from the Menu Foods action prior to the settlement.

Wal-Mart Cuts Class Off at the Pass in Pet Food Case [Law.com]

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Plaintiffs in Dukes v. Wal-Mart continue to count on the testimony of former Wal-Mart executive vice president Thomas Coughlin - he who has been convicted of embezzling $411,218 from the company - to help buoy its sex discrimination class action. This according to a rather choppy and meandering article from the Madison County Record in Illinois. Nothing really new here, but the piece does include a time-line of events leading up to the current status of the Dukes case.

Coughlin is currently under house arrest - his defense attorneys successfully argued that prison time could kill him considering his poor health. You can read more on Coughlin here and more on the Dukes case here.

Lawyers in $11 billion Wal-Mart case counting on embezzler’s testimony [Madison County Record]

SAN FRANCISCO - Retailer Wal-Mart stands strong while other businesses fall, but class action lawyers aim to knock it down with an $11 billion lawsuit.

Their star witness, former Wal-Mart executive vice president Thomas Coughlin, earned their respect by embezzling $411,218 from his employers.

Coughlin spent 27 months in home confinement and remains on probation.

Lawyers at the nonprofit Impact Fund in Berkeley and associates around the nation count on Coughlin to swear that Wal-Mart discriminated against female workers.

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From IPS (Inter Press Service): When a woman was interviewed for a job at a local Wal-Mart in the Mexican capital, the first thing she was asked was whether she was pregnant – a question she did not know at the time was illegal.

The woman, who goes by the fictional name of Paulina, is just one of many cases IPS cites in describing the growing problem in Mexico of discriminatory behavior towards women.

“I had to present a certificate of my state of health to get the job,” Paulina tells IPS in the parking lot of one of the U.S. retail giant’s stores in Mexico City. Paulina’s case is an illustration of the persistence of discriminatory practices that violate the labour rights of women in Mexico, even though they represent 42 percent of the workforce in Latin America’s second-biggest economy.

In the U.S. under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, pregnant women cannot be treated differently than other workers experiencing a temporary disability. In effect, they are treated as being temporarily disabled under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and are therefore subject to certain protections. And despite that fact, Wal-Mart has still been the subject of numerous disability-related lawsuits, many of which we have documented here. Several years ago, Wal-Mart was forced to settle with the EEOC after the company failed to hire a woman based on her pregnancy. In Mexico, however, there aren’t nearly the protections that exist here to the north - and a recent report by the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Project has focused on Wal-Mart in particular:

The report, “Lo barato sale caro: violaciones a los derechos humanos laborales en Wal-Mart México” (roughly, “cheap is costly: violations of labour and human rights in Wal-Mart Mexico"), concluded that the corporation violates rights in terms of wages, health, security, hours, overtime pay and labour benefits. It also blocks the creation of trade unions under the argument that its employees are considered “associates...” One of the authors of the report, PRODESC researcher Shaila Toledo, pointed out that women workers suffer discrimination and exploitation, such as being required to take a pregnancy test before they are hired, and being bypassed for promotion.

With Dukes v. Wal-Mart slowly moving forward here in the U.S., this doesn’t speak well for Wal-Mart’s claim to be changing its ways in North America.

LABOUR-MEXICO: “They First Asked if I Was Pregnant” [IPS]

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Nationally, 15% of truck drivers are African-American. At Wal-Mart? Not so much. Not too long ago, it was determined that African-Americans comprised only 4-6% of Wal-Mart’s fleet, which employs 10,000 truck drivers. A discrimination class action was filed, and in May of 2007, a district court judge ruled that Wal-Mart’s hiring policies created a common group of potential plaintiffs (African -American truckers who either were not hired or were deterred from applying for Wal-Mart positions). A class action was born. Now, that case is no more.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of Bentonville announced Friday it will pay $17.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging the retailer discriminated against African-American truck drivers.

The federal suit accuses Wal-Mart of discriminating against black over-the-road truck drivers in the company’s private fleet. The settlement includes an agreement by Wal-Mart to provide priority job placements to 23 suit plaintiffs, direct notice of all future job openings to interested plaintiffs, establish benchmark hiring goals so that the racial composition of future hires is proportionate to the composition of applicants, hire a diversity recruiter, and enhance its recruitment efforts and advertising targeted to blacks.

You can read Wal-Mart’s statement here. Read more about Wal-Mart discrimination here. We’ll have more info as it comes available.

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In the Dukes v. Wal-Mart saga, chalk up the latest round as a win for Wal-Mart. In this case, Wal-Mart - which had already seen a 3-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirm class action status - had requested what is referred to as an en banc appeal. Cases that go before the U.S. Court of Appeals are heard by 3-judge panels, so when one party requests an hearing en banc, it means they are requesting a hearing where all judges of a court will hear the case, rather than a panel of them. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco obliged, and ruled late last Friday that a larger panel of judges will reconsider whether the case should be certified as a class action.

Counsel for plaintiffs did not seem to be necessarily surprised by the decision - Joseph Sellers, co-lead counsel, said the decision on review by a larger panel was “not a shock” and was surprised that it took them that long to grant a rehearing.

Brad Seligman, a Berkeley, Calif., lawyer and Sellers’ cocounsel, said the appellate court order is just one more step along the way. “We’re happy to move forward and we’re very confident we’re going to prevail in this case,” he said.

If the full panel reverses the class action decision, that would undoubtedly mean less financial risk for Wal-Mart. Denial of class action status would force women to pursue their discrimination cases individually - something many would not be likely to do because of legal fees and the length of the legal process- instead of allowing the case to proceed as the largest discrimination class action in U.S. history. You can check out past coverage of Dukes here and here.

9th Circuit orders rehearing on status of Wal-Mart sex-bias lawsuit [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette]

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The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court will hear arguments this week in the case of Cynthia Haddad, a former pharmacist who filed suit alleging that she was the victim of discrimination by Wal-Mart management. To be more specific, after finding out that she was making less than her male counterparts, Haddad asked for a raise and equal bonus - Wal-Mart gave her the bonus, then fired her two weeks later for an incident that had occurred nearly a year and a half before.

In June 2007, Haddad won a $1 million decision, and then the jury added an additional $1 million in punitive damages. Wal-Mart appealed, and while the initial verdict was upheld, the punitive damages were overturned. The Supreme Judicial Court, the highest court in Massachusetts, will hear arguments on the punitive damages Thursday.

Mass. court to weigh Wal-Mart discrimination case [Boston Herald]

BOSTON — The state’s highest court is set to hear arguments this week in the case of a former Wal-Mart pharmacist who claimed she was fired after asking to be paid the same as her male colleagues.

Cynthia Haddad filed the gender discrimination lawsuit after she fired in April 2004 after 10 years at the Pittsfield Wal-Mart.

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