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Wal Mart lawsuits 1

I learned an interesting fact in school tonight. According to my textbook and this article Wal-Mart was sued 4,851 times in 2000. That means that an average of once every 2 hours every day of the year. They have been sued for some strange things such as people being abducted from the Wal-Mart parking lot, people slipping on French fries and falling, people having merchandise fall on their head, etc.

The book also states that Wal-Mart doesn’t give in to lawsuits, even if it costs less to settle than to fight the lawsuit. They are likely trying to set a precedent to scare of people who think they can cash in with a lawsuit. Most companies use risk management to determine whether it costs less to settle or to litigate, and settling is usually the chosen path regardless of a lawsuit’s merit. Recently a large Canadian bank settled an Enron lawsuit for $2.1 billion dollars. They had made a decision that it would be a better business decision to settle and not admit fault, rather than fighting it and risking having a jury settle against it, which is also a risk to a company’s reputation.

According to the article I linked to above, the only entity that gets sued more than Wal-Mart is the U.S. Government, which according to the article, estimates indicate that it was sued more than 7,500 times in 2000.

One comment on “Wal Mart lawsuits

  1. Pez Mar 28,2006 10:10 pm

    I refuse to shop at Wal-Mart for many reason, especially their deplorable treatment of employees (and their female employees in particular).

    Our state tried to pass a bill aimed almost solely against Wal-Mart since so many of their employees are on state medicare because they do not make enough money nor are scheduled enough hours to qualify for health insurance through Wal-Mart.

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