Verdicts & Settlements
Judge Approves $24M Walgreens Bias Settlement
Posted Mar 26, 2008, 09:13 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss
A federal judge has approved a $24.4 million settlement by Walgreen Co. that resolves two race discrimination lawsuits, including one filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The suits claimed Walgreens failed to promote black employees into management positions and that minorities were paid less than similarly situated whites, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
The settlement resolves an EEOC suit filed last year and a 2005 class action filed by 14 current and former black employees. The cases were consolidated last year, the Associated Press reports.
The AP story says lawyers in the case will earn about $4.5 million in fees, while the Post-Dispatch puts lawyer fees at about $5.5 million. About 10,000 past and current workers at the drugstore chain will share the rest of the settlement money.
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Posted by anonymous - 1 month, 3 weeks, 7 hours, 48 minutes ago
It is getting ridiculous how much money is going to the attorneys and how little is going to the victims (and I am not sure they are as I have not heard the evidence in this case - I can only presume they are since they won the case). These class actions suits (and Weiss proves it) are out of control. There must be some limits on the percentage of the total verdicts that go to the lawyers.
Posted by anonymous - 1 month, 3 weeks, 7 hours, 28 minutes ago
The lawsuit does have plenty of merit, but since it was settled, I doubt you will ever get to see all of the details (which is why they settled). The law firms DO get a huge chunk but have been working on this case since 2004. So that results in about 250,000/year per law firm involved, which is actually pretty low.
This is one Class Action lawsuit (along with the suit against Walgreens based on gender bias) that definitely needs to be addressed as it deals with unconstitutional and illegal practices. However, there are plenty of frivalous suits that have occurred as well.
In this case the “pay-off” amounts given to the class don’t even cover one annual bonus that would have been received if the managers had been in better performing stores, let alone the salary that others that were never even promoted have missed out on. So, to anyone who takes this out of context without any of the facts, this was not a “free handout” type of case. As a matter of fact, the litigation took so long because the details of monitoring and changing policies was very important and needed hammering out.