Surprised no one mentioned this yet, but on Wednesday Walmart spared itself yet another potential black eye when it reached a settlement with Tracy Morgan. For those who don't know, Morgan was nearly killed last year when a Walmart truck slammed into a limo carrying him and several other comedians on the New Jersey Turnpike. While terms of the deal weren't disclosed, Morgan said as part of the press release announcing the deal that Walmart "did right by me" and the other three plaintiffs in the lawsuit. According to Morgan's lawyer, Walmart made a key concession--it took "full responsibility" for the accident.
It's not as if Walmart had a choice. It turned out that the driver, Kevin Roper, hadn't had any sleep in more than 24 hours. Morgan's legal team had amassed evidence that 11 of those hours came from Roper being forced to drive from his home in Jonesboro, Georgia to a Walmart distribution center in Smyrna, Delaware---in the process, bypassing several other centers within a more reasonable distance. At the time of the crash, he had been on the clock for 13.5 hours--meaning he could have only been on duty for another half hour. Which means that by the most conservative estimate, he'd been up for 25 hours straight.
Roper is facing criminal charges of death by vehicle and assault by vehicle; in New Jersey, it's against the law to get behind the wheel if you've been up for 24 hours straight. Morgan's team had also amassed evidence that this was one of many instances that proved Walmart "intentionally and recklessly" allowed its drivers to flout regulations governing truckers' work hours.
Even in the face of this, Walmart's initial response to the suit was a crass claim that since Morgan wasn't buckled up, he shouldn't get a penny. Apparently the prospect of its business practices being exposed for all to see brought Walmart to its senses.
Had Walmart not settled, I believe that there would have been a lot of parallels to how ValuJet's cost-cutting methods were exposed in the wake of Flight 592. Last year, I mentioned that these methods put the safety of ValuJet's employees and passengers at risk. It required pilots to pay for their own training and only paid them when they completed flights. Its flight attendants only got bare-minimum training, and its mechanics faced having their pay cut if there were maintenance-related delays.
The parallels with Walmart are staggering. It's long been common knowledge that Walmart is so fixated on keeping prices low that it's willing to throw the welfare of its employees to the winds to do it--salaries so low and health plans so expensive that the company actually encourages workers to go on public assistance. And now, Morgan's lawsuit strongly suggested that Walmart was willing to play fast and loose with the safety of its workers and the driving public. This should serve as a wake-up call to Walmart--after all, most Americans aren't willing to compromise safety in the name of saving money.