Wal-Mart settles lawsuit over stool use
Posted on Friday, October 12, 2007
A settlement has been reached in a federal lawsuit filed against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. over claims that a female employee’s supervisors failed to meet her medical needs during a problematic pregnancy.
Terms of the out-of-court agreement were not released in court documents Thursday. The sides signed a confidentiality agreement, said Judith Rebecca Hass, attorney for Maggie Collins, a former customer service manager at Wal-Mart Supercenter No. 144, 2875 W. Sixth St. in Fayetteville.
The lawsuit, filed in September 2006 in U. S. District Court in Fayetteville, claimed Collins’ former bosses told her she couldn’t use a stool at work because “it did not look good.”
Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, didn’t dispute that Collins wasn’t allowed to sit on a stool to do her work. The retail giant instead argued that Collins stated no “cognizable legal claim under any theory, and she is unable to point to a disputed material fact such that a reasonable jury could find in her favor.”
Wal-Mart also argued that other pregnant employees were not treated more favorably, and that she was an at-will employee.
Collins, who had worked for the company since July 2004, suffered a miscarriage in 2005 and was having problems with a second pregnancy when she asked her supervisor if she could sit on a stool do to her work.
Collins quit her job in late 2005 “rather than endanger the health and life of her unborn child,” court records show.
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