A San Bernardino County jury has awarded a former Walmart truck driver $34.7 million, based on what that same jury said was the company’s false accusations against him that he had engaged in fraud and was faking the severity of injuries he suffered after he was rear-ended while making a delivery for the retail giant.
The substantial award, what some in the courthouse on November 19 called exorbitant, came after the jury determined that the company falsely accused the driver of fraud, then firing him while he was on injury leave.
Jesus Fonseca was employed for 14 years as a truck driver for Walmart, operating for most of that time out of the Apple Valley Distribution Center. In 2017, while operating one of Walmart’s trucks on I-15, Fonseca was rear-ended by another semi-truck. Fonseca was put on medical leave the day following the accident. After a relatively short time while he was on injury leave, he attempted, according to his lawyers, to return to work for Walmart, but was unable, to engage in “commercial driving” and further disallowed to engage in “pushing, pulling, bending, stooping and lifting over 5-10 pounds.”
Fonseca’s lawyers maintain he requested alternate duties at the Apple Valley Distribution Center, including desk work or clerical assignments monitoring the dispatch of trucks, but was not given that opportunity by Walmart. The company made no effort to match him with tasks which he could perform, according to his lawyers.
When later in in 2017 Fonseca took vacation time to travel with his family, as he had scheduled to do before the accident in which he was injured, Walmart hired a private investigator who shadowed the Fonseca family on two separate trips, documenting with photos and videos evidence that Fonseca was operating a recreational vehicle and engaging in physical activity that included bending, stooping and carrying items heavier than what he was medically restricted from lifting.
In January 2018, Fonseca was interviewed/interrogated by Walmart corporate managers with regard to a report that he had engaged in Workers’ Compensation fraud, which extended to the report that Fonseca had driven a recreational vehicle. Fonseca’s response was that his medical restrictions extended only to commercial driving and that he was permitted to drive the large recreational vehicle.
Two months later, in a phone call, Fonseca was told by a Walmart corporate officer that the company was charging him with fraud and he was going to be terminated because of what was termed “gross misconduct” and having demonstrated a lack of “integrity” and had violated the company’s code of ethics
Fonseca hung in limbo for several months, during which time he was consulting with a Workers’ Compensation attorney and was trying to engage with Walmart’s vice president of transportation. That effort, which originally held some promise of the matter being resolved, foundered when the company learned that Fonseca was had retained an attorney.
In November 2018, Walmart fired Fonseca.
In 2019, he filed suit against the company on multiple grounds, including disability discrimination, wrongful termination, retaliation in violation of the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, defamation, failure to accommodate his disability, failure to engage in an interactive process, failure to prevent discrimination, subjecting him to a hostile work environment and intention infliction of emotional distress.
According to the suit, Walmart falsely and publicly accused him publicly of fraud.
In reaching its verdict, the jury found that Walmart failed to use reasonable care in ascertaining the truth as to Fonseca’s physical limitations in the aftermath of the accident and was intentionally both reckless and malicious in statements which defamed Fonseca. Those statements harmed him personally and inhibited his future employment prospects, the jury determined.
On Tuesday, November 19, the jury concluded the case by awarding Fonseca $9.7 million in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages.
David deRubertis, Fonseca’s Studio City-based lead trial attorney called the trial outcome “historic,” which held Walmart accountable for not simply the action it had engaged in against Fonseca but a pattern of “defamation [that is] part of a broader scheme to use false accusations to force injured truckers back to work prematurely or, if not, terminate them so that Walmart can cut down Workers’ Compensation costs.”
While compensatory damages in the $2 million to $4 million range were anticipated, lawyers for Walmart and some courtroom observes were incredulous at the jury’s action, in particular the $25 million punitive damages component in its decision.
Walmart in a prepared statement indicated it was determined to “pursue all available remedies” as the “outrageous verdict simply does not reflect the straightforward and uncontested facts of this case.”