Reporter Martin Kuz of The Cleveland Scene has produced this week’s Labor Day story about a Wal-Mart employee whose tragic death was surpassed only by the company’s more tragic response to it. Tom Davis died ten years ago next week at the age of 40 while operating a fork lift at a Sam’s Club in Oakwood Village in Ohio. While moving produce from a truck to the loading dock, the truck moved away from the dock. The fork lift and its contents fell on Davis and crushed him. During the lawsuit filed by his widow, Davis’ attorneys learned of a Wal-Mart memo written 8 months before Davis’ death describing similar dock accidents, and outlining procedures for preventing reoccurences. The memo said that Sam’s had had several incidents where trucks “prematurely pulled away from our dock while an associate and/or lift equipment was still on the truck.” During the trial, Wal-Mart did not admit this document existed until Davis’ lawyers indicated they already had it. Wal-Mart claimed they kept no accident records. After deliberating for 40 minutes, jurors in the 1995 case awarded Davis’ widow $2 million. Davis’ lawyers also uncovered the fact in the company’s lawyer’s diary that Wal-Mart had, in fact, detailed reports of many similar dock accidents that led to the issuance of the memo, even though the company claimed in court that it had no such records. Two years later, Davis’ widow sued Wal-Mart again for supressing documents, thereby hindering her from seeking punitive damages. The second case went to the Ohio Supreme Court, which chided Wal-Mart for playing “hide the thimble” with key evidence. The court ordered Wal-Mart to produce files back to 1990 of all the decisions in which is was charged with holding back key evidence during the”discovery” phase of investigations. Wal-Mart then settled the lawsuit with Davis’ widow, so the documents never were released. Davis’ attorney, William Greene, wrote to Wal-Mart’s lawyer: “It is one thing to kill your own employee recklessly and ‘intentionally’, but quite another thing to cheat his widow…” Wal-Mart’s deal with Davis’ widow to end her second lawsuit is confidential, so the amount of financial award has not been made public. Ironically, the Davis family was willing to settle at one point for $250,000, but Wal-Mart’s ten year battle with Davis’ family ended up costing them at least 10 times that amount.
This database contains additional stories of “discovery abuse”, in which companies like Wal-Mart are criticixed and fined by Judges for witholding information key to the plaintiffs’ lawsuit. This has been a pattern of Wal-Mart legal behavior for years. For more background, search by the word “discovery” or “lawsuit”.Tom Davis gave his life for this company. But in return, his survivors had the fight of their life to try and get justice out of Wal-Mart.
