Jury slaps Wal-Mart with $172M ruling A California jury orders the retail giant to pay $172 million to workers denied lunch breaks. December 22, 2005: 7:43 PM EST
(CNN) - Jurors in Oakland, Calif., Thursday awarded $172 million to thousands of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. employees after deciding that the world's largest retailer violated state law by denying lunch breaks, a court spokesman said.
Jurors in Alameda County Superior Court awarded $57 million in actual damages and $115 in punitive damages in the class action lawsuit filed in 2001.
Jessica Grant, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, spoke to Reuters after the ruling. "What was compelling for the jury was that we put a lot of evidence before them of memos by Wal-Mart from seven years ago that concluded they had been breaking the law," said Grant.
"Instead of taking steps to solve the problem, Wal-Mart concealed it."
Wal-Mart said in a statement to CNNMoney.com that it will appeal the ruling. "During the trial, a California court of appeals made a ruling in another case (Murphy v. Kenneth Cole) that directly supports Wal-Mart's position that the meal-period premiums in question are penalties, rather than wages. This means that punitive damages cannot be recovered in this case. In short, California law prohibits penalties on top of penalties."
Wal-Mart also claims to have addressed the problem by "adopting new technology that sends alerts to cashiers when it is time for their meal breaks. The system will automatically shut down registers if the cashier does not respond."
They should pay up. I don't doubt it whatsoever. When my husband worked 3rd shift at Sam's Club, they literally locked the employees in the building. The only way out was the first exit which would trigger the fire department. And one time we had an emergency and I tried to call him, and no one would answer the phone!
The thing that would be the worst is doing the WalMart cheers & perky stuff they do. I would gladly recind part of my pay if I could be grumpy all day long.
Wal Mart is the reason that I am unemployed as well. I hate them. Now that I no longer am under contract let me just give you a hint as to what goes on behind those corporate doors.
You know I sold those sponge thingy's, and I had the patent. Patent or no, Wal Mart didn't care- they would call me to the buyers office and put a Chineese sponge on the table and say, I can get this landed in LA for .xx. You either need to meet or beat that to keep the business. So don't be fooled when you see my happy smiling yellow face rolling back pricing and giving the credit to wal mart, the vendor is taking the hit. During one of these visits, in order for my company to survive, I had 47 USA employees. That was dwindled to 10 over the next three months. When I mentioned the patent issue, which walmart so openly claims to adheare, they told me it was my responsibility to fight it out with manufacturer in China.
As you know fighting a US and Worldwide patent against the Chinese is impossible and the US government is of no help whatsoever. We are literally shopping our way to the unemployment line. Would you have paid 12 cents more for the dumb thing knowing that you were keeping honest decent US citizens employed?
My opinion is to boycott walmart, and its actually pretty easy. Trader Joes is great, so is Jensen's, Ralph's, Walgreens.
The problem I have is that the nearest grocery store that actually has anything is walmart. I live 30 minutes from it. I am going to try going 30 minutes the other way and going to Kroger, but I don't know how much I'm going to be able to do that. There are some items I just can't get unless I go to walmart or drive an hour or more to get it. Since I don't have a lot of free time for grocery shopping, that's something I don't normally get to do. I am going to try, though.
My brother worked at walmart for almost 10 years. It's not a great place to work. Here's a sad thing though. I had my stuff on layaway at walmart for Christmas. I had my hubby go and pick it up for me. I usually wait until the night before Christmas to open it up and get it all wrapped. This year, my brother had stuff in there, so I had to get it out and give it to him. When I did, there were 10 items in there that did not belong to me. A nintendo DS and a game for it and 8 other toys. All in all, over $200 worth of stuff. I called the store and let them know that I had it and that I was bringing it back. When I got there, the woman standing there said they have had to issue a lot of refunds, but I was the first person to bring back anything that did not belong to them. That saddened me.
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Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you do criticize them you will be a mile away and have their shoes.
wose part, think of the disorganization back there at walmart and that some kid isn't going to get his present because it was misfiled, routed or shuffled. I personally hate wal-mart and would rather die than grace it doors again, and they are just down the street. Did you know that over 80% of the merchandise you purchase from Wal-Mart now comes from the orient?
70% of the alone is from China!!
I am telling you--patrons of Wal-Mart you are shopping yours and all of America's way to the unemployment lines. My opinion of course.
My philospohy on your Wal mart situation would be to buy your groceries there, but maybe not other thing.s I try not to buy things there that I can pay a little bit more for somewhere else, but help keep them in business.
I buy health related items and prescriptions. I try to patronize other companies for other household items.
you have wounded me Ruby. My opinion again, Wal-Mart defileth this country, nay this world. I truly believe that Mr. Sam is in heaven above crying at what has happened to his company at the hands of greed. I knew a guy that contracted with Mr. Sam to do some work. Met him on one of my trips to Arkansas. Mr. Sams VP negotiated the price down to where the guy made next to nothing. Mr. Sam paid him the original bid telling his VP that is not how we do business. Mr. Sam was out for the average joe--the new execs are only interested in the almighty dollar and how much they can make. If they cared about people they would not be losing so many law suits right now.
THE WORST PART ABOUT IT RUBY IT THAT YOU ARE GOING TO PAY THE 172 MILLION. Don't think for one second that it is coming out of the profits of that company. I guarantee there is a team of global sourcing people on their way to china right now to find a cheaper price and threaten to pull the contract on some poor other vendor just trying his best to stay in business. They won't pay one penny. Small business owners of this country will pay every penny, this government with the unemployment when the small and large business do layoff. What do you thing Proctor and Gamble will do when wal-mart commands a fifty million write off, and yes that happens, or they get pulled off the shelf. Remember a time when you did not see Rubbermaid on the Wal-mart shelf? It's because when gas prices went so high so did plastic. In order to maintain their profit, they told wal-mart they needed a price increase. Wal Mart said no--and if you try, you are out of here. Rubbermaid didn't think being such a recoginzed brand would be tossed. Well, containers were on their way from china, rubbermaid got tossed, they laid people off, and in order to survive, cut pricing, laying off more employees.
