Woman Receives $2.1 Million After Being Falsely Accused Of Stealing At Superstore

Oct 14, 2022 by apost team

No one wants to be accused of something they haven’t done, much more of a crime they haven’t committed. This happened to a woman who got falsely accused of shoplifting, which resulted in her getting charged criminally. So, she fought back and got what she rightfully deserved. While it is true that her reputation had already been damaged, she did not let go without a fight - not to mention the fact that she won at the end of the day.

It was an ordinary day for Lesleigh Nurse of Mobile City in Alabama, who went shopping at Semmes Walmart with her three kids. While she was at the checkout counter, she encountered a few problems, including a malfunctioning scanner which led her to ask for help from one of the store associates. But just when she thought she was already paid and was finally ready to leave, the asset protection manager suddenly stopped her.

“I remember going in that little room and thinking this will be resolved, this is an accident, this isn’t on purpose,” she recalled in an interview with WKRG.

Nurse was then charged $48 for allegedly stealing a number of grocery items. But it got even worse when her criminal record affected her means of survival. But as if getting humiliated in public and being criminally charged weren’t enough, she also started getting demand letters from a law firm asking her to pay $200 in exchange for her case getting dropped.

“At first you think ‘well, I’ll pay it and it will all go away,'” Nurse said.

“But then I’m like I didn’t do anything wrong. Why would I pay for something I didn’t do?” she added.

Walmart didn’t provide any footage, which would have proven that Nurse had indeed stolen grocery items that day. So, she filed a suit on “abuse of process” in 2018. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one who had been receiving the same demand letters.

“The defendants have engaged in a pattern and practice of falsely accusing innocent Alabama citizens of shoplifting and thereafter attempting to collect money from the innocently accused,” part of the suit she filed read.

“I hope it makes a difference. I don’t want anybody else to have to go through this again,” Nurse said.

A professor from the University of Nebraska revealed in a testimony that Walmart had claimed more than $300 million from 1.4 million people across the US from collecting money for alleged criminal theft of property cases.

But luckily, she got what she rightfully deserved in 2021 after she was awarded $2.1 million in punitive damages after the jury went for Nurse.

Meanwhile, Walmart released a statement following the publication of the story on WKRG, with the retail company claiming that they only wanted to prevent cases of theft from taking place and that their associates simply “acted properly.”

“We want our customers to have a safe, pleasant shopping experience in our stores. We take measures to help prevent, identify and appropriately handle instances of theft, which is a problem for all retailers that costs the overall U.S. economy tens of billions of dollars each year. We continue to believe our associates acted appropriately,” the statement read.

Walmart, in the same statement, added that it will file a post-trial motion as “we don’t believe the verdict is supported by the evidence and the damages awarded exceed what is allowed by law.”  

apost.com

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