Droves of suits buffet retailer Sex-bias case called Wal-Mart's biggestBy Steve Painter, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 28, 2007 The judge's certification of the class-action lawsuit, Wal-Mart says, stripped the company of its right to show that no discrimination occurred at individual stores or against individual plaintiffs and that "the district court simply ignored Wal-Mart's actual companywide policies, which prohibit discrimination and encourage equal opportunity." The judge altered substantive law "solely for the purpose of certifying the largest employment class action in history," Wal-Mart argues. Roger Pilon, vice president for legal affairs at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, called the Dukes case an example of "one of the more abused areas of our law today." "Are we to believe that Wal-Mart has discriminated against 2 million people? This is discrimination law run amok," he said. The lawsuit can't be separated from the constant political pressure on Wal-Mart from unionfunded groups, Pilon contends. "The hypocrisy that surrounds this is all but boundless," he said. "Whenever Wal-Mart opens its door and advertises for help, all the, quote, little people, unquote, for whom these groups pretend to be speaking are lined up to apply for these jobs, and they are shopping at Wal-Mart because of the lower prices." TAKING ON THE GIANT At a less visible level, Nashville, Tenn., lawyer Lewis Laska continues to work a niche he carved out several years ago. Although he says he has never sued Wal-Mart, he sells the how-to kits after studying the company's litigation tendencies. He concedes that his Web site, www.wal-martlitigation. com, has become a bit dated, but says he plans to spruce it up this year. "It's turned out to be a much more difficult project than I imagined," he said, adding, " It's safe to say that I get e-mails every day from disgruntled employees, injured customers, vendors, all seeking specific information or global kinds of information." For a modest price, as law work goes, he sells packets of information on the different types of lawsuits Wal-Mart typically faces: ice in parking lots, causing injury; debris in parking lots, causing injury; unknown substance on floor, causing injury; merchandise falling off shelf, causing injury; customer hit by employee-pushed carts, causing injury. And the not-so-typical: assault by employee; employee falling on customer; exploding merchandise. Wal-Mart has a history of not settling lawsuits, Laska said, and historically has been viewed favorably by most people. "At one point, it was extremely difficult to get a judgment against Wal-Mart," he said. He sees that changing with verdicts such as the Pennsylvania case, in which the company was found guilty of forcing offthe-clock work by employees. "There is an increasing awareness in the public, particularly people that sit on juries, that Wal-Mart is not always the good citizen that it claims to be," Laska said. This article was published 01/28/2007 |
