If the Forces of Disapproval ever tire of beating up on Wal-Mart, they’ll need a new business to blame for the world’s not being everything it ought. George Will thinks Coca-Cola might fill the bill (“Liberalism as Condescension”, syndicated/RealClearPolitics, Sept. 14).
Posts Tagged ‘Wal-Mart’
Fact-checking the mainstream media (lawsuit division)
News clips reporting on large verdicts and settlements cross my desk regularly, and most do not seem on their surface to be worth blogging about. Most are terse summaries of a case’s outcome, and others do not present any indication (again, on the surface at least) that a case might have problematic aspects. The other day, however, I ran across a story in the Charleston (W.V.) Gazette describing a case in which a plaintiff had been terribly injured after a retailer sold what the reporter bluntly stated was a “defective mower.” This particular newspaper story was so one-sided that I thought there almost had to be more to it than was being reported — and I had no idea how right I was in that suspicion. This is a long post, but I hope worth readers’ while. It certainly makes me wonder how much I’m missing when I don’t go into the dockets to fact-check other seemingly run-of-the-mill cases.
Wal*ocaust
It’s blatantly a parody, coupled with social criticism of the world’s largest retailer, but Wal-Mart had its lawyers fire off nastygrams to computer store owner Charles Smith and, perhaps more effectively, to CafePress. Now things have proceeded to court. Smith’s website is here. (Abigail Goldman,”Wal-Mart Parodist Sues to Sell Products”, L.A. Times/Chicago Tribune, Mar. 7)(via Housing Panic).
“Wal-Mart ends food donations to charity”
Is the nation’s largest grocer being ignorant or overcautious? Or has it reckoned that even a “gross negligence” standard will not prevent it from being a target after some future incident of food poisoning?
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the nation’s largest food retailer, said Thursday it will no longer donate nearly-expired or expired food to local groups feeding the hungry….
Olan James, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said the policy, which applies to all 1,224 Wal-Marts, 1,929 Supercenters and 558 Sam’s Clubs, is an attempt to protect the corporation from liability in case someone who eats the donated food gets sick….
Ernie Brown, a spokesman for Sacramento’s Senior Gleaners, which received about 25,000 pounds of food in 2005 from Sam’s Club on Greenback Lane in Citrus Heights, said most food is fine to eat for days after the “sell-by” date.
He said Wal-Mart’s concerns about liability seem misplaced in light of the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, a federal law passed in 1996 offering food donors wide-ranging protections from civil lawsuits or criminal prosecution. The law states that donors can be held liable only in instances of “gross negligence.”
“Lord, we get millions and millions of pounds from Raley’s and Bel-Air and Albertson’s, and they don’t have a problem understanding the law,” Brown said. “Why don’t Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club understand the law?”
The food will be thrown out instead. (Todd Milbourn, Sacramento Bee, Jan. 6). More: Dvorak Uncensored, Jan. 11.
Wal-Mart vs. Kevin Brancato
Kevin Brancato, a Ph.D. candidate at George Mason who heads the masthead at the economics blog Truck and Barter, also publishes a weblog entirely devoted to following the fortunes (policy and otherwise) of the Wal-Mart Corporation, by the name of AlwaysLowPrices.net (see our cites to it on Apr. 13, 2004 and Apr. 6, 2005). In contrast to the Wal-Mart-bashing line taken by so many other sites, Brancato frequently, though not invariably, rises to the defense of the company and the efficiencies of its way of doing business. This has done nothing to prevent Wal-Mart’s lawyers from sending him a cease and desist letter ordering him to vacate the name and URL “AlwaysLowPrices”, a phrase which is of course Wal-Mart’s service mark. (T&B, Apr. 5). Kevin Heller at TechLawAdvisor (Apr. 6) doesn’t think he stands much of a chance if Wal-Mart goes to court.
Wal-Mart: target
“Encouraged by the press criticism, entrepreneurial trial lawyers, eyeing Wal-Mart’s deep pockets with glee, have made it perhaps the biggest private-sector target of the nation?s plaintiffs’ bar. In just ten years, the number of pending lawsuits against Wal-Mart has increased fourfold, to 8,000, and the company has tripled the size of its litigation department. … Wal-Mart faces a growing number of potentially costly class action lawsuits, exemplified by a sex-discrimination suit brought by the Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll firm, notorious for getting Texaco to pay $176 million to black employees in a discrimination suit.” (Steven Malanga (Manhattan Institute), “What Does the War on Wal-Mart Mean?”, City Journal, Spring). See Jul. 7-9, 2000 and more links: Feb. 1, 2004; Dec. 4, 2003; Jan. 11, Jun. 14, and Aug. 29-30, 2001; Sept. 6-7, Sept. 25-26, Nov. 15, and Dec. 13-14, 2000; and Dec. 2, 1999. More: we are linked by Always Low Prices — Always, a blog whose mission is to chronicle “The Best and the Worst about Wal-Mart” and which is put out in part by Kevin Brancato of George Mason U. and the economics blog Truck and Barter. (More: Apr. 19, 2005).