Walmart should pay one among its former truck drivers $35 million after a jury discovered the retailer had falsely accused him of employees’ compensation fraud.
A San Bernardino County jury mentioned in a two-part verdict filed final week that former Walmart driver Jesus “Jesse” Fonseca is owed $25 million in punitive damages and $9.7 million in precise damages, which incorporates losses from misplaced wages and advantages and non-economic hurt, corresponding to emotional misery.
The semi-truck Fonseca was driving for the corporate was rear-ended by one other semi-truck in 2017, forcing him to file a employees’ compensation declare with a health care provider’s order to limit business driving and decrease lifting objects. In accordance with the lawsuit filed in 2019, Walmart denied Fonseca’s requests to accommodate his accidents with completely different work duties. The corporate later accused him of fraud, saying there was surveillance of him driving a private car whereas injured. The corporate fired Fonseca whereas he was on work-related harm go away for a breach of integrity in being “deliberately dishonest” and made him ineligible for being rehired.
“The notion that somebody presumably performing day by day actions exterior of their work restrictions quantities to fraud is preposterous,” Fonseca’s criticism mentioned. “But, even when an worker with work restrictions inadvertently violates them, this doesn’t quantity to fraud within the office.”
Walmart, nonetheless, pushed again in opposition to the jury’s verdict, arguing its actions have been rightful. The retail big mentioned it’s going to pursue cures, presumably within the type of damages.
“This outrageous verdict merely doesn’t replicate the easy and uncontested info of this case,” a Walmart spokesperson instructed Fortune in a press release.
Fonseca, who labored for the corporate for 14 years as a truck driver and mentored different drivers for over a decade, “lived and breathed Walmart,” in line with an X put up from David deRubertis, one among Fonseca’s attorneys.
However after leaving his put up at Walmart, Fonseca had little luck discovering a brand new job. Six months after being terminated and whereas he was making use of to new jobs, Fonseca was compelled to inform potential employers Walmart had fired him for “gross misconduct and integrity” as a result of he was suspended for fraud, in line with the lawsuit. He was not given job affords by these potential employers.
The $35 million in damages is a hefty payday for Fonseca. In accordance with job listings on Walmart’s web site, regional truck drivers make as much as $110,000 of their first 12 months. The retailer boosted its wage for the place in 2022 because the trade confronted a scarcity of almost 80,000 drivers as a result of elevated freight calls for and pandemic-induced challenges like closed driving colleges and DMVs, in line with the American Trucking Associations. In accordance with Walmart, the common pay of a long-haul freight driver in 2022 was about $56,000.
Fonseca’s different lawyer, Mohamed Eldessouky, mentioned in a press release to CBS MoneyWatch the decision “sends a transparent message.”
“If an organization decides to query somebody’s character and integrity, it should accomplish that fastidiously and actually,” he mentioned. “Walmart ought to rethink the way it treats the hardworking drivers who’re the spine of its enterprise.”
