WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court threw out a sweeping sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc., ruling Monday that the 1.6 million women allegedly victimized had too little in common to form a single class of plaintiffs.
The case split the court 5-4 along its ideological divide, with Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion concluding the allegations against Wal-Mart were too vague and the evidence too weak to establish the common injury essential to encompass all women employed since 1998 in the roughly 3,400 U.S. Wal-Mart stores.
The decision is sure to reverberate in other employment class actions, with lower courts scrutinizing more carefully the factors that constitute a class for the purpose of bringing mass claims.
Wal-Mart defense attorney Theodore Boutrous said the ruling would have a significant impact on other pending gender class-action suits, including against Costco Wholesale Corp. The Costco suit alleges a "glass ceiling" for women at the store level. Costco, which has denied the allegations, declined to comment Monday. Brad Seligman, a lawyer for the Wal-Mart plaintiffs who also represents the Costco plaintiffs, said the latter case is far narrower, focusing on two job classifications—store manager and assistant store manager—and is unlikely to be affected by Monday's ruling.
Full Article
Source: Wall Street Journal
The case split the court 5-4 along its ideological divide, with Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion concluding the allegations against Wal-Mart were too vague and the evidence too weak to establish the common injury essential to encompass all women employed since 1998 in the roughly 3,400 U.S. Wal-Mart stores.
The decision is sure to reverberate in other employment class actions, with lower courts scrutinizing more carefully the factors that constitute a class for the purpose of bringing mass claims.
Wal-Mart defense attorney Theodore Boutrous said the ruling would have a significant impact on other pending gender class-action suits, including against Costco Wholesale Corp. The Costco suit alleges a "glass ceiling" for women at the store level. Costco, which has denied the allegations, declined to comment Monday. Brad Seligman, a lawyer for the Wal-Mart plaintiffs who also represents the Costco plaintiffs, said the latter case is far narrower, focusing on two job classifications—store manager and assistant store manager—and is unlikely to be affected by Monday's ruling.
Full Article
Source: Wall Street Journal
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