Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mauldin v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   no consensus.  MBisanz  talk 00:12, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Mauldin v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

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Not sure why this was ever an article, but it never once complied with NPOV in its lengthy history as a stub fork from another Wal-Mart fork, and no one in the last two years bothered to update it with the fact that the plaintiffs slunk away and voluntarily dismissed the suit without receiving a penny, or before the court issued any rulings of any precedential value. WP:NOT, even if third-party coverage existed. I PROD'd it; an editor told me it previously survived a couple of AFDs, but I couldn't find any evidence of them. I deleted the PROD myself and took it to AFD. THF (talk) 02:14, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions.  —THF (talk) 02:16, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete as per nom. Ray  Talk 04:27, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Non-notable non-sustained lawsuits could fill a few terabytes of space. And still have no value. Collect (talk) 11:19, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete per above. I've seen very few NN Lawsuit-related articles in the past 2 years, and I've worked on a lot of them, but this is one of the few truly meaningless legal articles. Bearian (talk) 17:14, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. This article may not be notable solely as an independent legal case, but it is certainly notable regarding the history of Wal-Mart labor relations, the issue of occupational sex discrimination, and the issue of insurance coverage of contraceptives. Not only was this lawsuit covered by numerous mainstream news sources, it is also mentioned in the book The Handbook of Women, Psychology, and the Law. That seems to meet the notability requirement of receiving significant coverage in reliable sources, IMO. And FWIW, the reason this case was dropped was not because the plaintiffs "slunk away", it was because Wal-Mart finally caved and agreed to change their policy. So this lawsuit actually had a very important effect. Finally, I don't see any POV issues with the current version. Kaldari (talk) 17:47, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The lawsuit didn't "have an important effect," because if it did, the for-profit attorneys behind the case would have asked for damages and attorneys' fees instead of voluntarily dismissing a certified class and taking away zero. It was a meritless lawsuit. THF (talk) 19:55, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * If it was meritless, why did Wal-Mart agree to change their policy? Regardless, it's not our place to debate the merit of the lawsuit, just to list what is reported in reliable sources. Please feel free to add more on Wal-Mart's claims if you can find any info about them. (I couldn't.) Kaldari (talk) 20:04, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Nothing legally required Wal-Mart to, but also nothing stopped Wal-Mart from voluntarily deciding that they would be more competitive in the labor market by offering different health benefits. The change was part of a larger overhaul of its health benefits policy, and had nothing to do with the lawsuit. Milberg Weiss doesn't drop a billion-dollar lawsuit for zero if it has a shred of merit: they were notorious for prosecuting meritless lawsuits until the defendant said uncle and paid protection money to get out of the suit.  THF (talk) 20:10, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Nothing except the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's 2000 ruling that employers "must cover the expenses of prescription contraceptives to the same extent and on the same terms, that they cover the expenses of preventative drugs, devices, and preventative care." As the federal agency charged with administering and enforcing Title VII, the EEOC's interpretation of the law is authoritative, BTW. See also Erickson v. Bartell Drug Co. (2001), Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. United Parcel Service (2001), and Cooley v. Daimler Chrysler Corp. (2003). So if you really must debate the point, it seems that Wal-Mart's defense was meritless, not the other way around. Kaldari (talk) 20:55, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Several courts disagreed with that EEOC decision, which wasn't law, as opposed to a litigation position that they had inconsistent success with. See, e.g., In re Union Pac. R. Empl. Pract. Lit., 479 F.3d 936 (8th Cir. 2007); Cummins v. Illinois, No. 02-4201 (S.D.Ill. Aug. 30, 2005). Again, if Wal-Mart's position was "meritless", Milberg Weiss wouldn't have dismissed their billion-dollar lawsuit (which had asked for back pay) for zero.
 * In short, this is not a notable case. It set no precedent. No money changed hands. It had no effect on the world other than being another black mark on Milberg Weiss's stained accounting. If you wish to have an article about Requirement of coverage of prescription contraceptives under Title VII, where this is one of several cases discussed, I wouldn't have an objection. THF (talk) 21:03, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia's notibility guidelines don't mention anything about legal precedents or exchanging money. Kaldari (talk) 21:16, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * BTW, I've fleshed out the article with more information and references. Kaldari (talk) 19:15, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Very good content, not much as a stub, though. I would support a merger to Criticism of Wal-Mart as a separate sub-section, instead of deletion. Bearian (talk) 19:48, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * A better merger would be to Milberg Weiss, as the most notable thing about the case is the law firm running away from it the minute the court suggested that they could be investigated for kickbacks. THF (talk) 21:22, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment I didn't really want to get into this discussion, but it used to be in a Wal-Mart criticism article (what is now Criticism of Wal-Mart) and the reason I forked it is that during the time we thought it being there was POV. I don't think it's NPOV to treat lawsuits as criticism because lawsuits are more like events.  In such cases I think it's more appropriate to put it in the article on the prosecutor or the subject instead of an article about the defendant.  Thus I agree with THF on here that if a consensus to merge the article was reached, it should go to Milberg Weiss and not Criticism of Wal-Mart.  As far as this AFD goes, I abstain.  Tuxide (talk) of WikiProject Retailing 04:57, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * It should be noted that the article is now over three times longer than it was when it was nominated for deletion and now includes 13 cited references instead of just one. Kaldari (talk) 23:13, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. The reason it is longer is because, to get the article to achieve NPOV so it wasn't just reciting non-reliable sources and plaintiffs' allegations, I had to use primary sources. There's very little secondary-source coverage.  It's surely not the case that every lawsuit that gets an article in the Fulton County Daily Report is notable, because then Wikipedia would be filled with thousands of cases from Atlanta, with a few hundred new articles every year.  Most of the secondary-source coverage that exists is based on the false prediction that the lawsuit would amount to something, and all but one of the secondary sources have basic factual errors about the law that make them questionable sources for discussion of a lawsuit.
 * Using primary coverage, I can make many many many lengthy articles about non-notable cases in Wikipedia. So length tells us nothing about notability.  Most civil cases have docket sheets dozens or hundreds of entries long, and it's possible to WP:PUFF up an article with a paragraph about each docket entry--as was done in this article with sentence after inaccurate sentence about the court's tentative class certification.
 * For a case to be notable, it should be noted by other cases. E.g., it should be a case that either (1) changed the law in a notable way, (2) had a result that was notable, or (3) is widely cited by other cases as a precedent.  This case is only notable because of the fallout from the Milberg Weiss scandal.  Any other result and we violate WP:NOT.  THF (talk) 11:22, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Have you actually read WP:NOT? This lawsuit is hardly a breaking news event. Of course, you're right that the length of the article doesn't matter that much. But considering the plethora of newspapers and magazines that covered this lawsuit, including The Nation, USA Today, and Ms. magazine, it seems pretty evident that it was, in fact, a notable lawsuit. If you believe that the notability requirements for lawsuits should be different than those of regular articles, you should propose that as a separate guideline. Kaldari (talk) 15:05, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Ms. Magazine reprinted a press release. The Nation gave it three sentences.  USA Today gave it one sentence and was talking about the larger legal issue (and I support an article about the larger legal issue rather than six smaller articles that are meaningless out of context).  None of that is significant independent coverage by virtue of flunking one adjective or the other. THF (talk) 17:50, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep. Fascinating. Although Walmart says otherwise, this case could have been the reason it changed it's policy. This case is both notable and significant. Jeff Carr (talk) 03:29, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * There is zero evidence that this is why it changed its policy, and much evidence that it wasn't. If Milberg was right on the law, it surrendered tens of millions of dollars for no reason. THF (talk) 11:10, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * "Could have been"? Seems like SYN is a requirement to buy that as an argument. The death of Abe Lincoln's reputed girlfriend "could have been" the cause of the Civil War.  I did not find "could have been" to be used as a valid reason for keeping any article in the archives here - it is surely an interesting reason. Collect (talk) 11:47, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Since the The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth, all that editors need do to show it as not WP:SYNTH is cite the reliable sources which make this conjecture, and state that it is a conjecture. Readers may always visit these sources and make their own determinations. Simple.  Schmidt,  MICHAEL Q. 20:58, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The thing is, no reliable source says that. WP:NOT is supposed to prevent us from cluttering up the encyclopedia with articles of transient interest just because they're mentioned by a few sentences in a couple of newspaper articles.  No one is ever going to write about this case again; it was meritless when it was filed, it was meritless when it was dismissed (it was dismissed without prejudice, but no one refiled it), and the only reason it has half the press coverage it does was because of short-circuited investigation into trial-lawyer corruption. THF (talk) 21:09, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * If someone were investigating the history of insurance coverage of contraceptives, I think this article would be marginally interesting to them. Of course, Erickson v. Bartell Drug Co. would be a lot more interesting. Also, someone doing research on Wal-Mart's health insurance policies might find the article interesting as well. Or someone researching the history of Milberg. Just because the case was legally inconclusive doesn't mean it wasn't notable as an event in history. Kaldari (talk) 21:23, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep per meeting WP:N. Any concerns with POV can easily be addressed by Cleanup and discussion.  Schmidt,  MICHAEL Q. 18:41, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Subject is blatantly notable and reliable sources exist Jwray (talk) 20:36, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.