$10K Or $250K — How Much Should Walmart Pay For Wrongly Accusing Man Of Attacking Worker?

(Marike79)

In Sept. 2007, a man described as being 5’7″ and around 50 years old in California allegedly attacked a Walmart employee who had caught him shoplifting. Two months later, a man in his early 40s and five inches taller than that suspect walked into the Walmart, where he claims he was detained by a manager and publicly accused of being the attacker from the earlier incident. Seven years later, the legal debate is ongoing as to how much, if anything, Walmart should pay this man.

The shopper is asking for upwards of $250,000, but according to the Fresno Bee, he may end up with nothing depending on how a judge rules next week.

See, the customer filed suit in 2008, but Walmart claims that the suit should be dismissed because the case didn’t go to trial within five years. The plaintiff contends that the delay is Walmart’s fault, that the retailer misled the court into believing that a settlement was in the offing.

He also claims that court documents show that Walmart had previously agreed to a March 2015 trial date before requesting the dismissal.

The man says there was a previous offer of $10,000, but that this more about teaching Walmart a lesson than about the money.

“I’m doing this as a public service so no one else has to go through what I have gone through,” he explains to the Bee.

Walmart maintains that not only is the case too old to go trial, but that the manager didn’t do anything wrong. The retailer says that the man was not, as he alleges, detained or touched by Walmart workers but “asked to leave the store because he previously assaulted an employee.”

The manager stated in a deposition that all he told the shopper was, “You can’t be here. I need you to leave the store.”

But the plaintiff claims that he was detained and publicly accused of being the man in the earlier attack, and that he had to break free and contact the police to clear his name.

The police put his photo in a line-up and showed it to the employee who’d been attacked in the September incident. That worker picked someone else out as the likely culprit.

Interestingly enough, Walmart has no video surveillance footage from either the original attack on the employee or of the day on which the shopper was accused of being that attacker.

One lawyer — who is not connected to the case — the Bee spoke to says he believes the plaintiff is probably due some sort of damages, but thinks that $10,000 is generous because it’s hard to quantify damages when there aren’t things like medical bills or loss of income that you can point to.

“He wasn’t knocked down and put in the hospital. He was inconvenienced,” says the lawyer.

But the plaintiff contends that this offer was “insulting.”

“I was taught never to lie, never to steal and to respect women, but I have been falsely accused of all three,” he explains.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist