Today it was announced in the St Paul paper that WalMart has agreed to a settlement of $54 million, rather than face a jury verdict of damages, in a case over WalMart not providing proper break and meal times, and proper overtime pay. The presiding Judge in Dakota County still has to sign off on the agreement.

It was also reported (Politico) that Joe the Plumber is now revealing that he "felt dirty" after being on the campaign trail and seeing what goes on, and that he was appalled by some of the things McCain was saying; but, he had nothing but praise for Sarah Palin.

I am not sure which of these two articles warmed my cockles the most!

Today it was announced in the St Paul paper that WalMart has agreed to a settlement of $54 million, rather than face a jury verdict of damages, in a case over WalMart not providing proper break and meal times, and proper overtime pay. The presiding Judge in Dakota County still has to sign off on the agreement.

It was also reported (Politico) that Joe the Plumber is now revealing that he "felt dirty" after being on the campaign trail and seeing what goes on, and that he was appalled by some of the things McCain was saying; but, he had nothing but praise for Sarah Palin.

I am not sure which of these two articles warmed my cockles the most!

I think the one where Joe, in a round about way, said he wants in Sarah Palin's pants.

Settling? That's odd. Walmart usually goes all scorched earth in trials and not only never settles, they go all the way to appeals before paying out - which usually delays the inevitable several years. Although they have lost just about every one of these overtime/break violation lawsuits. I seem to remember reading about one of their annual reports (or maybe it was a 10k) where they mentioned class action lawsuits like this in something like 30 states as one of the business risks.

Settling? That's odd. Walmart usually goes all scorched earth in trials and not only never settles, they go all the way to appeals before paying out - which usually delays the inevitable several years.


It is quite possible that the $188 million verdict in Pennsylvania and the $172 million one in California in the past several years has made them change their game plan, as far as legal matters. Of course, they are still appealing the Penn and Cal verdicts. But the $54 million is less than a third of what the jury verdicts have been, so it may have been wiser to settle rather than continue with piling up the legal fees.

Heh. When I was in college I worked for Sam's Club for about a year. They let us open 1 movie a week from the floor to put in the break room. I couldn't tell you how many times I went in the break room and saw people watching the whole movie instead of working. I guess they got their settlement early.

Of course the people who are supposed to get the settlement will recieve a pittance, while the lawyers who represented them will receive a king's ransom.

Reminds me of the time I got a settlement check for a similar issue Best Buy was part of. I got $10.42 out of the settlement. Wasn't even worth going to the bank to cash the check over....