To me, there is something untidy -- and, ultimately, troubling -- about most class action law suits. The current sex-discrimination action against Wal-Mart is a good example.
I'm sure that Christine Kwapnoski, the original plaintiff 10 years ago, still feels that she has a strong case. Probably, she does.
But even if you can safely assume that Kwapnoski and the other core plaintiffs were discriminated against, can you really say that about all 1.6 million women involved in the case?
Ironically, this seems like an attempt to influence the wheels of justice in the same way Wal-Mart influences the gears of commerce -- prevailing by sheer strength of numbers.
The key question at odds here, to which U.S. Supreme court justice Anthony Kennedy made reference this week, is this: Is there really a corporate Wal-Mart policy in place to always promote and reward men or women? Is there some Vice President of Discrimination lurking somewhere in Wal-Mart's Arkansas headquarters who signs off on every such personel issue?
Doubtful. More often than not, I would suspect, each case involves a particular woman and a particular supervisor. And just as it's difficult to prove that every defendant in a class action suit against a drug manufacturer suffered from exactly the same side effect, so it's almost impossible to settle 1.6 million cases of alleged favoritism in one big bundle.
Granted, such a strategy does protect a lot of individual women from retaliation. But I don't think it's fair to expact a corporation to pay out an enormous amount of money when no general corporate policy has been proven. I'm sure Wal-Mart has supervisors who are chauvinistic, racist, homophobic and the whole spectrum of human prejudicies, just as there are no doubt many who are praised for their fairness. Social attitudes don't always come across in job interviews.
If this suit puts Wal-Mart on notice that discrimination on the basis of sex is wrong, I think it would have served its purpose for the $1.6 million. If Christine Kwapnoski really wants to be redeemed monetarily, perhaps she should sue as an individual.
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