Wal-Mart Seeks Review of Ad Order
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will ask a federal judge in Tucson to reconsider his order that the company make a television commercial admitting it violated the Americans With Disabilities Act, a spokesman said Thursday.
U.S. District Judge William Browning made the demand and fined the company $750,200 after finding it in contempt Wednesday for not complying with the consent decree in a lawsuit that charged the retailer with discrimination for failing to hire two deaf job applicants.
Wal-Mart spokesman Bill Wertz said the nation’s largest retailer never admitted any discrimination in settling the suit.
“Even if we are judged to have violated the consent decree, there were provisions of the decree that went beyond the ADA itself,” he said. “So we’re uncertain how the judge determined the ADA was violated.”
The company was ordered to make a 30-second commercial and air it for two weeks on major Arizona stations, Wertz said. “This was not something that had been discussed with us previously.”
The commercial exceeded the demands of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Arizona Center for Disability Law, which had brought the contempt complaint, said Rose Daly-Rooney, a center lawyer. “That’s amazing,” she said. “I haven’t heard of one like this before.”
The agencies sued Wal-Mart for discrimination after Jeremy Fass and William Darnell applied for jobs unloading merchandise in the back of a Tucson store in 1995. Neither man ever got a call back even though Fass’ mother, who worked at the store, knew they were hiring, Daly-Rooney said. When they inquired further, they were informed there were no jobs, she said.
The judge approved the consent decree Jan. 6, 2000, and Wal-Mart hired Fass and Darnell at $8 an hour and paid them $66,250 each in back wages and damages. The company also paid $57,500 in attorneys’ fees and costs to the prosecuting agencies. Wal-Mart also hired a sign-language interpreter during a two-week training period for Fass and Darnell, as required.
But, as the deadline on the consent decree approached, the agencies charged the company had not met its obligation to train supervisors on the ADA and had not inserted a sign-language interpreter into corporate training videos.
Wertz acknowledged Wal-Mart had been unable to meet the deadline for those requirements.
“But we felt that we had made a good-faith effort to satisfy all of the requirements of the decree and asked for an extension to complete the training,” he said.
Wertz said Wal-Mart also plans to ask the judge to recalculate the fine. The amount was based on noncompliance at 22 stores--12 more than were included in the original order, he said.
