Financial Times
By Lauren Foster in New York
Published: June 23 2004 18:24 | Last Updated: June 23 2004 18:24
Large US corporations could face bigger and broader employment class-action lawsuits if the certification of a sex discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart is upheld by an appellate court.
The world's largest retailer has said it intends to appeal against the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal.
"Anytime you have a high-profile company like Wal-Mart facing class certification of 1.6m people, it rings like a wake-up call to plaintiff attorneys to believe anything is possible," said Perry Binder, legal studies professor at Georgia State University's Robinson College of Business.
"If the plaintiffs survive the appeal, I believe we will see similar attempts to group large class-actions together."
Jennifer Coberly, a partner at Zuckerman Spaeder, a law firm based in Miami, said that if the plaintiffs were successful it would "change the face" of future employment class-actions.
"Lawsuits will be broader in scope and cover more employees in a larger geographical area," she said.
Lawyers say that if the certification stands, other big retailers could be hit with similar class actions. "If this is held up on appeal we will definitely see the grocers and other retail stores face similar suits," said Ms Coberly.
Lawrence Z. Lorber, a partner in the Washington, DC, office of Proskauer Rose, the law firm, said the trend has been to go after big name-brand defendants. "Companies that have large numbers of employees doing similar jobs [to those at Wal-Mart] will be looking at this case with some degree I suppose of anxiety," Mr Lorber said.
"This is the granddaddy of all employment class actions and other large employers are going to look at this case to see whether it will encourage other plaintiff lawyers to go after them."