Posted on 09/16/2012 11:11:18 AM PDT by rawhide
A mother who says Walmart employees intentionally humiliated her after wrongfully ripping up two of her $100 bills while believing they were fake is taking legal action against the store.
According to her complaint: 'The cashier inspected the $100 bill, turned to another cashier and had a brief discussion, and returned to her register telling Plaintiff that her money was "fake."
'The cashier proceeded to rip the $100 bill in half without performing any counterfeit detection tests. The metallic strip in the $100 bill was clearly visible.'
After marking the bill with the detection pen, revealing a yellowish colour across it, Ms Garcia said she explained to the cashier of that colour meaning it was legitimate, having previously worked in retail herself.
Detained at the front of the store while told the police had been called, Ms Garcia claims that adding to her humiliation, the employees told curious customers in passing that she was busted trying to use fake money.
After two hours at the front, police arrived around 4.15am and proceeded to inspect the bills in question.
Following a series of tests the first responding officer, identified as Officer Edwards, returned to Ms Garcia telling her that what the Walmart employee and manager had done was a 'terrible mistake.’
'He then approached the manager, who appeared upset by what he was told by Officer Edwards,' according to the complaint.
‘After speaking with Officer Edwards, Manager Russell approached Plaintiff and sarcastically stated that the police officers said the money was not counterfeit, though he disagreed.
‘At this time, he attempted to hand Plaintiff the two torn $100 bills he had misappropriated from her. When Plaintiff objected to receiving torn bills, Officer Edwards instructed Manager Russell to replace the bills he had wrongfully taken and destroyed.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Did the woman get fired from her job because she had been detained by WalMart? Did her employer have to bring in some other employee to do the woman's job? Did the woman miss an employment opportunity because of the detention? Were the woman's children or other dependents properly cared for during her unexpected absence.
Law Enforcement are permitted to detain people based on reasonable suspicion that the person committed a crime. What is reasonable about testing a bill, having the test indicate that it is genuine, and then claiming otherwise?
What is reasonable about tearing up the bills? What is reasonable about the police being able to determine the true nature of the bills TWO HOURS after a WalMart manager had an opportunity to do so?
I'm no expert on punitive damages, but I believe they are appropriate when the party being sued is demonstrated to have failed to take proper steps to eliminate a problem.
An example I would use to support the need for punitive damages is concerning the gun laws of Kalifornia. Despite the Heller and McDonald decisions, the Kalifornia legislature is behaving as if, by some incredible coincidence, their dozens of pages of gun laws just happen to be consistent with those Court decisions.
It's not unreasonable for the woman detained by WalMart to examine whether the company has taken steps in the past to reduce false detention of customers.
Walmart needs to pay up. Admittedly, $75K is probably too much, but she deserves a chunk of change. If it happened to me, I'd probably settle for expenses plus firing the employees involved, with negative references.
Are there really any fired TSA? Looks like they just transfer them to Atlanta.
I don't agree. Suffering UNINTENTIONAL distress happens all the time for many reasons. The distress the woman suffered becomes NEGLIGENCE on the part of WalMart if they had a duty to prevent the distress. Such a duty could probably arise if prior similar cases had provided WalMart the opportunity to change their ways.
The actions of the manager seem so unreasonable to me that I would want to investigate whether the manager had some axe to grind that played a part in the woman'w detention. The actions of WalMart might be revealed to have been INTENTIONAL. Intentionally detaining someone on false premises is a felony.
Perhaps since I have been a manager my expectations for what a WalMart manager should be capable of are too high.
If I were the judge I’d say at least 10 grand, no more than 15, commitment from Walmart to reexamine their employee training.
If the manager knew how to spot a phony $100 bill, he would have clamped down on the cashier immediately, because this incident was never going to escalate into anything but bad PR for Walmart.
The manager was also PO’ed that the cop told him the bill was legit.
If they were incompetent enough to have used a counterfeit detection pen, seen that bill was legit and then torn up the customer’s money, then detained the customer for two+ hours?
Yes. I’m not coming down on the side of the plaintiff because it’s Walmart. I’m coming down on the side of society that wants to persecute and extirpate stupid people.
I’m not the cuddly-fuzzball type of conservative. I fully support evolution, and I want to see stupid people be denied the ability to live, much less breed.
That Wal-Mart better get it together...after all the $100. bill is the new $20. after “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke gets thru with us!
I guess it comes down to whether your beef is with the corporation or the employees.
I take a dim view of authoritarian fascist nazi wannabes. It's best they be consigned to wannabe status (or worse) in perpetuity.
On the other hand, I'd be willing to let the stockholders of WMT off with a relative wrist-slap for being stupid enough to invest in a company stupid enough to hire the like of this story.
It's instructive to compare Ms Garcia's experience to my own recent interaction with United Airlines. United lost my checked bag on a recent flight through their main hub at Chicago's O'Hare. Seems the computer was down in Chicago during the layover (which was extended 1.5 hours due to the outgoing flight crew not arriving on schedule). It took them seven days to get my bag to me. But all the UAL people I interacted with were very nice, tried to be helpful, and were apologetic in their impotence. Therefore, if I were to bother to sue UAL, it would be solely to take a bite out of the corporate hide, not to punish individual members of a dysfunctional organization.
It's becoming ever more clear, Governor Perry had the right idea about dealing with traitors!
Thanks for insulting my wife.
Perhaps you should be shown the door. Nice tag line.
You belong at DU
It is not sufficient to just complain. What are YOU doing about it? We all have a stake in The Republic. I don’t vote for the candidate who will give me the most freebies. I vote what I feel is best for the country. Now, if you can convince the 40% who take, and do not give, we could have a winning solution. I KNOW that my SSDI and VA Disability are going to winnow away. Yet I still vote for fiscal responsibility. I am not always pleased with the choices we have, but they are what we have.
Stupid advice. First, who is going bother to call the Secret Service? Local police? They'll yawn. Just take it to a bank and they'll handle all of that for you.
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