A Win for Wal-Mart

Remember the class action case against Wal-Mart a few months ago that made headlines? That’s the one that saw trial lawyers setting a new “low bar” for certifying a class. This was the case that, if allowed to move forward, would have broadened the circumstances vastly where classes can be certified.

Well, a decision has been made. And thankfully, it was a sensible one. Today, the Supreme Court threw out a sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The ruling determined that the about 1.5 million women that were allegedly victimized had “too little in common to form a single class of plaintiffs.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion lead the decision, “concluding the allegations against Wal-Mart were too vague and the evidence too weak to establish the common injury essential to encompass all women employed since 1998 in the roughly 3,400 U.S. Wal-Mart stores.”

Despite the ideological divide of the Justices on this case, all nine “gave Wal-Mart and other corporate defendants a victory by ruling that they must be allowed to beat back individual monetary claims and not be bound by statistical models pushed by the plaintiffs.”