As retail titan Wal-Mart seeks to overturn a $187.6 million class action, one of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices hearing oral arguments Wednesday in Harrisburg questioned how the class of employees could have proven its case without using the company’s payroll records.
Wal-Mart’s counsel, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles, argued that the payroll records were indeed admissible, but Boutrous argued that smaller class actions could have been brought attacking management practices at the store level or that the class action could have been divided into a two-part process in which the cases were looked at first for "truly common" issues en masse and then second, adjudicated in individual proceedings. Instead, the case was handled in "one fell swoop all mixed together," he said.
