Class Action Lawsuits - Walmart Essay example

In 2001, Donnell Battie sued Walmart because a 16-year-old shopper picked up the store’s public address microphone and announced “Attention Walmart customers: all black people must leave the store.” Battie claimed that this incident caused him “severe and disabling emotional and physical harm” and sued Walmart for $1,000,000. Battie’s lawyer argued that his client was a subject of racial discrimination because Walmart did not properly secure its speaker system. The outcome of the case was not stated but Walmart was forced to change the PA systems throughout all its

Tort reform is very controversial issue. From the plaintiff’s perspective, tort reforms seems to take liability away from places such as insurance companies and hospitals which could at times leave the plaintiff without defense. From the defendant’s perspective, tort reform provides a defense from extremely large punitive damage awards. There seems to be no median between the two. Neither side will be satisfied. With the help of affiliations such as the American Tort Reform Association and Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, many businesses and corporations are working to change the current tort system to stop these high cash awards.

The purpose of class action lawsuits is to give the common man the ability to take on the largest corporate or private entities, who can afford the very best legal services,

This often occurs in cases involving consumer products— there can be thousands of people who have not actually been injured but who are merely unhappy with a product, and they are allowed to be a part of the class. An empirical study found that no-injury class actions have resulted in approximately $4 billion worth of settlements and judgments over the last decade alone.

Women in the workforce encounter more challenges and discrimination in wages and positions than men. At another Walmart in Tennessee employee Bobbi Milner was mistakenly given the paycheck of her fellow assistant manager. She noticed that he was making “thousands of dollars more than she” although he had significantly less experience. These workers were among the 1.5 million female workers in 2011 who banded together in the largest sex discrimination lawsuit suing Walmart for allegedly discriminating against its female employees in wages and position opportunities. Although the female employees received on average $1,100 less per year than their male counterparts and were often

Today, CPP changes in pension law reform, particularly for division requiring expert and legal guidance. Legal services may fall into two categories; business benefits and pension and family law for litigation or class actions. Litigation is a process to resolve disputes by filing a complaint. The complaint is governed through a legal process to determine the change or value of benefits under family law practices. A class action is usually business related representing the collective who may have suffered damages. Both methods require some level of legal representation to reach a settlement.

In 2010, a group of female financial advisors filed a national class action lawsuit against Bank of America and Merrill Lynch under gender discrimination. The main plaintiff, Judy Calibuso, worked in the Miami, Florida office since 1995 (Lieff Cabraser Heiman & Bernstein, 2010). In the lawsuit, Bank of America is accused of favoring male brokers in merit pay, allocating client accounts and referrals, partnership opportunities, and benefits. The plaintiffs had hoped to end the discriminatory practices and policies and be awarded back pay from retaliatory efforts (Lieff Cabraser Heiman & Bernstein, 2010). After three years, they finally came to a settlement awarding $39 million to a possible 4,800 current and former employees (Stempel, 2013). The settlement also provided that Bank of America needed to hire an independent contractor to oversee the improvements of their practices and policies. Bank of America never admitted to any

In this essay, I will be writing to show whether I believe litigation, ADR, or criminal prosecution is the appropriate response the three scenarios presented. The three examples given were a secretary who has been taking money from the company she works for, with the intent of paying it back but never did; a little girl who was rendered brain damaged as a result of swallowing the toy finger of the toy doll that her father purchased for her; and a company that loss money as a result of not being able to ship product due to receiving an incorrect shipment from one of their suppliers.

Since 2009, 3,044 federal court lawsuits have been filed against Walmart and 12% of those have involved issues with employment (Van Voris & Fisk, 2012). One plaintiff who won her suit against Walmart was Meredith Boucher, an assistant manager at a Walmart store in Windsor, Ontario (Fairchild, 2012). She had been a Walmart employee for ten years and had received several work awards from her employer. She sued for mistreatment in the workplace and was awarded $1.49 million, more than she asked for (Fairchild, 2012). Meredith claimed she was a victim of mental and verbal abuse and was bullied by her store manager, Jason Pinnock; he ridiculed her in front of other employees and referred to her as a “gong show” and “stupid” (Fairchild, 2012). He made her count a row of skids to prove she could count to 10 in front of her coworkers (Canadian Press, 2012). Meredith started having physical problems from the workplace bullying and stress; she began vomiting blood and

The six women who sued Wal-Mart had physical proof and evidence of the discrimination laid upon them. Some of the evidence were found in the employees’ records whereby Richard Drogin, a statistical expert found out that employees in Wal-Mart are divided into two main groups: hourly employees who occupied the lower levels and salaried manager who occupied the higher levels. Since Wal-Mart promotes predominantly from within, workers typically progress from being an upper hourly employee to management trainee, to store manager or assistant manager, and finally to the district, regional or cooperate manager. Compensation increases from one level to another. In 2001, salaried managers made about $50,000 a year while hourly employees made $18,000.

A class action law suit or class suit is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member of that group. Some advantages of this is that it is lower costs of litigation because the expenses are shared among the class members who pay nothing up front and even then only if the lawyer is able to settle or their behalf or win do they pay, it is a stronger position because the very nature of a large group of people with a similar claim leads to a stronger negotiating position, etc. One con of this is that there is a lack of control because only the representative parties have decision- making power to settle and to make other important decisions regarding the lawsuit and it takes time because

Multiple lawsuits against the company are currently fighting for women who’ve been overworked, put in dangerous situations, and

These behaviors could behaviors could be controlled just as well as private lawsuits. Moreover, private lawsuits can result in being equally punishable as any. Most private lawsuits usually end in one defendant financially paying for the act or crime. An extension of private lawsuits are civil lawsuits. Civil lawsuit are the court-based process that which someone can seek to hold another responsible for some type of wrong. Usually, if a person is successful, he or she will be granted compensation for the harm that resulted from another's action or inaction (David Goguen, J.D., 2015). An example would be, the

Some of the unfair practices that are given in Wal-Mart may be for the same reason that not as many benefits are given in that store than they are in any other local business. For example, Wal-Mart does not assure health care for any employee working under 30 hours a week according to a copy of the company’s policy. Under the strategy, slated to produce results in January, Wal-Mart additionally maintains all authority to take out social insurance scope for specific specialists if their normal weeks’ worth of work plunges beneath 30 hours - something that happens with consistency and at the heading of organization administrators. Work and human services specialists depicted Wal-Mart 's choice to prohibit laborers from its restorative arranges as an endeavor to breaking point

Wal-Mart could avoid lawsuits, but they need to give more job with responsibilities and opportunities to women and they should get paid as much as male employees. Even though Wal-Mart is such a successful company, they can do better if they stop discriminating their women employees and they will save money on lawsuits.