As 2014 winds down, legal analysts are looking back at some of the court cases leveled against Fortune 500 companies over the past year. From class action suits aimed against predatory lending practices to leaked oil pipelines to allegations of wage theft, the nation’s largest firms were no strangers to the inside of courthouses from Los Angeles to New York.
McDonald’s Corporation
The world’s largest fast-food chain, and number 106 on the Fortune 500 list, McDonald’s Corporation had a class-action lawsuit filed against them on behalf of their workers for wage theft. Seven class action lawsuits were filed in New York, California, and Michigan alleging that the fast-food giant forced employees to work off the clock, failed to pay them overtime, and removed hours from their time cards. Since 1985, McDonald’s has paid back wages more than 300 times under the provisos of the Federal Labor Standards Act. Company officials report that they are reviewing the allegations of the lawsuit.
Wells Fargo & Co.
Wells Fargo is in the City of Los Angeles’ crosshairs for predatory lending practices that date back to the housing collapse of 2008. The banking firm, # 29 on Fortune 500’s list, failed in attempts to throw out the city’s lawsuit in an ongoing attempt to hold predatory lending firms to task for the urban blight that resulted from the housing meltdown. The suit moved forward when U.S. District Judge Otis Wright II ruled that the city furnished sufficient evidence that the bank targeted minority lenders for predatory loans.
Wal-Mart Stores
Following a June accident involving Wal-Mart injuries in Atlanta, when a semi-truck in New Jersey, actor Tracy Morgan filed suit against the #1 Fortune 500 Company for damages that severely injured the actor and killed another passenger, comedian James McNair, in Morgan’s limo bus. Fighting the federal lawsuit, Wal-Mart attorneys assert that Morgan was culpable in his injuries for not wearing a seat belt at the time of the accident.
Kroger
Cincinnati-based Kroger Supermarket chain reached an agreement with the animal advocacy group, Compassion over Killings. The advocacy group claimed that the supermarket’s Simple Truth brand chicken was deceptively labeled to suggest that Kroger chickens were raised more humanely than other companies owing to the fact that their birds are raised cage-free. Since no “meat” chickens are raised in cages within the industry, the assertion suggests that Kroger chickens are unique. Kroger agreed to an out-of-court settlement with Compassion over Killings that has led to Kroger’s agreement to relabeling their products.
Exxon Mobile
The world’s fourth-largest oil company, Exxon Mobile, just received a legal setback relating to an accident of their Pegasus pipeline in 2013 resulting in a 210,000-gallon spillage. Little Rock, Arkansas judge Brian Miller ruled in favor of granting class-action status to a suit claiming negligence on the company’s part in maintaining the Pegasus pipeline.
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