The Walmart discrimination case went before the Supreme Court today, and apparently it was ten years in the making. I know nothing of the merits of the case, I know nothing of the case law, and I know nothing of the law in general. Having said that, I am going to go out on a limb and predict the outcome will be a very business friendly decision breaking 5-4, with all the women on one side of the issue.
That’s a pretty safe bet for a ruling in our new banana republic. Gotta maintain competitiveness, now!
mr. whipple
Good thing the court just calls ’em as they sees ’em.
Hacks.
Barb (formerly Gex)
That’s just good jurisprudence. Women didn’t count for anything back when the Constitution was written, and they are just good originalists after all…
beltane
Too bad the plaintiffs can’t just ignore the inevitable decision. It’s really hard having a country where one tribe is above the law and the rest aren’t.
demkat620
I on’t know why they even bother to hear these cases anymore.
5-4 Walmart gets to do whatever the fuck it wants.
Dennis SGMM
I agree that our Supremes will side with Walmart. The only consolation for me is that Walmart already haz a sad because the case is going forward. As I understood it, they were asserting that with 1.5 million plaintiffs, the case was too big. I couldn’t help but think that Too Big to Fail is going to be joined soon by Too Big to be Adjudicated.
We are fucked.
mr. whipple
From the link: “But lawyer Theodore Boutrous Jr, for Wal-Mart, said on Tuesday the class action nature of the legal action deprived the company of legal rights as it was forced to defend the treatment of women regardless of the jobs they held or their place in the Wal-Mart chain.”
Wow.
mr. whipple
This tells ya it’s in the bag for Walmart:
“Meanwhile, Justice Anthony Kennedy remarked that he was unsure “what the unlawful policy is” that Wal-Mart engaged in.”
Remember, he’s the ‘reasonable’ one.
4tehlulz
Reading SCOTUSblog’s summary of the arguments leads me to believe 6-3 or 7-2 WalMart.
The plaintiffs’ lawyer appears to have choked.
Dennis SGMM
@mr. whipple:
Well, fuck, why should peasants be granted the same rights as the gentry? This is not the same country I was born in. This shit makes me glad that I’m old and sad that I have a son.
Tax Analyst
@4tehlulz:
Probably on the bagful of dicks he was presenting his case to.
kdaug
If I ain’t mistaken (and I sure as shit could be), the issue here is whether the women can constitute a class-action suit, not on the merits of their claims.
That said: Fun Fact! I remember when old Sam was on my TV and the slogan was “Made in America”. And I believe Sam meant it.
The junior Walton’s, on the other hand…
john b
wasn’t this already decided? i swear i read about it this afternoon. 5-4
mr. whipple
Yup, long before they ever entered the courtroom.
jo6pac
Yes mr whipple so true. Glad I never had children because even along time ago the hand writing was on the wall. I feel for all children and young adults and it wasn’t this old hippie that did this to them.
superluminR droid
You’re just asking for a punch in the neck from eemom aren’t you?
WaterGirl
Until the year 2000, I believed that federal judges and the Supreme Court decided cases on their merit, unrelated to politics. Isn’t that quaint?
Citizen Alan
Yeah, far be it from me to defend the neanderthals on the court, but my understanding is that this case (at least at the SC level) is purely about the procedural question of whether you can have a class of over 1 million women from all across the country all of whom have significantly differing claims of mistreatment. Of course, bad facts make bad law, and I imagine that whatever problems there were which were specific to this case will nevertheless result in a ruling which favors all corporations in all future cases.
James Hare
@jo6pac: We’ll muddle through. Most of us are smart enough to know what it will be like. We’re also trying like hell to change things. All is not lost.
pattonbt
Since I’m in an odd mood – I’ll go 7-2, business friendly.
dr. bloor
@mr. whipple:
What’s the matter, you’ve never heard of 1,500,000 coincidental, independent events with the same outcome taking place before?
me
OT: Pakistan is a fucking mess.
dr. bloor
@WaterGirl:
Quaint in the same way that we used to observe the Geneva Conventions.
Bush v. Gore. There’s a special room in hell where Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy will be forced to have sex with each other for all eternity.
eemom
and indeed, superluminar, this is the best example so far of ignorant idiots with no idea WTF they’re talking about.
The case is before the Court on a procedural issue. IMO, the plaintiffs’ attorneys didn’t do their clients — or plaintiffs’ class action jurisprudence — any favor by pursuing certification of a class this huge, based on criteria this ill-defined — and yes, it is not likely to result in a good decision.
And I’d elaborate on that, if I were talking to people interested in discussing an actual issue, instead of Captain Kangaroo Cole and his merry band of court-buster-cowboys.
FlipYrWhig
@mr. whipple: Could be a loaded question with the goal of eliciting an interesting response, rather than a sign of actual misgivings. Supreme Court justices have been known to do that.
JPL
@dr. bloor:
They would probably enjoy it. Can we come up with something else?
EDIT.. what is W had to join them for a threesome…
burnspbesq
The arguments in favor of class certification were always crap; the circularity is obvious. Scalia’s “whipsaw” comment is spot on. The decision in favor of Wal-mart should be unanimous, because it is clearly right on the narrow issue before the court.
Denial of class certification doesn’t say anything about the merits of any particular claimant’s case. I don’t doubt that female employees have been discriminated against; the open question is whether the discrimination is the work of individual managers, or flows from Bentonville.
The problem is that the amount at issue in any particular case is so small that many potential plaintiffs will choose not to proceed, or won’t be able to get quality representation.
Sucks, but there it is.
eemom
@burnspbesq: @
that’s kind of an incoherent mishmash of legal commentary. Either you know your audience, and/or you don’t know much about class action law.
WaterGirl
@dr. bloor: The outcome of Bush v. Gore was so wrong that I can almost not talk about it. Still.
iI have been unhappy with Crowley for a long time, but I really liked what he said recently : “If you have to explain why a guy is standing naked in the middle of a jail cell, you have a policy in need of the urgent review.”
I can’t help but think of the old curse: “May you live in interesting times.” For me, the times have gotten so interesting that yesterday I moved 2/3 of my retirement money from mutual funds to a money market.
negative 1
@burnspbesq: Or will get indefinitely delayed since the largest retailer’s corporate litigation unit will be able to file motion after motion while the plaintiffs’ individual “by the hour” guys’ bills will eat up any real desire to sue.
Corporations hate class actions because bigger, better lawyers are far more inclined to get involved for the large chunks of money that large classes provide. Individual claimants can only afford to hire their own – on Walmart wages, no less. They’re going to use this as precedent to divide and conquer on as many class action suits as possible. “Can’t be a class – discrimination only extends as far as your immediate supervisor. See ‘Women v. Walmart’ for precedent.” Once again, why bother even bringing suits against corporations to the Supreme Court?
Not for nothing, but it would make a far larger statement if a plaintiff ever dropped a lawsuit right before a Supreme Court hearing, claiming that they could never receive a fair trial against a corporation.
Zach
Seems like a simple question of fact finding which isn’t the Supreme Court’s job. Did Wal-Mart give its managers discretion so that it could have a plausible-deniability excuse in the event of discrimination claims? Did Wal-Mart corporate receive complaints and have a process by complaints could be heard at the corporate level instead of stopping w/ a specific store’s manager? How did Wal-Mart respond to complaints? These are important questions that have presumably been addressed at prior hearings… I think the response to Kennedy is quite reasonable assuming that there are facts to back it up that were relied upon by the lower courts in affirming the class.
TooManyJens
So, discriminating against 1.5 million people is a defense now. Awesome.
burnspbesq
@eemom:
At least John was honest enough to admit the deficiencies in his knowledge. That kind of honesty is very often in short supply around here.
And in fairness to John, there are non-legal rules of thumb that are sometimes better predictors of outcomes in the broad run of cases than the merits of any particular case. For example, one of the reasons why DOJ Tax Division appeals so few of the IRS’ losses in cases that are appealable to the Fifth Circuit is a widely held belief that “the Government always loses in the Fifth Circuit.”
My personal view is that “big business interests always win in the Supreme Court” is not a hypothesis that is supported by the data, but I understand why someone whose frame of reference doesn’t go back more than three years might think that.
Mr Stagger Lee
The talk host Norman Goldman has been all over it. it would be nice to get Anthony Kennedy, on the right side but since Justice O’Connor left it is hard slap him upside the head. If there is a hell for Uncle Toms, I hope justice Thomas burns at its hottest!
Barb (formerly Gex)
@dr. bloor: Ewwwww.
Baud
@burnspbesq: Someone, somewhere compiles statistics of wins and losses in different areas of law, but it’s not literally 100% in favor of business.
Dennis SGMM
I often learn things on this blog. Today I learned that eemom is smartest person in the world. As the 317,654,929th smartest person in the world I salute you.
MikeJ
@burnspbesq:
So people with current info have a different outlook from people with outdated info?
You go to court with the justices you have, not the justices you wish you had.
burnspbesq
@negative 1:
I don’t have a good sense of whether the cause of the pervasive gender discrimination at Wal-Mart is policy-driven or culture-driven. It makes more sense to me that it would be culture-driven, for a couple of reasons. First, from an HR policy perspective, no company wants to have a reputation for pervasive gender discrimination, because it cuts you off from a rather large pool of qualified employees. Second, given where Wal-Mart operates, it’s almost inevitable that it will have a lot of crackers and Neanderthals as store managers. It’s interesting that Neither Target nor Kohl’s seem to have similar problems.
Anne Laurie
@Dennis SGMM: Off-topic, how’s your wife doing today?
burnspbesq
@MikeJ:
“So people with current info have a different outlook from people with outdated info?”
Ha. Nice try.
No, people with an incomplete understanding have a different outlook than people who know their history and can put things in an appropriate historical perspective.
Dennis SGMM
@Anne Laurie:
She is still hospitalized. She has begin suffering seizures so she’s in ICU. I just called and she ate dinner and is resting.
Our hospital is one of the best places ever so I am continuing to be optimistic.
I would be with her there 24/7 save for the fact that we have a wonderful, autistic son. I divide my time between my dear wife and him. All he knows is that his mom is very ill and she’s not home.
eemom
@Dennis SGMM:
You know, unlike HCR, this is an area of law where there is much less room for controversy, and in which the actual issue facing the court is not nearly as glamorous as constitutionality.
And you don’t have to be all that smart to understand it. You just have to know something about the subject.
No different from how I wouldn’t hire someone who wasn’t a licensed plumber to fix the fucked up toilet in my basement.
But by all means, go on with the schoolboy taunts about how smart I think I am. It does make you look so very much like one of the kewl kids.
negative 1
@burnspbesq: Nor do Target or Kohl’s have the same management demographics. In Walmart’s case, I also agree that it is culture driven. That in and of itself is not necessarily a basis for the narrow interpretation though in my understanding – the basis for a lot of sexual harassment cases is a “pervasive culture”.
I understand the narrow case before the court is that all 1.5 million can not have been discriminated against in the same way, hence they don’t constitute a class. My point is that the precedent becomes de facto pro-business. For the reasons I stated before, businesses hate class action suits. Realistically, only class action suits can target systemic discrimination. What, then, becomes ‘too dissimilar’ to constitute a class? Same store? Same manager? Either way, this has the potential to cripple class actions by providing precedent to limiting the class sizes.
I don’t think it’s unfair to say that since Roberts was made chief justice that the supreme court has been profoundly pro-corporation. I also don’t think that it’s unfair to be skeptical that this was ever going to get a fair shake.
p.s. – one of the things that I am most proud of is failing Walmart’s psychological profile during their hiring process.
MikeJ
@burnspbesq: What John Jay would have ruled means jack shit right now. History means jack shit. Knowing what right wing loons will do has more predictive value.
patrick II
@TooManyJens:
The new corporate strategy will be when you screw over your employees, make sure you screw over a number too large to form a class.
Dennis SGMM
@eemom:
I taunted you because of your continuing above-it-all, smartest-person-in-the room comments. “You just have to kn ow something about the subject – Fuck me. Do you know the valve gap for a 1966 Volkswagen engine? Or do you know how to set up a form tool on Warner Swasey #5 turret lathe?
I don’t know the law, what I do know is that Walmart is an asshole corp. Period. They employ plenty of people but, so did the pharaohs. If you want to add something, and you do often have something to add, try not accompanying it with a smug dose of sulphuric acid.
cmorenc
When too much flies by narrow 5-4 hard-core ideologically driven decision, it becomes far more vulnerable to being systematically, rudely (but in nominally polite legalese that those in the know clearly recognize as nevertheless a firm rebuke) overturned not long after the court’s composition changes. Although the SCOTUS tended to be ideologically impure and inconsistent over several decades, it nonetheless retained considerable legitimacy because the substantial majority (though not all) of its most important decisions were at worst, 6-3 or 7-2 (e.g. Roe v Wade). Only over the last dozen years or so has the tendency toward huge landmark reversals and shifts in longstanding American constitutional law been carved out by so many 5-4 decisions along sharp ideological divisions, which has substantially undermined the former near-consensus esteem in which the nation’s high court as an institution was held. We’ve passed a tipping point where it has become more and more unmistakably partisan in its loyalties and viewpoints, with Citizens United confirming that Bush v Gore was not simply a one-off greedy partisan grab that the justices were unlikely to repeat, lest the court permanently lose legitimacy and respect as an institution. Now, it still has power, but it has lost respect and integrity.
Anne Laurie
@Dennis SGMM: Optimism is good. You’ll all three be in my thoughts.
Bob Loblaw
@JPL:
Eternal Eiffel tower. Poor Sandy…
Anne Laurie
@patrick II:
The Robber Baron version of Stalin’s “How many battalions does the Pope have?” seems to be “How many top-dollar corporate-specialist lawyers can our employees hire?”
Dennis SGMM
@Anne Laurie:
Thanks, Anne. I appreciate all of the good vibes that the BJ crew has sent my way. It really upsets people to see a six foot tall, ex-tough guy crying in the down elevator.
eemom
hmmm. A case of the incredible disappearing comment.
Kyle
deprived the company of legal rights as it was forced to defend the treatment of women regardless of the jobs they held or their place in the Wal-Mart chain.”
Shorter Wal-Mart:
We’re from the feudal plantation-economy South — you can’t expect us NOT to treat lowly employees like shit”.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: It is always the incredible ones that disappear, isn’t it? The half-assed ones with the typos appear and the edit function doesn’t work. What can you do?
eemom
@Dennis SGMM:
and nevertheless, at this difficult time, you can still find it within your heart to invest time and energy being a jerk to someone you don’t even know. A true testament to the human spirit.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
I suspect it was…..done away with.
Ruckus
@Tax Analyst:
Bravo. Bravfuckingo
Dennis SGMM
@eemom:
Well, you’ve taken the time and trouble to be a jerk to someone whom you don’t even know – haven’t you?
The sad, or great, fact is that this blog is the extended family that I never had. So, you keep on keeping on as the annoying but sometimes right great aunt.
Gin & Tonic
@eemom: Maybe someone who starts off a comment with “ignorant idiots with no idea WTF they’re talking about” shouldn’t bee too quick to toss around the “jerk” label.
John Cole
Not sure why you have a stick up your ass this time, but I think I pretty clearly said I know nothing about the merits, nothing about the case law, and nothing about law in general, but was predicting a win for Walmart anyway. Am I wrong? Or are the plaintiffs going to win?
John Cole
I’m sure at any moment now, eemom is going to give us all a lecture on blog civility. Allan can then back her up.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic:Be nice to eemom. She’s foul-mouthed, but she’s mean.
Ruckus
Not to pile on here
Oh what the hell.
eemom, if you didn’t frequently sound so condescending maybe you could teach those of us who are doing/have done other things in this world besides being a lawyer, something. As it is I mostly ignore everything you have to say, because it’s not worth my time to read most of your comments.
WaterGirl
@Dennis SGMM: Think “great”, not “sad”.
General Stuck
just got back from a little sojourn out of town, so what did I miss? Has Obama sent the Marines in yet? And my ears have been burnin’ that little bucket of human excrement corner stone has been trash talkin my hillbilly ass behind my back. Where is that fat fuck? I got my idiot switch tuned up just for him.
And fuck a bunch of blog civility — eemom, you keep taking chunks out of Cole’s rumpus when it’s needed. And that is fairly regular these days. I got to water the plants.
PeakVT
@4tehlulz: It’s odd that I can’t find the words “Clarence” or “Thomas” anywhere in that post.
eemom
@John Cole: @
yeah, you said you know nothing about the merits or the law — but goddamn, you’re just going full steam ahead in your glorious ignorance to bleat right along with the sheep-meme of how the supreme court always, ALWAYS, fucks over The People and rules in favor of big business…….rule of law be daaaaamned, woo hoo! When you have no fucking idea what the rule of law at issue actually is.
No different from the rightard idiots you mock 24/7 with their equally ill-informed equally gleeful sheep-bleats: Government spending money is always, ALWAYS baaaaad!! When they have no fucking idea what it’s being spent on, or why it’s important.
The sad thing is, you may well be right that the conservatives on this Court are out to fuck over The People. Hell, I suspect you probably are right. But there’s no purpose to be served, other than the glorification of your own ego and that of the other idiots on this blog, to make that assertion in the specific context of a case that you admittedly know nothing the fuck about.
I’ve practiced law for 23 years, and my experience included representing class action plaintiffs. To litigate on behalf of a class, you must first have the class “certified” by the court. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 establishes certain requirements that must be met for a class to be certified — i.e., there must be “commonality” among the members’ claims; the representative plaintiff’s claims must be “typical” of those of the class members; and most importantly for purposes of the Walmart case, individual issues must not predominate over common issues.
As a matter of practice, this means that in order to stand the best chance of achieving certification and thereby litigating the claims successfully on behalf of the class, you HAVE to define the class relatively narrowly. Defining the class overly broadly is ASKING to lose on class certification — and if you lose on that, the only recourse is individual litigation.
In a case like the Walmart one, where the putative class is huge and there are significant individual issues involved in the claims, what the plaintiffs’ lawyers should have done, IMO, is filed a bunch of smaller cases with smaller, more narrowly defined classes. Doing it the way they did, as noted above, is asking to lose. OTOH, they — the LAWYERS, not the class members — WILL have the advantage of having filed a huge high-profile case that resulted in a huge-high profile Supreme Court decision…..and even if they lose, guess who’s gonna be the famous, noble plaintiffs’ lawyers who fought the law and the law won…..and guess how bad it’s gonna turn out for them, that the Walmart employees get nothing.
Mnemosyne
So, for the people predicting 7-2, who do you see going with the majority: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan?
Personally, I think the split will be along gender lines (duh), so it will probably be 6-3 pro business. This is pretty much the same court that decided that a woman had to sue within 1 year of being discriminated against — even if she didn’t know she had been discriminated against — or lose her right to sue. I don’t really see them deciding that 1.5 million women should be allowed to sue for gender discrimination.
eemom
@Ruckus:
please, pile on. Because there is nothing so rewarding as being piled on by someone so stupid as to admit they didn’t even read what they’re piling on about.
GHK
Don’t be so sure that a gender breakdown is guaranteed. This is a tricky procedural case, and Justice Ginsburg has shown some hesitation in recent years about the expansive use of the class action device. This may well be a hard case for her–the obvious gender issues on one side, and her possible procedural preferences on the other. She could easily vote to reverse.
General Stuck
The way I understand it, the plaintiffs only have to show a commonality of treatment by Walmart to reach the legal bar needed to get the class action certified. I am going out on a limb here, and am predicting Kennedy will have an interlude of conscience, and due to likely overwhelming evidence of common treatment of female employees, for decades by Walmart, it will be 5 to 4 for the plaintiffs.
HCR, due to it’s country changing electoral effects, or probability of that, not in the wingers favor, will likely be when the courts conservatives will hold Kennedy’s feets to the fire to go along and at least tinker with the ACA, enough to wound it, maybe fatally.
eemom
@John Cole:
when the fuck have I ever lectured anybody about “blog civility”? I’ve said that YOU, personally, were an asshole to ME, personally — which you generally have been.
Perhaps because I’ve made no bones about the fact that, IMO, you’re not much of an independent thinker as a Democrat anymore than you were as a Republican, but whatever.
Like most people, I suspect, I hang out here for the fellow commenters, and not for the wit and wisdom of the front pagers, least of all you.
Mark S.
@Mnemosyne:
They can all still sue; the issue is whether they can all do it together in a class action suit. I agree with eemom and the SCOTUSblog guy that the plaintiffs overreached trying to include this many people in the suit. I think it will go 9-0 in favor of Wal-Mart.
Berto
@eemom:
Agreed. If you’re a plumber, you expect the mortgage loan professional to put you in a mortgage loan you can handle. Yet I still hear folks who want to blame the plumber who’s house is “under-water” (no pun intended).
FlipYrWhig
Being “condescending” in the comments is now a grave offense? At this rate we’re not going to have anyone left to ignore matoko-weasley!
General Stuck
@FlipYrWhig:
I plan to soon just pie everyone, and talk to myself and maybe several sockpuppets.
eemom
@Berto:
Thank you. Finally, someone who gets it.
Ija
@eemom:
Wow, you are such an asshole. I never understood before why so many people seem to hate you, but I get it now.
Jeesh. It’s like you scroll the comments for any nuggets of personal info people might intentionally or unintentionally give out, and use it against them in arguments that have nothing to do with those personal issues.
eemom
@General Stuck:
The question then becomes…..are they Nicks?
FlipYrWhig
@John Cole: I’ll have you know that I don’t recall eemom ever being less than robustly uncivil. Same as the rest of you fuckers.
eemom
@Ija:
That’s good. I always understood why you were a negligible idiot with a stupid name who no one ever paid attention to, so now we’re even.
FlipYrWhig
@General Stuck: If I tried that, somehow one of the sockpuppets would start badgering me over nothing without ever saying what he himself thought about any issue. It’s like this blog has a poltergeist. Either that or WordPress was coded over an ancient Indian burial ground.
Ija
Maybe Cole and the rest of the front pagers should never write anything about the Supreme Court or anything involving the law without clearing it with eemom and burns first. That way we are spared the inevitable “you people are so stupid, only us lawyers know what is going on” rants. It’s tedious. FYI, people would be more willing to listen and learn if both of you are not condescending assholes.
Ija
@eemom:
The stupid name is my name. At least my shortened name. Yes, Americans have weird names too. Not everyone is Jones or Smith, but I bet that fact will be lost on you.
I guess I am stupid and ignored, but that’s ok, I’d rather be that than condescending and superior and hated.
General Stuck
@eemom:
They’ll be little Stucks pontificating on how I’m the gawds gift to blogging, and generally a handsome devil. Ought to drive the whiny shits on this blog crazy. Otherwise, I still care about a few commenters here, that keeps me reading it. And maybe DougJ and ABL, and Kay, if she hasn’t dropped this cesspool of radioactive turds and prissy Matildas.
FlipYrWhig
@Ija: Look, we’re all assholes here. It’s just that the know-nothing assholes have been exasperating the know-something assholes lately.
ETA: I am not one of the know-something assholes.
MattR
@Ija: No shit. eemom said above “No different from how I wouldn’t hire someone who wasn’t a licensed plumber to fix the fucked up toilet in my basement” and I would like to remind her that I wouldn’t hire a licensed plumbed who responded to my amateur belief that it was caused by the large wad of paper towel I tried to flush down with “You are such an idiot it is not even worth trying to explain why you are wrong or what actually needs to be done to fix the toilet and prevent a recurrence.”
eemom
@FlipYrWhig:
“But I don’t want to go among assholes,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat. “We’re all assholes here.”
eemom
@MattR:
analogy fail.
However, I’m glad you two have found each other.
Mnemosyne
@Mark S.:
Here’s the thing, though — if you’re arguing that there’s pervasive gender discrimination throughout the company, don’t you have to include all of the people of that gender in the lawsuit? Otherwise, the defendant could argue that the discrimination can’t possibly be pervasive if women X, Y and Z are not part of the class.
IANAL, but it seems strange to argue that some natural members of a class in a discrimination lawsuit should be left out just so the class doesn’t get too big. If it were African-Americans who said they were being discriminated against, should only some of them be allowed to be part of the class? What would the criteria be?
Ija
@FlipYrWhig:
Meh. Some of the know-something-assholes, or at least the claimed-to-know-something assholes are more tedious and condescending than others. Oh well, what do I know, apparently I’m stupid and ignored, so obviously I’m one of the know-nothing-assholes who are so exasperating our experts and lord and masters. Sorry about that, know-something-assholes.
MattR
@eemom: It wasn’t really an analogy. Just backing up Ija’s point that “FYI, people would be more willing to listen and learn if both of you are not condescending assholes.” by pointing out how much that applies to the world in general.
eemom
@Mnemosyne:
the problem is that the kind of discrimination at issue here is individualized — i.e., although supposedly pursuant to a corporate “policy,” it was admittedly implemented by individuals with individual discretionary authority. That is what makes it problematic from a class action perspective. Contrast that with a situation where the alleged discrimination is based on a supposedly objective criterion like not passing a test.
As I noted above, the thing that is fatal to class certification is individual issues predominating over common ones. In a case like this where the decisions being challenged are by definition case-specific, such as non-promotions, I honestly don’t know if there is any way to make it amenable to class action treatment. But the one sure way NOT to do it, is to define the class as broadly as the plaintiff attorneys have done it here.
The bottom line is, that not every case where a vast number of people have been injured by an ostensibly common practice is suited to class action treatment. A notable example is asbestos litigation.
ETA: and if it’s not too “condescending,” thank you for asking the first intelligent question on this thread.
MattR
@eemom: That comment was not condescending and contained actual information that taught me something. But I am sure that is purely coincidence.
eemom
@MattR:
piss off, semi-troll.
Xenos
@eemom: And at the same time, should they push the boundaries of the law a bit and survive the challenge to class certification, then they will be in a position to force WalMart to negotiate. This could include some proper, official changes to the corporate policies that would allow future litigants to point to those policies and prove that, in their case, those policies were not followed.
This large class action may be tilting at windmills, but there is at least a logic to it and the possibility that it could succeed in furthering the plaintiffs’ interests.
As for the cheap cynicism of JC or the public at large – I would say that cynicism is well earned, even if it grates on your nerves (mine too, at times). That sort of cynicism can be redirected productively (say, by expanding public support for a nationwide retail employees’ union) rather than sneeringly dismissed.
Ruckus
@eemom:
Being stupid and ignoring an asshole are two different things. And I know this because at various times I have been an ignored asshole, hell once upon a time I used to get paid to be an asshole. And on occasion I have even been stupid.
But I am also capable of listening, learning and growing.
I used to read your posts until I noticed that, well you are usually a condescending asshole. Now I only read them when someone else points out that you might have said something reasonable. Because that seldom happens I feel just fine skipping over your crap. And that’s the smarter thing to do.
@FlipYrWhig:
The issue is not being condescending, it is being consistently so. And from the looks of it, many others here feel the same way.
A Humble Lurker
If people were only allowed to write about things they knew about on the internet, there would be no blogging.
Are there assholes here? And we should get over it? Alright, there are ignorant people here too, and the rest of you should get over that too.
Now eemom, you and John kiss and make up, preferably in a youtube clip with sleazy porno music playing in the background, and with tongues. That will be a fitting punishment for both his ignorance and your assholishness and the rest of us are entertained by the horrid spectacle thereof. Everyone wins.
burnspbesq
@eemim:
Wait a sec.
We agree on what the correct outcome of this case should be. We also agree on the correct rationale for that outcome. And you’re sledging me?
You’ve lost it. It’s time for you to take a deep breath.
burnspbesq
@lja:
If you can’t tell the difference between my comments and e’s, you need an eye exam and a course in remedial reading.
Pococurante
Ah, blog community – cheaper than therapy, heavy on the boxed wine.
FlipYrWhig
@Ruckus: If we were making a list of the blog’s biggest assholes, first off, we’re going to need one of those guys who writes on grains of rice, and, second, eemom’s not _remotely_ near the top.
Ruckus
@FlipYrWhig:
eemom’s not remotely near the top
Oh I agree on that, absolutely. Not even in the running for top 10. I think it’s that quick draw from discussion to why won’t all you assholes listen to your betters that annoys.
DougW
@JPL: And Sandra would be the “top”!