Wal-Mart Faces the Big Box of Bias Suits

Aspiring attorneys learn early in law school that a civil suit pits a plaintiff claiming injury against a defendant alleged to have caused a specific harm. It sounds simple. In the real world, litigation can get a lot more complicated. That's evident in the mammoth gender discrimination suit filed against Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) by women who claim that local store managers made sexist decisions about promotions and pay and that company executives failed to stop them. Rather than just seeking redress for their individual claims, six plaintiffs have won in federal courts the right to press their suit as a class action representing what could swell to 1 million female employees of the nation's largest private employer. Many of the women included in the class aren't active participants in the legal action and have voiced no claims of wrongdoing.

Now, in an appeal filed by Wal-Mart and heralded as the most important corporate case in years, the Supreme Court is poised to consider whether the class action has gotten out of control. The dispute, set for oral argument on Mar. 29 and a decision by early summer, marks the court's first look in a dozen years at the standards that plaintiffs must meet to mount a class action. With a million potential plaintiffs, this is litigation on an industrial scale. Invoking a familiar justification for class actions, plaintiffs' lawyers say many of the workers don't have enough money to gain to warrant pressing individual suits. Wal-Mart, which denies wrongdoing, counters that the accusations are too numerous and too diverse to be tried en masse. A class action defeat could cost it billions of dollars.