Costco, Target and Wal-Mart have been named in a class action brought by sewage treatment facilities. The retailers manufacture and sell wipes that allegedly are misrepresented as safe to flush, but damage sewage systems, the complaint alleges.
Wal-Mart greeter, Betty Dukes, is going to get to go to trial on her gender discrimination case against Wal-Mart.
A Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision in mid-December upholding a nearly $188 million judgment against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for denying breaks to its workers signals a split with federal courts over standards for bringing class actions, and could cause new claims to be pursued in the state court system. Continue reading “Pennsylvania Supreme Court gives green light to class actions”
Visa Inc. sued Wal-Mart in New York federal court in a bid to block the retail giant from pursuing more damages after opting out of a $7.25 billion antitrust settlement in the interchange fee MDL.
A federal judge ruled that Wal-Mart can be included as a defendant to a class action lawsuit brought by temporary warehouse workers in the Inland Empire. The battle involves a warehouse operated by Schneider Logistics, which receives containers from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and ships them to Wal-Mart distribution centers and stores around the country.
Lawyers for the workers accuse Wal-Mart, Schneider and two temporary staffing agencies which supplied about 1,800 employees of violating labor laws such as failing to pay minimum wage or overtime and providing substandard working conditions. Although the warehouse workers were not employed directly by Wal-Mart, the lawsuit alleges that the world’s largest retailer is ultimately liable for how workers are treated by its contractors. Continue reading “Wal-Mart included as defendant in class action by temporary warehouse workers”
Attorneys representing workers in Wal-Mart warehouses today announced the filing of a motion to add the retail giant as a defendant in an ongoing federal wage theft lawsuit. If successful, the motion would advance efforts by organized labor to punish Wal-Mart for alleged rampant abuses, and to establish its responsibility for the actions of its contractors and subcontractors in California and elsewhere. Continue reading “Warehouse workers petition to add Wal-Mart as defendants in wage theft lawsuit”
Three Tennessee women and long-time employees of Wal-Mart have filed a class action lawsuit against the discount retailer, claiming they were denied promotions because of their gender and paid less than their male counterparts.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Nashville on Tuesday, targets employment practices in Tennessee as well as parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Mississippi. Continue reading “Wal-Mart gender discrimination class action filed in Tennessee”
The class action settlement reached between the class and Wal-Mart in a class action lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (styled In re: Online DVD Rental Antitrust Litigation, MDL No. 2029) that we reported earlier about has now been preliminarily approved. The complaint alleged that Wal-Mart and Netflix reached an unlawful agreement under which Wal-Mart would withdraw from the online DVD rental market and Netflix would not sell new DVDs that allegedly caused Netflix subscribers to pay higher subscription prices, according to the Wal-mart and Netlfix Online DVD class action lawsuit and settlement notice. Netflix did not settle. Continue reading “If You Rented Online DVDs from Netflix, A Class Action And A Settlement With Wal-Mart May Affect You”
I previously posted several blogs about the Dukes v. Wal-Mart case in which the U.S. Supreme Court said a national sex discrimination case was simply too large, and reversed class certification of a Rule 26(b)(2) injunctive class seeking to recover backpay. The holding by the Supreme Court was really limited to injunctive class actions.
In response to this ruling, the lawyers representing the female employees are now filing regional actions. A complaint was filed in federal court in Texas on October 28, 2011. The complaint is the second to be filed since a nationwide class action against the company was thrown out by the Supreme Court in June, 2011. On October 27, 2011, a similar set of claims was filed in federal court in California. In both Texas and California, plaintiffs are seeking class action status for female Wal-Mart workers in that state. Continue reading “Dukes v. Wal-Mart going state by state”
The Ninth Circuit remanded to the district court the decision of whether the gender discrimination case against Costco could be certified as a class action after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dukes v. Wal-Mart. The ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is the first major class case to be decided since the Supreme Court’s June decision in Wal-Mart Stores Inc. vs. Betty Dukes et al., where the high court ruled against a proposed class of some 1.5 million members. Continue reading “Costco: Ninth Circuit remands gender discrimination class action”
Wal-Mart recently surged into third place in the movie-download business, barely a year after buying the startup Vudu. Now, the giant internet retailer may have scored another coup.
A new court ruling gives Wal-Mart a major boost in its effort to muscle in on Netflix’s streaming subscribers. A federal court in California late last week approved a class-action settlement that requires Wal-Mart to pay out $27.5 million. But here’s the key element of the ruling: Wal-Mart will be allowed to pay the 40 million Netflix subscribers in the form of gift cards for Wal-Mart.com — where there is prominent advertising for Vudu, which rents and sells movies a la carte. Continue reading “Wal-Mart antitrust class action settlement gets preliminary okay”
California Federal District Court Judge Charles Breyer issued a tolling order extending the time in which Wal-Mart former employees can file individual claims. The order eliminates potential confusion that could occur if different judges in different districts had to make decisions regarding the statute of limitations.
All former class members who have an EEOC notice to sue shall have until October 28, 2011 to file suit. All former class members who have never filed an EEOC charge shall have until January 27, 2012 to file charges with the EEOC in those states with 180 day limits and until May 25, 2012 to file charges with the EEOC in those states with 300 day limits. Continue reading “Wal-Mart Judge issues order extending statute of limitations for individual claims”
The Honorable Nicholas Garaufis, a district court judge from the Eastern District of New York entered an order in the NYC Firefighters case, applying and, to a degree, limiting, the Supreme Court’s decision in Wal-Mart. He certified subclasses under Rule 23(b)(3), including claims for compensatory damages. Continue reading “Disparate impact class action certified, despite U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Wal-Mart”
Costco Wholesale Corp. may be able to block women accusing it of gender bias from suing as a group because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in a discrimination suit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The women sued Costco in 2004, accusing the largest U.S. warehouse-club chain of limiting promotions of female employees to assistant general manager and general manager by failing to post such job openings. They won the right to sue as a group in a class action in 2007. Costco’s appeal of that order was put on hold while the Supreme Court considered Dukes v. Wal-Mart. Continue reading “Wal-Mart decision may affect Costco class action”
I was interviewed on the Think Out Loud radio program on Oregon Public Broadcasting on June 24, 2011. The topic was the recent class action decision by the US Supreme Court in Dukes v. Wal-Mart, which I recently blogged about.
If you click on the link below, and when you get to the OPB website, click on the arrow, the podcast recording of the program will play.
http://www.opb.org/thinkoutloud/shows/whither-women-wal-mart/.
On June 20, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court in Wal-Mart, Inc. v. Dukes reversed a class certification order in a class action lawsuit against Wal-Mart filed on behalf of current and former female employees of Wal-Mart. As reported earlier on this blog, the trial court had certified a class representing approximately 1.5 million female employees at Wal-Mart stores throughout the country. The workers sued the nation’s largest private employer for sex discrimination in Wal-Mart’s pay, promotions, and other employment practices, alleging that employer policies delegating authority to make subjective and discretionary employment decisions allowed for widespread discrimination against women in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The complaint seeks injunctive relief and declaratory relief, punitive damages, and backpay. It did not seek compensatory damages. Continue reading “U.S. Supreme Court reverses Wal-Mart, Inc. v. Dukes”
The Supreme Court recently heard argument in the employment discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart that I have written about before on this blog. It is the largest in American history. Wal-Mart is also one of the largest private employers in American history. If the Supreme Court rejects this suit, it will send a chilling message that some companies are too big to be held accountable. Continue reading “Wal-Mart v. Women”
On January 20, 2011, Wal-Mart filed its opening merits brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dukes v. Wal-Mart case mentioned several times earlier in this blog. Not surprisingly, Wal-Mart asserts that the Ninth Circuit’s opinion is not consistent with the requirements of Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 23(a), because the “Class members – potentially millions of women supervised by tens of thousands of different managers and employed in thousands of different stores throughout the country – assert highly individualized fact-intensive claims for monetary relief that are subject to individualized statutory defenses.” Continue reading “Wal-Mart Files Opening Merits Brief in U.S. Supreme Court”
As indicated earlier in this blog, this term the U.S. Supreme Court will be focusing on more issues involved in class actions than it has in decades. It granted certiorari in the now well known case of Dukes v. Wal-Mart, Inc., and should be issuing an opinion this term in the equally well known case entitled AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion. Both of these cases from the Ninth Circuit were decided in favor of the plaintiffs, but the Ninth Circuit is the most reversed Circuit in the country, so decisions in these cases could reconfigure the class action landscape. Continue reading “U.S. Supreme Court docket for this term focused on class actions”
A federal judge granted class-action certification to Netflix, Inc. subscribers in their lawsuit against the company and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. for an alleged agreement to monopolize the DVD market. U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton said that the subscribers bringing suit against the companies in 2009 were “united by common and overlapping issues of fact and law,” in an order dated Dec. 23 and filed in federal court in Oakland, California. Continue reading “Class Action certified against Netflix and Wal-Mart”
