It seems so. According to CNNMoney,
The plaintiff, 21-year-old Long Island resident Patrick Brady, suffers from cerebral palsy. According to the plaintiff’s attorney Douglas Wigdor, Brady applied for a position in the pharmacy unit of a Wal-Mart store in Centereach, NY. and was hired in the summer of 2002.
But Brady, who worked for just four days before he quit, claimed he was soon reassigned to other responsibilities that included collecting garbage and shopping carts in the Wal-Mart parking lot.
On the face of it, that seems absurd. Someone has to get the garbage and the shopping carts; would it then be discrimination to ask anyone to do that?
According to the AP story,
The jury in U.S. District Court in Central Islip deliberated one day before ruling on Wednesday that Brady was discriminated against when he was transferred. It also found that Brady was asked impermissible pre-employment questions about his disability, said his lawyer, Douglas H. Wigdor.
I wonder what those questions were. And did the asking of such questions by another employee warrant taking $7.5 million from stockholders?
This seems just another example of what’s gone wrong with U.S. employment laws. (For one thing, we have something called “employment law” that is radically different from “contract law.”)
I don’t get it, and I think in this case the problem is with the American legal system and not with my ability to understand…
It’s too easy to criticise before knowing the facts. Are you aware of the details involved or where they can be read?
There are several layers of facts in anything and it seems to me that Tom is in possession of the higher level ones here and that his comments therefore are simple observation taking into account the published key issues. The jury were in possession of all the detail though and made a decision which, on the face of it, seems more than slightly extreme. I am watching England go the same way at the moment and finding it very uncomfortable.
Argument from authority is unsatisfying. I would like to know the facts of the case. I have heard the McDonalds coffee case criticised hundreds of times though it is a decision every libertarian should approve of in the broader considerations of tort and government regulaton.
Amen, James, I have been trying to tell people for years that the McDonald’s coffee case was completely legitimate, but ignoramuses from lowbrow publications still have the “Stella Awards” because the word “sue” has become so dirty.
This is the first and last time I look at your site. Your information on the Walmart case is without merit, and obviously, without any research. Five million dollars was punitive, which has a 300,000 cap. Approximately 2 million was for emotional damages. Read the case. The boy, who worked in a pharmacy for 2 years doing exactly what Walmart hired him to do in their pharmacy was discrminated against by the pharmacist because he handed out prescriptions a bit slower than norm. After one day she sent him to personnel, which assigned him to carts. He was never under any psychiatric care and never took anti-depressants – until this action by Walmart – who, by the way has continuously ignored the Federal law concerning people with disabilites. This was blatant discrimation of someone with a disability – but not a disability that made it feasable to have him push carts instead of working in the pharmacy, which he had the qualifications and experience to do.As his lawyer said, if he could get A and B in English in college, he could read the names on the prescriptions to hand out to the patients – as he had done for 2 years – but thought Walmart would offer him a future in the largest retail store in the world, instead of staying at the local pharmacy, which by the way, if you read all the details, had the same amout of prescriptions filled per day as the Walmart pharmacy. Do your homework next time before writing – obviously, you did not.
Frankly, I still don’t understand all the talk about “discrimination”. If an employment contract was treated more like, well, a contract, the point should be whether Wal-Mart failed to respect any of its clauses.
You can have implied as well as express clauses in a contract. Does Ellen Winters have a link to the case? J
see the New York Times article in the business section on February 24
I’ve been out of internet range for a few days (hard to imagine, I know) and was quite interested to find the comments above.
Ms. Winters has raised questions regarding the details of a sparsely reported case, but I found nothing in the New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/business/24walmarts.html?oref=login ) that was relevant to the case that was not contained in the essays to which I linked in my post. It did contain information likely to make one sympathetic to the plaintiff for understandable reasons, but how (or that) it relates to the justice of the case is not clear to me.
I think that AAA put his finger on the issue above when he wrote “If an employment contract was treated more like, well, a contract, the point should be whether Wal-Mart failed to respect any of its clauses.” Whether we feel sympathy for the plaintiff is irrelevant to whether justice was done. Losing a job may very well be quite emotionally damaging, but I don’t see why damages of any sort, whether emotional or not, should be awarded if the decision to change his work responsibilities was not a violation of the requirements of justice.
From the NYT article Dr. Palmer links above: “People with disabilities are not supposed to be questioned about them when they apply for jobs, according to New York and federal laws. But Mr. Brady said he was questioned by Wal-Mart managers about his ability to do the job before he was hired.” I believe the second sentence speaks for itself.
Additionally, since the infamous “McDonald’s case” was mentioned, I would be remiss if I didn’t cite to McMahon v. Bunn-O-Matic Corp., 150 F.3d 651 (7th Cir. 1998) (Easterbrook, J.), which is the single most learned judicial discussion of appropriate coffee temperatures ever penned. (The original case referenced above produced no published opinions.)
“Mr. Brady said he was questioned by Wal-Mart managers about his ability to do the job before he was hired.”
I’m no lawyer and not intimately familiar with employment law. I do work and interview for a large corporation, and have gone through interview training where the rules are explained to us.
The guidelines are pretty clear: while we are not allowed to ask any questions pertaining or related to an interviewees disability, we *are* allowed to ask them about their ability to do their job. On the face of it, there do not appear to be any violations here.
As Rob said, we only have the high-level facts available. Given these, it seems Wal-Mart treated Brady with less than utmost dignity — this should surprise no one, incl. Brady — but that a multi-million dollar settlement is ludicrously disproportionate.
If he was hired TO BE A PHARMACIST, then I completely understand why he would sue.
If he was hired as a general laborer, then it seems he has no case whatsoever.
Which one was it?
I’d be very surprised if someone can become a pharmacist by age 21. At most, I suspect, he was hired to a pharmacist assistant, which is in large part a gopher job.
i think walmart got what it deserved.really because you got some of those mangers in there .that have there picks .and don’t care about the next .i used too work for them .never called out worked there 2yrs and 4months .and they walked all over.me and gave this personthe postion that never came too work work .only when she wanted too .and she got too promotion over me.