Did Walmart really talk about sales figures in a release about this incident? I am not a Walmart hater like many on this site, but that is really in poor taste. Sam must be spinning about now.
No kidding, that really is poor taste. If it was me that died and they made that comment I would haunt the family forever. “We are really sorry our employee was trampled to death by a bunch of crazed overweight housewives. We are also very sorry that we do not offer adequate insurance. Therefore his funeral will be covered by the family. I am sure his spirit will rest much easier knowing that our profits have gone up.”
It’s amazing that this has never happened earlier. Retailers whip the public into a frenzy with ridiculous opening hours on Black Friday and deals that they cannot possibly deliver to each shopper.
To allow shoppers to start camping out the night before only invites havoc when they are understaffed with security to handle crowd control.
The shoppers themselves also must accept blame. Why would an 8 month pregnant woman allow herself to be part of this stampede.
I love to shop — but this is beyond the pall. Off the soapbox now
Since the death is an accidental one that was surely never intended by Walmart management even if they mis-estimated the danger to their staff, NY law on workers’ compensation should be the sole remedy permitted to the worker’s next of kin rather than a PI suit for tort damages. Walmart might make a deal anyway for public relations reasons but I think they have a strong legal defense from a technical standpoint – even if comp benefits would be way lower than a Bronx jury award might be if the case can survive to get to trial and verdict.
Independent contractors don’t always have Work Comp, so sole remedy may not apply.
If this guy worked for a security company, it would be their work comp on the line. But not Wal-Mart’s. But if he’s a self-employed independent contractor, he doesn’t even need work comp in many states.
And when there’s no Work Comp, there’s no sole remedy. His family could sue.
Since Wal-Mart is not the employer, they could be sued, not only by the victim’s estate but also by subrogation from any insurance the victim did have.
I concur (I just love using fancy words like that). Seriously though, while some of the blame must go to Wal Mart, in my opinion, the shoppers who decided to act like a drunken mob deserve just as much. I wonder how those people felt after they trampled that poor employee? Did the transient satisfaction of buying whatever consumer item that they’ll probably forget in a few weeks compensate for their responsibility in that death?
Whether or not the unfortunate individual was covered by his employer’s WC (e.g. a security or temp company), or was a totally uninsured subcontractor, his estate can still bring suit vs. Walmart for “failure to provide a safe workplace.” Of course, those clever risk managers at Walmart no doubt hung the subcontracting company (if there is one) with an oppressive indemnity agreement with additional insured and waiver of subrogation provisions in the isurance section of their contract. They can then just turn the lawsuit over to the security company and its insurer and tell them to defend under their GL contractual coverage.
It looks like the limit demanded of the subonctractor was not too high and Walmart is worried to a small extent that it will have to pay a few mill above what the subcontractor’s GL policy is going to have to pay. (I would not want to be defending this action!)
Walmart has raked in billions by using subcontractors with no benefits, not to mention employees with no or cruddy benefits. They all end up at the county hospital and we all end up paying for their care through our taxes. And now, this one time, this practice may come back to haunt them–just a bit.
What they should really be worried about are UNIONS and UNIONIZING EFFORTS.
Maybe something good will come out of this instance of the fruits of Walmart’s unparalleled and unrestrained greed.
I have to agree that retailers must share some of the responsibilty. Did anyone see the Walmart commercial that advertised the flat screen tv for 399.00 but only 5 tvs per store !! The commercial alone probably inspired a lot of the madness. Also I am sure that most of the people present got caught up in the mob mentality, and all common sense flew out the window.
Larry, I’m with you. How does one foresee idiotic people breaking down your doors and trampling some poor security guard? How does one protect against this? Temporarily replacing the doors with ones that are steel-reinforced? Hiring 150 security guards to man the doors, armed with mace and Tasers to keep the masses under control? Mandatory ingestion of NO for all shoppers so they are less-hyped when they enter the store? The people responsible for this man’s death are the one’s whose bootprints are on his corpse. Sue them.
Agree w/you lastbat. The only ones responsible for this are the pieces of human garbage who opted to act like wild animals. Shame on them. The foreseeability and duty issues will be hard for the plaintiffs to overcome.
The District Attorney needs to step-up to the plate and produce an indictment AND soon.
Someone lost their life here, and the peeps who did it are responsible.
I believe that the exposure Wal-Mart put the decedant in goes far beyond the purvue of his normal job; so that his survivors SHOULD be able to enter a PI suit
Moreso, Wal-Mart was well aware of previous similar incidents at their stores so they should have known to have a genuine Security Team employed for those 4am loonies
Lastly, it’s time for our legislators to examine these early am or late pm “sales”, with an eye towards a law banning such dangerous events !
I agree. Wal-mart pays their employees little to nothing and give them very poor benefits but make billions a year off of them. They work people ranging from teenagers to senior citizens with little pay out and really have no concern about them outside of their walls. I wish the government would break up this monopoly or force them to have better benefit packages so I can stop paying for other’s healthcare.
The store holds responsibility because they get the buyers excited about products and then they only have a few avaible. Every year they do this and every year there is a mob so they knew it was coming they just didn’t care. They wanted all those people in the stores acting crazy so that they would buy their limited products and tones of others while they were there. The people are wrong for not showing self control but in an economy like this and the American Dream of living outside our means who could blame them. No it was no right for them to not stop and help but what is right these days.
Walmart gets a lot of grief, but my mom loves it there. She has also worked at K-Mart, Target, and Meijer, but she says Walmart pays the best and offers the most benefits. Walmart provides decent jobs for people with no education and no skills.
I suspect that the real reason people trash Walmart’s hiring practices is that they don’t like Walmart for other reasons, such as crowding out mom-and-pop shops.
A lot of the comments focus on how to argue a tort case against Walmart and that is not really hard to do – they have potential liability if a tort case is allowed for the foreseeable results of how they ran the crowd control – a crowd they created with their marketing and which was somewhat predictable; they are also supposed to have some foresight to what happens when a crowd suddenly is allowed in for a sale. My impression when I started this line of comments was that the employee was a Walmart employee; even if he was employed by a subcontractor, he may be a “borrowed servant” in which instance the workers’ comp bar may stop a tort suit and make comp his sole remedy. I do also agree with earlier comments that the subcontractor would have likely agreed to hold Wal Mart harmless and indemnify it for any injuries “arising out of” the contractor’s work and that Wal Mart may pass the loss to the subcontractor and/or its insurers in the first instance. The case is one that stirs people up and so a high (Bronx County) jury verdict if a tort case is allowed, would be a given. I expect Walmart will settle this once the current passions subside some and publicity is less – next summer would be a guess.
For Employees’ Son:
-Another of the MANY reasons some peeps don’t like Wal Mart, aside from their “crowding out” mom & pop stores, is that in crowding out those mom & pops, they remove the very personality of an entire town.
Funny; but K-Mart never really did that, nor did Aames, Jamesway, etc..
There are also several times in which WalMart opened in a town, sucked the Main Street dry of all those mom & pops, then decided to close their own store as the revenue just wasn’t ample to support it. Now the whole darn town was unemployed and all you found on Main St was vacant stores
Another reason, (and growing in anger & intensity) is the hiring of *illegal aliens, and the sale of lead-tainted toys and other goods
With their billions,none of these should be occurring.
* yes: illegal aliens, not “undocumented immigrants”
To call an illegal alien an undocumented immigrant is like calling a drug dealer, an “unlicensed pharmacist” (!)
My opinion is that you have two problems here. One is that Walmart did create a dangerous situation with their marketing techniques. A lot of the big retailers use the same marketing technique, Walmart just got unlucky and get bit by it first. This is easily fixable. Legislators will need to make some rules/laws stating that you can’t do this type of marketing unless you have enough product to satisfy the demand, thus doing away with the mad crowd at the door waiting to sprint through the store to obtain one of the few items. The other problem is a society that has created people with so little regard for their fellow man, that they put obtaining “stuff” at a cheap price to be more important than the welfare of their fellow man. This isn’t easily rectified. They need to review the store video and do what they can to press charges against every shopper that knocked down or stepped on the employee that died. Our society needs to start teaching us to respect eachother and stop putting so much emphasis on “me”. Stop worrying so much about our own self esteem and start worrying more about others. “put others first” and the rest will fall into place.
The problem with getting everyone on video is this. If you have ever been to a big concert or gathering you will understand. When you are in front of a big crowd you kind of have to go where the crowd goes. No matter how strong you are when you have 50+ people pushing you are going to move. I am sure many of the people were horrified that they were being forced to trample this poor guy to death. I have been in crowds where I could literally lift my feet off the ground and still be held up. The strength of a closely bunched group can be creepy.
Based on comments made by Atty. Sundheim (Steven R. Sundheim, esq.), he is either:(A)Not really an attorney, (B)Does not do Tort or W.C. litigation, (C) Doesn’t know New York law (D) All of the above
If he does work for any of you………ask him to raise his malpractice limits.
What a remarkable attack on me w/o any substance. I am an attorney; have been a defense attorney for almost 25 years in NY; have successfully defended cases for many insurers; never sued for malpractice and for the life of me, have no idea what “claims guy” is taking exception to in simply saying I am not giving a valid analysis. Worker’s comp law provides that no tort claim can be made against an employer who provides comp coverage provided the tort was not an intentional one – this death was an accident even if the negligence by Walmart was compelling negligence; if Walmart is not the employer, and is not able to hide behind the doctrine of borrowed servant, it can be sued in tort; otherwise it will be insulated. Claims guy needs to explain why he has attacked me substantively rather than insult my credentials and view w/o an explanation. My comments were/are professional ones submitted for a discussion of applicable law and are based on knowing the law. Perhaps he does not like any comments that suggest that Walmart might escape being held liable in tort and so “shoots the messenger”.
Forseeability and duty issues hard to overcome? Hardly. All the plaintiff’s attornies have to do is show news clips from every year since the beginning of Black Friday sales and a jury should have no problem ruling for the plaintiff. Heck, last year the big story was a woman being trampled when she was pushed down. The video from the store security camera was shown for days on the news. Fortunately, she was not seriously injured. As far as the stampede…it is highly forseeable and arguably expected by the retailers. Get the shoppers excited and they will buy buy buy!!! Retailers need to take responsibility for stirring up the masses and then allowing a free for all when they open the doors. Many other venues face even larger crowds than these stores with NO problems.
As far as the people in the stampede…yes they are idiots. But, they are idiots responding to a stimulus provided by the retailers.
Have any of you ever worked at Walmart? I did a number of years ago. They paid higher hourly wages than nearly all other competitors and the health benefits were better than anything I’ve had since then and I’ve worked both for an agency and on the company side. At that point in time, they offered a choice of something like 4 or 5 different health care plans. Including plans that paid 100% of in network benefits. They also had a nice employee stock purchase option. What do you think someone in retail should earn?….$20/hr? Hardly. Perhaps things have changed since I worked there.
TO HMMMM: I AGREE THAT RETAILERS PROBABLY WANT TO SELL MERCHANDISE IN ORDER TO MAKE A PROFIT, AND NOT APPLY FOR A BAILOUT. AND IT IS A SUBJECTIVE, NOT AN OBJECTIVE QUESTION AS TO THE METHODS THEY USE. HOWEVER, THE REASON THEY ARE BEING SUED IS NOT THEIR NEGLIGENCE, IT IS THAT THEY HAVE DEEP POCKETS! WALMART DID NOT TRAMPLE THE POOR GUY—INDIVIDUAL CUSTOMERS DID, AND THEY ARE THE ONES RESPONSIBLE, NOT WALMART!
I have been at a lot of sales where very little promotion has taken place and seen uncontrollable crowds. Crowds are not individual people, they take on a life of their own. I recall one, like this one, where a few people came at the last minute and cut in front of people who had been in line for a while in the cold. They were lucky not to be knocked down. It’s the people that are the problem, not the stores. Now, when you have some stores that trump up a great sale and only have a couple items advertised, you are going to have some angry people, but nobody should do what this group did. The people in the group should bear the brunt of the blame. You shouldn’t have to call out the riot police for a sale. I thought that with more retailers being open on Thanksgiving these sales would not be as meaningful. Wrong.
It sounds like your making an excuse for the “idiots” because the store provided a “stimulous” that they “reacted” too. Last Christmas I got up early and went to a nearby Best Buy to try to take advantage of the great sales they were advertising. It actually was a 32″ LCD TV for, if I remember right, about $500. I was shocked when I got there at about 4:30 AM and found lines with thousands of people waiting since the previous afternoon. I didn’t even get in line. I watched from my car as they opened the doors at 5:00 AM and watched the hordes pour in. Just out of curiousity I went into the store and squeezed my way through the ailes just to watch the circus. It was interesting to say the least. I left Best Buy and went to a nearby Walmart and went in and found a similar TV for about $100 more, but without near the crazynous. What I witnessed that morning was a lot of people acting like animals. But the majority of people (those in the back of the line) acting relatively normal. My point is that all the people had a choice how they acted. Some chose to act like idiots. Most did not. I don’t think you can blame the “stimulous” for the problem. The root of the problem was the people that chose to act like animals. I don’t think we need to make excuses for this type of person. We need to make examples of them and teach the next generation not to tolerate this type of behavior.
I’m not placing the blame anywhere else but the individuals. The individuals are to blame, but crowds don’t always behave like sane individuals. The old phrase is, people get caught up in the moment. I would like to think I would not step on the dead guy or pregnant woman on the floor, but who knows.
Okay..I got you now and all those folks preach responsibility. You mean ONLY individuals have responsibility. Corporations are exempt from taking responsibility for their actions. I mean something as simple as roping out the entry way like at the entrance of most venues like theaters might very well work. And/or perhaps having several employees standing outside the entrance organizing the line and providing instructions well before the actual opening. Or gee…if they are going to have a limited number of items, have a raffle ahead of time to see who would be the lucky purchasers (but that would just spoil the fun now wouldn’t it?). Point being there are countless ways a store could attempt to mitigate the crush of humanity. But, that would mean the corporation would have to take responsibility for providing a safe environment for their customers and employees. of course, we know that they shouldn’t have to do that!!
WalMart had responsibility and they took care of it. They had doors and they had security guards. It was the mob of individuals that broke the doors and trampled the security guard that killed him, not WalMart. This could be “what if’d” to death but the fact is there are individuals that trampled this poor guy and they are the ones that killed him.
Stories like this are one reason I’m a little glad I have to work on Black Friday. There is no chance of me going shopping during all the idiocy and madness.
oh yeah, roping of the area would have stopped the herd of people from tearing the doors off the hinges and trampling the guy. *rolls eyes in disgust*. such naivety.
The corporation had a product for sale and they marketed the product to get a lot of people there to buy it and other products. They didn’t have any malicious intent toward anyone in the crowd or the security guard. Yes, they could have forseen problems and maybe did a better job of crowd control. My point is, they shouldn’t have to be worried about crowd control. We aas a society need to take responsibility for ourselves and act like human beings that are concerned for eachother and not so concerned with how much cheap “stuff” we can accumulate.
Did Walmart really talk about sales figures in a release about this incident? I am not a Walmart hater like many on this site, but that is really in poor taste. Sam must be spinning about now.
No kidding, that really is poor taste. If it was me that died and they made that comment I would haunt the family forever. “We are really sorry our employee was trampled to death by a bunch of crazed overweight housewives. We are also very sorry that we do not offer adequate insurance. Therefore his funeral will be covered by the family. I am sure his spirit will rest much easier knowing that our profits have gone up.”
It sounds to me like they mentioned the death in a release about sales figures.
It’s amazing that this has never happened earlier. Retailers whip the public into a frenzy with ridiculous opening hours on Black Friday and deals that they cannot possibly deliver to each shopper.
To allow shoppers to start camping out the night before only invites havoc when they are understaffed with security to handle crowd control.
The shoppers themselves also must accept blame. Why would an 8 month pregnant woman allow herself to be part of this stampede.
I love to shop — but this is beyond the pall. Off the soapbox now
Since the death is an accidental one that was surely never intended by Walmart management even if they mis-estimated the danger to their staff, NY law on workers’ compensation should be the sole remedy permitted to the worker’s next of kin rather than a PI suit for tort damages. Walmart might make a deal anyway for public relations reasons but I think they have a strong legal defense from a technical standpoint – even if comp benefits would be way lower than a Bronx jury award might be if the case can survive to get to trial and verdict.
Independent contractors don’t always have Work Comp, so sole remedy may not apply.
If this guy worked for a security company, it would be their work comp on the line. But not Wal-Mart’s. But if he’s a self-employed independent contractor, he doesn’t even need work comp in many states.
And when there’s no Work Comp, there’s no sole remedy. His family could sue.
Since Wal-Mart is not the employer, they could be sued, not only by the victim’s estate but also by subrogation from any insurance the victim did have.
QUESTION: WHO DID THE DEED? ANSWER: THE GREEDY PEOPLE WHO TRAMPLED HIM. END OF CASE!
I concur (I just love using fancy words like that). Seriously though, while some of the blame must go to Wal Mart, in my opinion, the shoppers who decided to act like a drunken mob deserve just as much. I wonder how those people felt after they trampled that poor employee? Did the transient satisfaction of buying whatever consumer item that they’ll probably forget in a few weeks compensate for their responsibility in that death?
Ahhh……Tort and Deep Pockets at it’s
best! :)
Whether or not the unfortunate individual was covered by his employer’s WC (e.g. a security or temp company), or was a totally uninsured subcontractor, his estate can still bring suit vs. Walmart for “failure to provide a safe workplace.” Of course, those clever risk managers at Walmart no doubt hung the subcontracting company (if there is one) with an oppressive indemnity agreement with additional insured and waiver of subrogation provisions in the isurance section of their contract. They can then just turn the lawsuit over to the security company and its insurer and tell them to defend under their GL contractual coverage.
It looks like the limit demanded of the subonctractor was not too high and Walmart is worried to a small extent that it will have to pay a few mill above what the subcontractor’s GL policy is going to have to pay. (I would not want to be defending this action!)
Walmart has raked in billions by using subcontractors with no benefits, not to mention employees with no or cruddy benefits. They all end up at the county hospital and we all end up paying for their care through our taxes. And now, this one time, this practice may come back to haunt them–just a bit.
What they should really be worried about are UNIONS and UNIONIZING EFFORTS.
Maybe something good will come out of this instance of the fruits of Walmart’s unparalleled and unrestrained greed.
I don’t shop at Walmart–period!
I have to agree that retailers must share some of the responsibilty. Did anyone see the Walmart commercial that advertised the flat screen tv for 399.00 but only 5 tvs per store !! The commercial alone probably inspired a lot of the madness. Also I am sure that most of the people present got caught up in the mob mentality, and all common sense flew out the window.
Larry, I’m with you. How does one foresee idiotic people breaking down your doors and trampling some poor security guard? How does one protect against this? Temporarily replacing the doors with ones that are steel-reinforced? Hiring 150 security guards to man the doors, armed with mace and Tasers to keep the masses under control? Mandatory ingestion of NO for all shoppers so they are less-hyped when they enter the store? The people responsible for this man’s death are the one’s whose bootprints are on his corpse. Sue them.
Agree w/you lastbat. The only ones responsible for this are the pieces of human garbage who opted to act like wild animals. Shame on them. The foreseeability and duty issues will be hard for the plaintiffs to overcome.
The District Attorney needs to step-up to the plate and produce an indictment AND soon.
Someone lost their life here, and the peeps who did it are responsible.
I believe that the exposure Wal-Mart put the decedant in goes far beyond the purvue of his normal job; so that his survivors SHOULD be able to enter a PI suit
Moreso, Wal-Mart was well aware of previous similar incidents at their stores so they should have known to have a genuine Security Team employed for those 4am loonies
Lastly, it’s time for our legislators to examine these early am or late pm “sales”, with an eye towards a law banning such dangerous events !
I agree. Wal-mart pays their employees little to nothing and give them very poor benefits but make billions a year off of them. They work people ranging from teenagers to senior citizens with little pay out and really have no concern about them outside of their walls. I wish the government would break up this monopoly or force them to have better benefit packages so I can stop paying for other’s healthcare.
The store holds responsibility because they get the buyers excited about products and then they only have a few avaible. Every year they do this and every year there is a mob so they knew it was coming they just didn’t care. They wanted all those people in the stores acting crazy so that they would buy their limited products and tones of others while they were there. The people are wrong for not showing self control but in an economy like this and the American Dream of living outside our means who could blame them. No it was no right for them to not stop and help but what is right these days.
Walmart gets a lot of grief, but my mom loves it there. She has also worked at K-Mart, Target, and Meijer, but she says Walmart pays the best and offers the most benefits. Walmart provides decent jobs for people with no education and no skills.
I suspect that the real reason people trash Walmart’s hiring practices is that they don’t like Walmart for other reasons, such as crowding out mom-and-pop shops.
A lot of the comments focus on how to argue a tort case against Walmart and that is not really hard to do – they have potential liability if a tort case is allowed for the foreseeable results of how they ran the crowd control – a crowd they created with their marketing and which was somewhat predictable; they are also supposed to have some foresight to what happens when a crowd suddenly is allowed in for a sale. My impression when I started this line of comments was that the employee was a Walmart employee; even if he was employed by a subcontractor, he may be a “borrowed servant” in which instance the workers’ comp bar may stop a tort suit and make comp his sole remedy. I do also agree with earlier comments that the subcontractor would have likely agreed to hold Wal Mart harmless and indemnify it for any injuries “arising out of” the contractor’s work and that Wal Mart may pass the loss to the subcontractor and/or its insurers in the first instance. The case is one that stirs people up and so a high (Bronx County) jury verdict if a tort case is allowed, would be a given. I expect Walmart will settle this once the current passions subside some and publicity is less – next summer would be a guess.
For Employees’ Son:
-Another of the MANY reasons some peeps don’t like Wal Mart, aside from their “crowding out” mom & pop stores, is that in crowding out those mom & pops, they remove the very personality of an entire town.
Funny; but K-Mart never really did that, nor did Aames, Jamesway, etc..
There are also several times in which WalMart opened in a town, sucked the Main Street dry of all those mom & pops, then decided to close their own store as the revenue just wasn’t ample to support it. Now the whole darn town was unemployed and all you found on Main St was vacant stores
Another reason, (and growing in anger & intensity) is the hiring of *illegal aliens, and the sale of lead-tainted toys and other goods
With their billions,none of these should be occurring.
* yes: illegal aliens, not “undocumented immigrants”
To call an illegal alien an undocumented immigrant is like calling a drug dealer, an “unlicensed pharmacist” (!)
My opinion is that you have two problems here. One is that Walmart did create a dangerous situation with their marketing techniques. A lot of the big retailers use the same marketing technique, Walmart just got unlucky and get bit by it first. This is easily fixable. Legislators will need to make some rules/laws stating that you can’t do this type of marketing unless you have enough product to satisfy the demand, thus doing away with the mad crowd at the door waiting to sprint through the store to obtain one of the few items. The other problem is a society that has created people with so little regard for their fellow man, that they put obtaining “stuff” at a cheap price to be more important than the welfare of their fellow man. This isn’t easily rectified. They need to review the store video and do what they can to press charges against every shopper that knocked down or stepped on the employee that died. Our society needs to start teaching us to respect eachother and stop putting so much emphasis on “me”. Stop worrying so much about our own self esteem and start worrying more about others. “put others first” and the rest will fall into place.
The problem with getting everyone on video is this. If you have ever been to a big concert or gathering you will understand. When you are in front of a big crowd you kind of have to go where the crowd goes. No matter how strong you are when you have 50+ people pushing you are going to move. I am sure many of the people were horrified that they were being forced to trample this poor guy to death. I have been in crowds where I could literally lift my feet off the ground and still be held up. The strength of a closely bunched group can be creepy.
Based on comments made by Atty. Sundheim (Steven R. Sundheim, esq.), he is either:(A)Not really an attorney, (B)Does not do Tort or W.C. litigation, (C) Doesn’t know New York law (D) All of the above
If he does work for any of you………ask him to raise his malpractice limits.
What a remarkable attack on me w/o any substance. I am an attorney; have been a defense attorney for almost 25 years in NY; have successfully defended cases for many insurers; never sued for malpractice and for the life of me, have no idea what “claims guy” is taking exception to in simply saying I am not giving a valid analysis. Worker’s comp law provides that no tort claim can be made against an employer who provides comp coverage provided the tort was not an intentional one – this death was an accident even if the negligence by Walmart was compelling negligence; if Walmart is not the employer, and is not able to hide behind the doctrine of borrowed servant, it can be sued in tort; otherwise it will be insulated. Claims guy needs to explain why he has attacked me substantively rather than insult my credentials and view w/o an explanation. My comments were/are professional ones submitted for a discussion of applicable law and are based on knowing the law. Perhaps he does not like any comments that suggest that Walmart might escape being held liable in tort and so “shoots the messenger”.
Forseeability and duty issues hard to overcome? Hardly. All the plaintiff’s attornies have to do is show news clips from every year since the beginning of Black Friday sales and a jury should have no problem ruling for the plaintiff. Heck, last year the big story was a woman being trampled when she was pushed down. The video from the store security camera was shown for days on the news. Fortunately, she was not seriously injured. As far as the stampede…it is highly forseeable and arguably expected by the retailers. Get the shoppers excited and they will buy buy buy!!! Retailers need to take responsibility for stirring up the masses and then allowing a free for all when they open the doors. Many other venues face even larger crowds than these stores with NO problems.
As far as the people in the stampede…yes they are idiots. But, they are idiots responding to a stimulus provided by the retailers.
Have any of you ever worked at Walmart? I did a number of years ago. They paid higher hourly wages than nearly all other competitors and the health benefits were better than anything I’ve had since then and I’ve worked both for an agency and on the company side. At that point in time, they offered a choice of something like 4 or 5 different health care plans. Including plans that paid 100% of in network benefits. They also had a nice employee stock purchase option. What do you think someone in retail should earn?….$20/hr? Hardly. Perhaps things have changed since I worked there.
TO HMMMM: I AGREE THAT RETAILERS PROBABLY WANT TO SELL MERCHANDISE IN ORDER TO MAKE A PROFIT, AND NOT APPLY FOR A BAILOUT. AND IT IS A SUBJECTIVE, NOT AN OBJECTIVE QUESTION AS TO THE METHODS THEY USE. HOWEVER, THE REASON THEY ARE BEING SUED IS NOT THEIR NEGLIGENCE, IT IS THAT THEY HAVE DEEP POCKETS! WALMART DID NOT TRAMPLE THE POOR GUY—INDIVIDUAL CUSTOMERS DID, AND THEY ARE THE ONES RESPONSIBLE, NOT WALMART!
I have been at a lot of sales where very little promotion has taken place and seen uncontrollable crowds. Crowds are not individual people, they take on a life of their own. I recall one, like this one, where a few people came at the last minute and cut in front of people who had been in line for a while in the cold. They were lucky not to be knocked down. It’s the people that are the problem, not the stores. Now, when you have some stores that trump up a great sale and only have a couple items advertised, you are going to have some angry people, but nobody should do what this group did. The people in the group should bear the brunt of the blame. You shouldn’t have to call out the riot police for a sale. I thought that with more retailers being open on Thanksgiving these sales would not be as meaningful. Wrong.
It sounds like your making an excuse for the “idiots” because the store provided a “stimulous” that they “reacted” too. Last Christmas I got up early and went to a nearby Best Buy to try to take advantage of the great sales they were advertising. It actually was a 32″ LCD TV for, if I remember right, about $500. I was shocked when I got there at about 4:30 AM and found lines with thousands of people waiting since the previous afternoon. I didn’t even get in line. I watched from my car as they opened the doors at 5:00 AM and watched the hordes pour in. Just out of curiousity I went into the store and squeezed my way through the ailes just to watch the circus. It was interesting to say the least. I left Best Buy and went to a nearby Walmart and went in and found a similar TV for about $100 more, but without near the crazynous. What I witnessed that morning was a lot of people acting like animals. But the majority of people (those in the back of the line) acting relatively normal. My point is that all the people had a choice how they acted. Some chose to act like idiots. Most did not. I don’t think you can blame the “stimulous” for the problem. The root of the problem was the people that chose to act like animals. I don’t think we need to make excuses for this type of person. We need to make examples of them and teach the next generation not to tolerate this type of behavior.
I’m not placing the blame anywhere else but the individuals. The individuals are to blame, but crowds don’t always behave like sane individuals. The old phrase is, people get caught up in the moment. I would like to think I would not step on the dead guy or pregnant woman on the floor, but who knows.
Okay..I got you now and all those folks preach responsibility. You mean ONLY individuals have responsibility. Corporations are exempt from taking responsibility for their actions. I mean something as simple as roping out the entry way like at the entrance of most venues like theaters might very well work. And/or perhaps having several employees standing outside the entrance organizing the line and providing instructions well before the actual opening. Or gee…if they are going to have a limited number of items, have a raffle ahead of time to see who would be the lucky purchasers (but that would just spoil the fun now wouldn’t it?). Point being there are countless ways a store could attempt to mitigate the crush of humanity. But, that would mean the corporation would have to take responsibility for providing a safe environment for their customers and employees. of course, we know that they shouldn’t have to do that!!
WalMart had responsibility and they took care of it. They had doors and they had security guards. It was the mob of individuals that broke the doors and trampled the security guard that killed him, not WalMart. This could be “what if’d” to death but the fact is there are individuals that trampled this poor guy and they are the ones that killed him.
Stories like this are one reason I’m a little glad I have to work on Black Friday. There is no chance of me going shopping during all the idiocy and madness.
oh yeah, roping of the area would have stopped the herd of people from tearing the doors off the hinges and trampling the guy. *rolls eyes in disgust*. such naivety.
Mary, I like my idea of Tasers, mace, and nitrous oxide. If you gas the crowd first at least they’ll be in a happy mood when they trample each other.
The corporation had a product for sale and they marketed the product to get a lot of people there to buy it and other products. They didn’t have any malicious intent toward anyone in the crowd or the security guard. Yes, they could have forseen problems and maybe did a better job of crowd control. My point is, they shouldn’t have to be worried about crowd control. We aas a society need to take responsibility for ourselves and act like human beings that are concerned for eachother and not so concerned with how much cheap “stuff” we can accumulate.