Posts Tagged ‘Wal-Mart’

Class action settlements as marketing outreach

At Paid Content, Jeff Roberts reports that Wal-Mart may have found a clever way to pitch its services at Netflix’s streaming subscribers, namely by settling a class action lawsuit to which they are party:

A federal court in California late last week approved a class-action settlement that requires Wal-Mart to pay out $27.5 million. But here’s the key element of the ruling: Wal-Mart will be allowed to pay the 40 million Netflix subscribers in the form of gift cards for Wal-Mart.com—where there is prominent advertising for Vudu, which rents and sells movies a la carte.

The court ruling is a blow to Netflix, which had earlier blasted the settlement as “the equivalent of a marketing campaign that costs Walmart only 68 cents per potential customer.”

Filed under: class action settlements, movies film and videos, Wal-Mart

Law, fairness, and Wal-Mart v. Dukes

I’ve got an instant analysis up at Cato at Liberty of the retailer’s big Supreme Court win today in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, the class action certification case. The Court ruled unanimously that the Ninth Circuit had jumped the gun in certifying the case as a class action, and 5-to-4 (Scalia writing) that plaintiffs had failed to assemble the evidence needed for certification. (& welcome Real Clear Politics “Best of the Blogs”, Atlantic Wire, Nicole Neily/Daily Caller, Jon Hyman, SCOTUSBlog)

More: Josh Blackman (with a comment on the Court’s recognition of the work of the late Richard Nagareda), Hans Bader, Jim Copland, John Steele Gordon. Spot-the-errors dept.: Dahlia Lithwick. Briefs and other resources on the case at SCOTUSBlog.

Filed under: class actions, Ninth Circuit, sex discrimination, Supreme Court, Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart v. Dukes, WO writings

June 8 roundup

Law firm settles with employee who said required high heels led to back injury [ABA Journal]
Stock listings fleeing U.S. for overseas, legal environment a factor [Ribstein, TotM]
Partial solution to above? Ted Frank places a stock bet on the Wal-Mart case [PoL, more]
Wider press coverage of hospital drug shortage [AP, Reuters, my March post]
Trial judge up north supports certifying as class action unusual suit blaming Newfoundland for moose collisions [Canadian Press via Karlsgodt, earlier here and here]
Academic revolt against copyright overreach [Chron of Higher Ed]
Sues deceased grandmother over trampoline injury [Madison County Record]

Filed under: animals, Canada, colleges and universities, copyright, hospitals, pharmaceuticals, Securities and Exchange Commission, Ted Frank, Wal-Mart

Want to open a store? We choose your locations

“D.C. Mayor Vincent D. Gray delivered an ultimatum in a face-to-face meeting with Wal-Mart officials at a real estate convention Monday: If the chain wants to enter the District at all, it had better commit to opening at Skyland Shopping Center, the long-delayed redevelopment project in Gray’s home ward…. Gray indicated he would be willing to go so far as to nix the company’s requests for building permits on privately owned sites, even for neighborhoods where residents favored Wal-Mart’s opening.” [Washington Post, earlier]

Filed under: land use and zoning, Wal-Mart, Washington D.C.

Activists’ demands of Wal-Mart in D.C.

Washington Business Journal brings word of the list of demands by a “community group” to drop its opposition to the opening of Wal-Mart stores in Washington, D.C. Given such a welcoming attitude, isn’t it strange that so many major retailers have opened stores in suburban Maryland and Virginia, but not in the District?

Filed under: Wal-Mart, Washington D.C.

The unfairness of bargain prices

Don’t know whether to laugh or weep: why one local activist thinks Washington, D.C. would be better off without Wal-Mart [Mark Perry]

Filed under: Wal-Mart, Washington D.C.

February 24 roundup

Judge Ciavarella defiant after racketeering conviction in Pennsylvania cash-for-kids horror [TheLegalIntel, Sullum and more, WSJ Law Blog, Greenfield, earlier]
Widener lawprof Lawrence Connell facing discipline over hypotheticals in class [Orin Kerr, NLJ, interview at NAS]
“Do we even want to remain a child care center if we have to eliminate all the parts we love?” [Free-Range Kids] Lawsuit fears tame a Frederick, Md. ice playground [same]
Marquette lawprof Rick Esenberg on Wisconsin showdown [first, second, third posts]
A patent owner, the Chicago Tribune and Sen. Durbin: Anatomy of a pool drain scare story [Woldenberg, AmendTheCPSIA.com]
Mayor Thomas Menino vows to save Boston from scourge of everyday low prices [Mark Perry]
“Comp Hearing Scheduled ‘On the Sly’ for Texting Cop Who Caused Fatal Accident” [Debra Cassens Weiss, ABA Journal] “Paying for bad cops” [Balko]
Demand for shaker abstinence: nosy, hectoring CSPI files suit asking that salt in food be subjected to FDA regulation [six years ago on Overlawyered]

Filed under: Boston, Chicago, law schools, Luzerne County judicial scandal, police, pools, Wal-Mart, Wisconsin, workers' compensation

Worst argument in history against letting Wal-Mart into one’s neighborhood?

“[District of Columbia Ward 4 ANC Commissioner Brenda] Speaks said young people would get criminal records when they couldn’t resist the temptation to steal.” [Robert McCartney, Washington Post via Michael Cannon, Cato at Liberty]

Filed under: Wal-Mart, Washington D.C.

Artisan cheese, Mark Bittman and Michelle Obama

I’ve got a food policy roundup at Cato that tries to answer such questions as:

* Has FDA’s regulatory zeal finally met its match in the foodie zeal of cheese-makers and -fanciers who are beginning to insist on their right to make and enjoy cheeses similar to those in France, even if they pose a nonzero though tiny bacterial risk?

* How annoying is it that Mark Bittman would stop writing a great food column in the NYT in order to start writing an inevitably wrongheaded politics-of-food column?

* Is Wal-Mart secretly smiling after First Lady Michelle Obama publicly twisted its arm to do various things it was probably considering anyway, along with some things it definitely wanted to do, such as opening more stores in poor urban neighborhoods?

Related: Led by past Overlawyered guest-blogger Baylen Linnekin, Keep Food Legal bills itself as “The first and only nationwide membership organization devoted to culinary freedom.” 11 Points has compiled a list of “11 Foods and Drinks Banned in the United States.” And GetReligion.org has more on the “shadowy community of outlaw Amish and Mennonite dairy farmers” portrayed in several recent press reports.

Filed under: FDA, food safety, France, Mark Bittman, New York Times, obesity, small business, Wal-Mart

“First lady, Wal-Mart reach pact on nutrition”

It’s disturbing to think of the federal government’s pressuring and jawboning a private business to reformulate perfectly lawful products, cut prices on some lines of goods, and so forth. In this case, however, as I told the Washington Times, there’s reason to think the nation’s largest retailer might have wanted to proceed with a “healthy-eating” remake anyway, and this way it can get Michelle Obama’s valuable endorsement with all the attendant publicity. Bonus: Ms. Obama has now vocally backed the idea of opening Wal-Marts in more “underserved areas” such as urban neighborhoods without full-line supermarkets; in the past union and local-merchant opposition has often stymied Wal-Mart’s wish to enter such neighborhoods.

P.S. Coincident news story: creepy pro-union group pickets home of developer who hopes to bring Wal-Mart to the District of Columbia. And Ira Stoll has covered the sometimes-exaggerated extent of “food deserts”.

Filed under: obesity, Wal-Mart