Fired Wal-Mart worker gets $31M in gender-bias case

Associated Press

CONCORD, N.H.

A jury has awarded more than $31 million in damages to a former Wal-Mart pharmacist in New Hampshire who claimed she was wrongly fired after reporting safety concerns about co-workers dispensing prescriptions.

Maureen McPadden was a 13-year employee who reported her concerns to management while working in Wal-Mart’s Seabrook pharmacy. She was fired in 2012 after losing her pharmacy key.

The jury awarded most of the money Thursday based on gender-discrimination claims, but also found Wal-Mart’s conduct was retaliation for her complaints about safety issues and/or privacy violations.

McPadden, 51, said she was confident she would prevail even before the jury announced its verdicts after about three hours of deliberations.

Randy Hargrove, director of media relations nationally at the Bentonville, Ark.-based company, said Wal-Mart will ask the court to set aside the verdict or reduce the damages.

McPadden testified that she was disciplined twice in the year before her termination because pharmacy technicians did not file required reports on two occasions.

Her lawyers, Richard Fradette and Lauren Irwin, said a male pharmacist at a Walmart in Plaistow, N.H., who lost a pharmacy key within the year after McPadden was terminated, was disciplined but not fired.