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Wal-Mart Ordered to Pay At Least $79 Mil. to Class

Wal-Mart Ordered to Pay At Least $79 Mil. to Class

The Legal Intelligencer 10-13-2006
Asher Hawkins

By and large agreeing with the plaintiffs’ estimates on damages, a Philadelphia jury has awarded $78.5 million to a class of some 186,000 current and former employees of Pennsylvania Wal-Marts who were not properly paid for missed rest breaks and off-the-clock work.

The award roughly reflects the total amount asked for by lead class counsel Michael Donovan of Donovan Searles in Philadelphia during his damages-related closing argument Friday morning.

In turn, Wal-Mart’s lead attorney in Hummel v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Neal Manne of Susman Godfrey in Houston, Texas, had requested that the jury take into account problems with the plaintiffs’ experts statistical analysis and hand up an award more along the lines of $7 million.

The jury’s award Friday afternoon came a day after its members determined that the retail giant had failed to pay its post-1998 Pennsylvania workers for time worked off-the-clock and for missed rest breaks, but not for meal breaks class representatives said they routinely missed as well.

It took the jurors about two hours mid-day Friday to reach their damages-specific verdict.

The $78.5 million awarded by the jury Friday will likely not mark the full amount that will ultimately be paid to Wal-Mart’s Pennsylvania employees as a result of the Hummel litigation.

As there were no punitive damages claims made in the Hummel complaint, the jury’s award Friday is comprised exclusively of compensatory damages.

But Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Mark I. Bernstein, who presided over the month-long trial, will in the near future have to decide, without the jury’s input, how much Wal-Mart’s Pennsylvania employees are owed under a statutorily designated damages scheme.

Class counsel hope that figure will total an additional $62 million on top of the Hummel jury’s award, but Wal-Mart’s attorneys are sure to contest that calculation.

Read more about it in Monday’s Legal.