Walmart is America’s largest employer, reporting 1.6 million employees nationwide. The retail chain maintains a massive physical footprint, with over 4,000 physical locations across the country.
According to Docket Alarm analytics, Walmart was involved in over 15,000 federal lawsuits in the last 10 years. It’s the defendant in almost all of them. This trend has remained stable over time, with a major exception – a massive spike of lawsuits in February 2023. Critically, many of these lawsuits are related to In re: Zantac (Ranitidine) Products Liability Litigation, a multidistrict litigation targeting primarily pharmaceutical companies but also distributors.
Personal injury generally is the largest case type in cases involving Walmart, with approaching 44% of the 15,000 cases filed under that classification. This speaks to Walmart’s physical footprint – at that scale, personal injury lawsuits scale too, especially considering that Walmart’s locations are grocery stories frequented by millions.
Medication-related products liability is the runner-up, tying into the Zanatc multidistrict case as well as Walmart’s role as a pharmacy for millions. Third place is civil RICO suits – a review of these reveals that they are similarly tied to multidistrict cases not primarily targeting Walmart. Fourth is generic products liability, and fifth is employment-related litigation.
Walmart relies on a variety of law firms for representation. Topping the rankings is McConnell & Associates. Littler Mendelson is the runner up, with McCranie Sistrunk Anzelmo Hardy McDaniel & Welch in third.
Walmart’s huge variety of services offered translates into this wide breadth of litigation – its pharmaceutical business, for example, exposes it to litigation brought by those seeking to recover from distributors.