A Wal-Mart employee in Oregon has accused Wal-Mart of demoting her because - of all things - she took time off during the Christmas shopping season to undergo an emergency hysterectomy.
According to her complaint, which was filed last week in Oregon’s federal district court, Lynda deBarros had worked for Wal-Mart since mid-2000 and over the last 8 years had received consistently positive evaluations resulting in increased responsibilities. She had advanced from photo technician to assistant manager, and then was transferred to a new store to oversee its construction.
DeBarros began experiencing health problems in October 2007, of which I will let The Oregonian do the describing:
On Nov. 14, 2007, deBarros went to her gynecologist because of excessive menstrual bleeding, documents show. DeBarros “had a strong family history of cancer and was very worried that cancer was the cause of her excessive vaginal bleeding.” On Dec. 3, 2007, her doctor recommended an emergency hysterectomy, which was scheduled for Dec. 10. When deBarros notified her boss, Kenneth Hutchison, about her medical condition, the suit said, he scolded her and told her to go to the doctor on her time, not his.
The moral of the story is apparently this: don’t have emergency health issues during the holidays, as deBarros was advised to postpone the procedure because it was Wal-Mart’s “busiest time of the season” and they needed all hands on deck. All that excessive bleeding she was experiencing? Yeah, you just tough that out until the holiday shopping season is over...you’ll have plenty of time for your emergency surgery after the new year.
Two weeks after returning from FMLA leave, deBarros was demoted from her assistant manager position to a simple associate position. This is the second time in two months an FMLA case has made news in a major state paper - in October a West Virginia woman filed suit against Wal-Mart alleging she was wrongfully fired after she used her FMLA leave to care for her young son who had a rare bowel disorder, requiring 12 months of hospitalization and several surgeries. Despite working for Wal-Mart since 1994 with positive evaluations, Arlene Jett was reprimanded for absenteeism after taking her first FMLA leave. Both cases are ongoing.
Employee in Oregon sues Wal-Mart [The Oregonian]
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Posted by Corey Himrod | Permalink
Wal-Mart has, unsurprisingly, been the target of more lawsuits than one can count over the years. The company’s treatment of its workers and “save money at all costs” mentality has resulted in a flood of legal challenges ranging from single plaintiff suits to multi-million dollar class actions.
Dukes v. Wal-Mart is of course one large example (the largest class action in American history, actually), as are the myriad wage/hour/overtime class actions the company faces. Recently, we also reported on Wal-Mart’s poor treatment of its disabled workforce.
Wal-Mart Watch will be focusing on these individual stories, highlighting cases that warrant further attention because of the insight each gives in its own way on how Wal-Mart feels about its employees.
John Lennex v. Wal-Mart Stores East, L.P.
John Lennex was hired by Wal-Mart on September 7, 2004, as a Bicycle Assembler. You take your kid into Wal-Mart, buy him the latest Huffy bicycle (now conveniently made overseas, since Wal-Mart forced the bike manufacturer to go broke), and John Lennex will put it together for you. Or he would have, had he not been fired.
Lennex has coronary artery disease. He requires a defibrillator to regulate his heart beat, and is limited in his life activities. He is recognized as have a life-limiting disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. And when he was hired, his managers were well aware of his condition.
When he was hired, bicycle assemblers were also allowed a certain comfort in their job – that is, they were actually allowed to sit on a stool while they built their bikes. When he received a new department manager in 2005, however, this changed. His new supervisor, Tye Wilson, told the employees to say bye-bye to stools or chairs. Despite knowing of Lennex’s disability and the fact that stools were readily available, AND that Lennex had performed his job admirably to that point, Wilson refused a request by Lennex for a reasonable accommodation that would let him continue to sit.
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Posted by Corey Himrod | Permalink
Mary Bach, a woman from Murrysville, Pennsylvania has won her fourth lawsuit against Wal-Mart after being over-charged for a dress. Bach, nicknamed the ‘scanner-lady’ has gained a certain level of fame recently, as a champion of consumers for filing numerous small-claims suits against retailers for what she calls: “electronic shopper-lifting.” She has sued Kmart and Eckard after being over-charged for products. Wal-Mart plead no-contest, having violated a consumer-protection law and had to pay Bach $164 including court fees. “Bach said it is not about the money” says WPXI-TV (Pa.), who also quoted her as saying:
“Here you have retailers who can reach into your wallet by overcharging you multiple times and they then shrug their shoulders and say, ‘oops it’s a mistake.’”
The Associated Press said that Bach was a key player in passing a law which requires the state to conduct inspections of price-scanners.
Wal-Mart is accustomed to being sued over pricing issues. Just over a year ago, we posted a story from the Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter about how Wal-Mart was fined almost $90,000 from the Wisconsin State Legislature for over-charging for bulk food items.
Woman Sues Wal-Mart Over Price Problems [WPXI-TV (Pa.)]:
DELMONT, Pa.—A woman won a lawsuit against Wal-Mart after she claimed she was overcharged for purchases at the chain’s store in Delmont.
Wal-Mart pleaded no contest and will play Mary Bach $164, including $64 in court fees.
In an earlier version of this story, Channel 11 posted only a portion of Wal-Mart’s response to the litigation. The following is Wal-Mart’s response in its entirety:
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Posted by Luke West | Permalink
Time to pull that roll of aluminum foil out of the pantry, because they’re after us, and they want our braaainnns…
Or so says Jerry Rose, one of our neighbors to the north in British Columbia, who has filed one of the more bizarre lawsuits I have seen in some time. Rose is after $2 billion in damages from Microsoft, Telus, Wal-Mart, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (among others) for the usual list of charges: mind control, satanism, and witchcraft. We’ll look around and see if we can get a copy of his complaint, but according to the National Post:
Mr. Rose’s claim states “that he has been subject to invasive brain computer interface technology, research, experiments, field studies and surgery” and also named the University of B.C. and the B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons as defendants.
Not to be outdone, an attorney for Microsoft assured the judge that there is in fact no scientific evidence that mind control is possible, although anyone that has been forced to watch a Sarah Palin rally may beg to differ. We’re not sure what role Wal-Mart has played in all of this, but if I had to guess, witchcraft would be my bet.
Judge Fraser Wilson, while calling the case unusual, has said he will need to be convinced there is nothing in Rose’s claim that could not be litigated before he dismisses it.
B.C. judge hears $2B lawsuit against Microsoft, Wal-Mart over brain control [CanWest News Service]
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Posted by Corey Himrod | Permalink
Hey, Wal-Mart? Do you feel the winds blowing today? Ah, yes, the winds of change. Indeed, that key demographic of Wal-Mart women across the country surely voted their pocketbooks and their consciences - and helped the electorate hand a decisive victory to Senator Barack Obama.
You can bet the Walton family and CEO Lee Scott weren’t doing a victory dance last night when the election was called for Obama. Oh, sure the company’s pr and gov relations guy, Leslie Dach has tried really, really, really, really hard recently (especially as things were looking really promising for Obama) to convince everyone that Wal-Mart was “non-partisan” – even going so far as to air infomercials for both candidates in the company’s stores. But, those “non-partisan” activities, like so many things Wal-Mart does are mere distractions from what the company was really up to.
In August, the Wall Street Journal exposed Wal-Mart’s mandatory meetings to attempt to instruct its employees to vote against Democrats and Senator Obama – oh, sure they nuanced the message in some settings, but the point was clear. And, the company implemented a plan at the beginning of 2008 to train all of its managers how to fight the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) should Obama be elected. During the presidential campaign, we saw anti-EFCA ads (and anti-Obama – walking the legal line in various forms) from several different organizations - including (but, not limited to): the Workforce Fairness Institute; Center for Union Facts; The Center for Consumer Freedom and of course, the Employment Policies Institute. Since these groups don’t disclose all of their contributors, it’s hard to prove that Wal-Mart gave them money, but we have a pretty good idea that Wal-Mart invested a nice chunk of change in their efforts. Maybe someone should ask Wal-Mart.
For the past eight years, Wal-Mart has had a free pass to trample workers’ rights - in part due to the ineffectiveness of the NLRB – and in part due to a system that has favored employers. The company’s business model of paying appallingly low wages, offering catastrophic, unaffordable health care plans, forcing employees to forgo overtime pay, manipulating employees’ schedules as punishment for standing up to the company, discriminating against employees and a host of other issues – evident from a multitude of lawsuits - and from the mouths of employees themselves - is finally in jeopardy.
Yep, change is coming. With an Obama presidency and the Democratic gains in Congress, average Americans – including Wal-Mart workers - will once more have a say and stand a chance of getting a fair shake. Wal-Mart knows it – and fears it.
Expect to see the company increase its lobbying expenditures in the next few months and ramp up its efforts to mislead its employees about EFCA – which by the way, could finally give its employees the ability to stand up to the company. And, expect to see even worse treatment of employees to send a clear message to them about who is still in charge (and Wal-Mart just doesn’t ever seem to learn on this front).
Posted by Media Team | Permalink
Wal-Mart has, unsurprisingly, been the target of more lawsuits than one can count over the years. The company’s treatment of its workers and “save money at all costs” mentality has resulted in a flood of legal challenges ranging from single plaintiff suits to multi-million dollar class actions. Dukes v. Wal-Mart is of course one large example (the largest class action in American history, actually), as are the myriad wage/hour/overtime class actions the company faces.
Wal-Mart Watch will be focusing on these individual stories, highlighting those cases that warrant further attention because of the light each sheds in its own way on how Wal-Mart does business.
Maria Sutherland v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. [Filed September 10, 2008; Case ongoing]
Sutherland was hired in the deli department at in Indiana Wal-Mart in 1999. In 2006, she was approached by a co-worker, Arturo Aguas, at 9am. He informed her that she had boxes in the cooler that needed to be retrieved. When she went to the cooler, what she found was Aguas waiting for her with a present and card – the card was inappropriate, indicating that Aguas wanted to “spend many years loving” Sutherland. He then grabbed Sutherland and tried to kiss her, and blocked the exit when she tried to leave. He also attempted to reach underneath her skirt and shirt. When Sutherland was finally able to push him off, she was so upset that she left work early. It was the first time in 7 years that she had done so.
The next morning she reported the incident, turned in romantic notes from Aguas, and stated she did not want to work with him again. Despite that, she was directed back to work with Aguas and told to act as if nothing had happened while an investigation was conducted.
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Posted by Corey Himrod | Permalink
Well, my faithful blog readers, after two years of working on Wal-Mart issues and more than a year as the main editor of this blog, our Friday Blog Round-Up today will be my last post. I hope you all continue reading, commenting and working to challenge Wal-Mart’s business practices. Enjoy the writing of my Wal-Mart Watch colleagues and try to keep the infighting to a minimum. As for now - on to the week’s blogs!
BLOGGERS WEIGH IN ON “EMPLOYEES SPEAK OUT”
Real Voices, Some More Wild Stuff [Working Life]
Wal-Mart Watch has set up a website where you can actually hear and read about the actual workers who have to put up with the oppressive behavior of The Beast. This is part of the picture: the Great Robbery that we have all endured for a number of decades--wages not going up (even though productivity goes up), no health care, no pensions--plays out, day-to-day, in those aisles at Wal-Mart.
The voice of the workers (Part 1) [Writing on the Wal]
What you get there is a look behind Walmart’s PR curtain to see what employees are really thinking, but too afraid to tell their supervisors since they don’t have a union to protect them. Indeed, let’s start this series there, in the category that Wal-Mart Watch calls corporate culture.
After the jump, union-busting in Canada, bottle water, Nike’s suit against the Bentonville behemoth and Sarah Palin.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt | Permalink
Nike Inc., the world’s largest athletic shoemaker, has sued Wal-Mart for allegedly selling footwear that infringes one of its patented designs. Or so says the footwear giant, who filed a patent infringement suit against the retail giant on Monday in federal district court in Illinois.
The case revolves around two of Nike’s designs, both having been patented back in late 2004. As you can see by photos included in Nike’s complaint, Wal-Mart’s shoe looks like a pretty spot-on match, at least design-wise. Kudos to Wal-Mart’s apparel design team - if your own products aren’t selling, why not copy those that do? And who wouldn’t want a shoe with pogo springs right in the heel?! I couldn’t find the offending models online, although most of Wal-Mart’s own athletic shoes appear to retail for between $10-25...I would guess the original Nike version sells for just a little bit more. Several Nike models, in fact, use the copied design and generally retail for $90 and above. You can draw your own conclusions, though my guess is that these two shoes are similar on face value only - it wouldn’t surprise me if for $15, Wal-Mart’s springs were filled with marshmallow or tiny foam peanuts.
The retail mega-chain has faced a couple of infringement suits already this year - recently by Pepe Jeans, and prior to that by Adidas, which settled its case with Wal-Mart in September. You can read more about those two instances here, here, and here.
Read Nike’s complaint here.
Nike sues Wal-Mart, alleges patent infringement [Rueters]
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Posted by Corey Himrod | Permalink
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 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 for infringement. Earlier this year, Wal-Mart settled a long-standing 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 | Permalink
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 | Permalink
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 | Permalink
Several retailers including Wal-Mart have been named in a nationwide class action for their participation in selling polycarbonate plastic baby bottles and toddler training cups containing the controversial hormone BPA.
This whole BPA - or Bisphenol-A - controversy is not a good thing. BPA is a key compound used in polycarbonate plastics, which are clear and nearly shatter-proof (a good thing), and also possibly toxic and poisoning us and our children daily (apparently bad...very, very bad). These plastics are used to make a variety of common products including baby and water bottles, sports equipment, medical devices, lenses, CDs, and household electronics...a fact that, in the interest of full disclosure, actually made me check the bottom of my water bottle this morning to make sure I wasn’t slowly killing myself.
The lawsuit in question was filed in Georgia, and you can read the (very long) complaint here, in which defendants are accused of manufacturing and selling materials made with BPA despite knowledge of likely adverse affects. In addition to Wal-Mart, retailers such as CVS, Target, and Kroger have been named in the suit. Also named were manufacturers of the bottles themselves, including Evenflo, Gerber, and Playtex. The best part of this whole thing - not only have over a hundred studies been produced in the last decade warning of the adverse affects of BPA, but apparently in deeming the compound safe the FDA decided to rely on only two, both of which were produced by the American Plastics Council. So kudos to the FDA for that.
The lawsuit has been filed in the U.S District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. You can read the release on it below.
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Posted by Corey Himrod | Permalink
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed suit in U.S. District Court in Illinois for violating employment provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The suit was brought yesterday on behalf of Barbara Hacker, a Wal-Mart greeter who suffers from epilepsy. Click here for a copy of the complaint.
The EEOC is the federal enforcing agency for the employment provisions of the ADA, and this is NOT the Commission’s first run-in with Wal-Mart. In fact, Wal-Mart’s history with the EEOC is littered with lawsuits, settlements, and broken promises to eliminate barriers for applicants and employees with disabilities. A report by Human Rights Watch found that between 1992 (when the ADA went in to effect) and 2002, sixteen suits had been filed by the Commission against Wal-Mart for violating Title I of the ADA, the most filed against any single corporation. Several more cases have been filed since then, two of which were settled earlier this year. (For more info on these, click here and here.)
As for Barbara Hacker, she informed her supervisors when she was hired about her epilepsy. She asked for nothing more than the reasonable accommodation of being allowed to sit for a couple minutes in a quiet place while she recovered from seizures. For a time she was accommodated, but ultimately she was fired after having a seizure in a back room off the sales floor at the Rockford Wal-Mart. According to EEOC attorney Aaron Decamp:
[T]he lawsuit was filed after Hacker filed a complaint with the EEOC in late 2006, after she was fired. EEOC investigators determined the claim had merit, and attorneys tried to reach a settlement with Wal-Mart before the suit was filed.
It should be noted that being the top lawsuit target of the ADA enforcement agency is probably not a good thing. Resources do not allow the EEOC to prosecute every case, which is why the Commission uses “strategic and vigorous” litigation as an enforcement tool.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission files suit against Wal-Mart [Rockford Register Star]
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Posted by Corey Himrod | Permalink
In an opinion delivered yesterday, Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas Judge Mark Bernstein wrote that the Pennsylvania Superior Court should reject a Wal-Mart appeal and affirm a 2006 jury verdict that found over 186,000 current and former Pennsylvania Wal-Mart employees were not properly compensated for off-the-clock work and missed rest breaks. He also sought to support his awarding last year of an additional $62 million in statutory liquidated damages. His opinion was delivered after Wal-Mart had contended in post-verdict motions that, among other things, the two class actions (Braun and Hummel were combined at trial) should never have been certified in the first place.
The total judgment against Wal-Mart in Braun/Hummel v. Wal-Mart currently stands at nearly $188 million.
According to Bernstein, “the trial evidence showed that Wal-Mart corporate leaders ceased all record-keeping of employees’ rest break periods after numerous lawsuits over the missed rest breaks were filed.” Bernstein allowed the jury to infer that Wal-Mart changed its policy to ensure that there were no records of missed rest breaks, an argument Wal-mart sought to preclude at trial, only to be denied.
The case is now with the Pennsylvania Superior Court on appeal.
Judge Upholds $185 Million Award in Wal-Mart Class Action [The Legal Intelligencer]
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Posted by Corey Himrod | Permalink
Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the world, with just over 2 millions employees on its payroll. So when the company does something wrong, there are usually a lot of people involved and for that reason, Wal-Mart often finds itself the subject of class action lawsuits.
An article today from Bloomberg News notes that there are currently over 70 lawsuits currently pending against Wal-Mart which deal with wage-and-hour violations alone. A 2005 federal law, which ruled that any lawsuit involving parties from multiple states and damages exceeding $5 million must go to federal court, means some of the cases filed since 2005 and currently pending against Wal-Mart will be combined. This had included class action suits from Delaware, South Dakota, Nevada and Alaska, until U.S. District Judge Phillip Pro denied their class status in June. Today’s article asserts that Wal-Mart stands to benefit from the 2005 law, which could make it harder for employees to collectively litigate against the company.
Whether Wal-Mart “shaved” time off employees’ schedules is not up for debate here: Judge Pro explained each wage-and-hour violation will simply be treated individually. Wal-Mart continues to look for ways to spend as little as possible on payroll, even if this means unfairly compensating employees for their hours worked. Rulings such as this one make it more difficult for employees to change Wal-Mart as a whole, but the company should stop breaking labor laws in the first place and pay its workers fairly.
Wal-Mart Shareholders Benefit From Judge’s Pay Ruling [Bloomberg News]
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., facing as much as $2 billion in damages in a Minnesota employee-pay trial, may be shielded from similar cases in the future thanks to a 2005 federal law.
The statute requires federal courts to handle class-action lawsuits of $5 million or more when plaintiffs and defendants are from different states. Because judges have been less willing to certify these cases as class actions, the law may save Wal-Mart as much as $5 billion, said Robert Bonsignore, lead workers’ attorney in Nevada suits against the world’s largest retailer. That’s equivalent to 77 percent of Wal-Mart’s $6.5 billion first- half profit.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt | Permalink
Proposed Roseland Wal-Mart hits snag [Press Democrat (Calif.)]
A Sonoma County judge has sided with opponents of a proposed Wal-Mart in Santa Rosa, tentatively ruling that the environmental study for the proposed store is flawed.
Superior Court Judge Robert Boyd said the analysis of parking and noise for the Wal-Mart in southwest Santa Rosa is “especially problematic.”
Boyd’s ruling is not final, and on Friday he gave attorneys on both sides another chance to present arguments before he completes his decision.
After hearing from opponents of the store and attorneys for both Wal-Mart and the city of Santa Rosa, Boyd said he would take the matter under submission.
He noted the environmental document for the store makes it “hard for the public to determine what is being proposed.”
It was not immediately clear what impact Boyd’s ruling would have if it becomes final.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt | Permalink
Attorney sues Barstow over Wal-Mart distribution site plans [The Press-Enterprise (Calif.)]
An Upland lawyer has sued the city of Barstow, alleging the City Council erred when it approved an environmental impact report regarding a planned Wal-Mart distribution center.
That report was prepared inadequately and failed to take into full account all of the environmental problems the proposed logistics facility could create for the city, according to attorney Cory J. Briggs.
The lawsuit, which was filed Aug. 8 in the Barstow division of San Bernardino Superior Court, also alleges that city officials have failed to respond to public complaints about their environmental report, a possible violation of the California Environmental Quality Act.
City Council members approved the report July 21.
That $60 million facility, which would serve Wal-Mart Supercenters, could create up to 700 jobs within two to three years of its opening, Wal-Mart officials said.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt | Permalink
Wal-Mart has, unsurprisingly, been the target of more lawsuits than one can count over the years. The company’s treatment of its workers and “save money at all costs” mentality has resulted in a flood of legal challenges ranging from single plaintiff suits to multi-million dollar class actions. Dukes v. Wal-Mart is of course one large example (the largest class action in American history, actually), as are the myriad wage/hour/overtime class actions the company faces.
At Wal-Mart Watch will be focusing on one of these stories each week, highlighting those cases that warrant further attention because of the light each sheds in its own way on how Wal-Mart does business.
Deborah Metcalf v. Wal-Mart Stores East
In the process of scouring the country searching for egregious examples of Wal-Mart malfeasance, we came across this interesting little case filed earlier this year in Oklahoma. On its surface, it’s a retaliatory discharge case – however, the plaintiff here, Deborah Metcalf, was fired for blowing the whistle on what should be considered some pretty repulsive conduct.
Among the many programs funded by the United States Government, we’re going to focus on one in particular – the federal WIC program. WIC stands for Women, Infants, and Children, and is a special supplemental nutrition program funded by grants by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and administered in Oklahoma by the OK State Department of Health. Basically, WIC provides food and education to low-income women, infants and children deemed eligible for the program. The program’s website tagline delivers the following:
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children - better known as the WIC Program - serves to safeguard the health of low-income women, infants, & children up to age 5 who are at nutritional risk by providing nutritious foods to supplement diets, information on healthy eating, and referrals to health care.
Deborah Metcalf, at the time of her firing, was an employee working at the Wal-Mart Pharmacy located within store #47 in Sallisaw, Oklahoma. In 2001, the Sallisaw Wal-Mart became a participant in the WIC program. Before we go any further, perhaps a little more information is needed on how the WIC program works:
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Posted by Corey Himrod | Permalink
Judge faults study on Wal-Mart Supercenter [Fresno Bee (Calif.)]
A proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter in north Clovis is being delayed again after a Fresno County Superior Court judge ruled the city did not meet state guidelines in studying water impacts and urban decay.
In a ruling last week, Judge Wayne Ellison said the city of Clovis complied with state guidelines on a host of other issues raised by opponents of the 491,000-square-foot retail center, which includes Wal-Mart and other stores.
But the city needs a revised environmental document that addresses the cumulative effects of urban decay and water availability across a wider area than just Clovis, Ellison ruled.
Ellison will now have to decide whether Clovis can make limited revisions to its environmental report, or will be required to prepare a completely new assessment.
Despite the delays, the project’s developer said the center, at the northeast corner of Herndon and Clovis avenues, will be built.
David Paynter said his company is “committed to the project no matter how long it may take.”
Read the rest of this story ...
Posted by Joel Nezianya | Permalink
Firm Sues Over Wal-Mart DC [Traffic World]
A law firm claiming to represent environmental groups is suing the city of Barstow, Calif., over a huge Wal-Mart distribution center planned for the city.
Briggs Law charges in the suit that the Southern California city did not properly prepare an environmental impact statement on the distribution center. The firm says it represents a group called Build Barstow Smart.
Wal-Mart plans to build a facility of greater than a million square feet on the outskirts of the town, which sits at a key road and rail junction about 125 miles northeast of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
An attorney at the firm told the Victorville, Calif., Daily Press that the group is most concerned about emissions and water use at the high desert site. Wal-Mart has said there is enough water in the area for the center.
Officials in Barstow have decried the suit and have said there is no coalition behind the law firm, which the newspaper said has sued Wal-Mart and other developers in the region repeatedly in recent years.
Posted by Joel Nezianya | Permalink
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