Attorneys seek injuncton to compel Wal-Mart to change employee practices

By Jeff Shuttleworth, Bay City News Service

June 26, 2006

OAKLAND (BCN) - Attorneys for plaintiffs who won a $172 million jury verdict against Wal-Mart for not providing paid meal and rest breaks for its California employees are back in court today seeking an injunction that would force the retail giant to change its practices.

San Francisco attorney Fred Furth represents 116,000 current and former hourly workers at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in California who won their trial last Dec. 22 on their claim that Wal Mart violated their rights under state labor laws by denying them their meal and rest breaks and by secretly deleting hours worked from their paychecks.

Following a three-month trial and two-and-a-half days of deliberations, an Alameda County Superior Court jury awarded the plaintiffs $57.3 million in compensatory damages and $115 million in punitive damages.

The lawsuit was filed in February 2001 and took more than four years to go to trial.

Furth and Wal-Mart attorneys are back before Judge Ronald Sabraw today for a non-jury hearing that's expected to take at least a week. Furth wants Sabraw to issue an injunction ordering Wal-Mart to have all its employees punch in and punch out for their paid rest breaks.

Following the jury verdict, Wal-Mart attorney Neal Manne said the company admits that it initially violated California law but he said the company has been in compliance with the law since the end of 2003.

In a recent court brief, Manne said "the alleged need to impose the extraordinary remedy of a meal period injunction is moot" because Wal-Mart employees have been able to take their breaks more than 99 percent of the time since mid-2003.

Manne said Sabraw himself has found that there is no evidence that Wal-Mart had an express policy of discouraging rest breaks. Manne said wage costs as a percentage of sales at Wal-Mart have increased and "turnover is low and associate morale is high, results that could not have occurred in a fictional world of uniform understaffing."

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