Walmart Sued Over Dumping Hazardous Waste Into The Environment

Via America’s Lawyer: Walmart faces a CA lawsuit for its illegal dumping of hazardous waste. Filling in for Mike Papantonio this week, Farron Cousins is joined by attorney Michael Bixby to discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Let's go on here. Another big one, another grocery chain, if you will, the state of California is suing Walmart for illegally dumping hazardous waste materials. Back to the dumping of toxic materials, right? Looking at Walmart here in California, you've got all kinds of things that have to be disposed of in a safe manner. Something as simple sometimes as even the light bulbs, the batteries, because Walmart sells everything and California said, well, we've been digging through your garbage and we found out you're just dumping this stuff wherever the heck you want to dump it.
Yeah. I think it's worse than that, Farron, because they've been caught before.
Yeah.
So if you go back to 2010, they actually had a settlement with California that paid out, let me see here what was the number, it was $110 million in criminal fines. So this is 10, 11 years ago. And now we find out they've continued to do it. And it's not just once or twice. Look at the amount 160,000 pounds is what the allegation is of, of materials. Whether it's the batteries, whether it's the light bulbs, the other things that need to be disposed of in a certain way to help us make sure that the communities that they're operating in remain safe. This is unacceptable, especially because of the history here, because it's not like they made an oops and it's an accident and this is a mistake. This is something they knew and they should have been preventing. And for whatever reason, they turned a blind eye, whether it was cheaper to do this and that's the problem, we need to stop it and we need to deincentivize them from dumping this. Dumping these types of toxic materials, whatever they are, whether it's chemicals or whether it's it's materials like batteries, we need to make it not profitable for these companies to make that type of a decision that puts profits over the health of our communities.
Well, and that's a good point to make too, because when the companies look at this and say, okay, if we were to get rid of all these, you know, industrial batteries that we have, the car batteries and the, the light bulbs and the other chemicals that come through the store, if we were to dispose of them properly, that's gonna cost us $300 million. But if we just toss them in the regular landfill, we're gonna get popped with $110 million, eh, we save $190 million by breaking the law. We'll pay our fine 10 years down the road when investigations stop. We've made money on this and it's not just Walmart in one particular, this is how corporations across this country work. We see it with pharmaceuticals every day, every day. Okay, well, if this many people get hurt, we'll pay out this much, but we've made 10 times that in profit. The banks, horrible with it. We saw it all through the financial meltdown. They know they can save money by breaking the law.
Yeah, it's the, it's the, it's the classic Ford Pinto problem. It's we know there's a problem, we know there's an issue, but it's gonna cost this much to fix it and the likely regulatory and lawsuit impact will only be this much, it's net profitable. That's where we need to deincentivize that. We need to make sure that they can be held fully responsible. And you go back into that, the subsidies, and then the lobbying that each of these corporations are doing when, when they're trying to reduce their ability to be held fully responsible for it, it, it might seem innocuous to the average person. They might say, well, what's the big deal? You have tort reform or limits on damages. But when you have that, that again allows the corporation to make that decision to say, ah, we're gonna do this even though it's gonna cost lives, because we're not gonna be found liable.

#rof #trofire #theringoffire #progressivenews

[tylerhackner]

As they SHOULD be sued for this. This is horrific.

[chocolmilk]

This will happen again if management aren't held criminally accountable (facing real prison time). We've already seen that in this case, paying fines isn't an adequate deterrent/punishment.

[ArtHistoryNstuff]

They shouldn't sued, they should be SHUT DOWN. There will always be other places to buy cheap junk, get a low paying job, or be taken advantage of.

[brenda]

California has strict regulations on this stuff, the whole country should. It is for our safety and environment. These companies make plenty of money. We as consumers and shareholders need to speak out and let them know we expect better.

[Leonaza]

It's cheaper for them to pay the fines than to follow the law, yet they will turn around and cite "litigation and settlements" as one of the reasons they "can't afford" to pay their employees a fair wage.

[godfreydaniel]

Rare is the business entity that won't piss into the community water supply. That's why environmental laws are indispensable...

[TheStigma]

A big problem with a lot of these huge corporations is that they generate so much money that per-case fines are all but meaningless. That also largely applies to individuals and families with very deep pockets, but that's kind of a different issue.

A proper disincentive would be to suspend operating rights for any location that gets caught not following the laws. Give a reasonable timeframe to correct the problem and demand exhaustive documentation and inspection of the result. Failure to folly comply means the location can't operate until the problem has been fixed - kind of like a failed health inspection at a restaurant. Have a "black marks" system where repeated offenses multiply the penalties and take a lot of time to expire. Follow up with random controls at a frequency proportional to the amount of non-compliance historically. Something along those lines - this isn't really a new or complex concept.

The biggest problem is no doubt going to come down to political will to regulate corporations that are also megadonors. This is a recurring theme in the US that makes easily solvable problems linger for decades because the whole political system is so thoroughly corrupted by donor money. The lack of regulation isn't a flaw, but a feature.

[KHwut]

Imagine how much harmful crap is being dumped in "business friendly" red states.

[CC-iqpe]

Why aren’t Walmart executives getting criminally charged

[jrfuentes]

Large companies like this have a budget for lawsuits and fines. They dont care.

[DCell]

I've lived in rural places where you had to pay to dispose of your garbage and bring it to the transfer station yourself. I believe 100% that Walmart is illegally dumping because it is cheaper to pay millions in fines rather than paying to dispose of it properly. If the Waltons had any concern for other people, animals and the planet they could easily remedy this by working with the state and federal government to come up with solutions to benefit everyone, like reduced cost to WM for proper disposal, etc. But no, major corporations and their owners, CEO's and bottom line watchers would rather keep the status quo and pay the fine. Who cares how many people are affected. Who cares if the water or ground is poisoned. They don't live there, so who cares?

[anthonybrowne]

Fine more and start putting people in jail.

[joelananna]

As a former Wal mart employee
Everything Walmart is toxic waste

[assassinsrequiem]

When breaking the law is more profitable than doing the right thing, it will continue.

And as long as corporations lobby for politicians, the environment & the people suffer for it.

[tonioshea]

Good! I despise Wal Mart & Amazon.

[glnnchrstphr]

Gee they had to pay $110, 000, 000 in fines 10 years ago for doing this. No wonder they keep doing it. It's far cheaper to break the law and destroy the environment than it is to do the right thing. So they will keep doing it. The only way they will stop is when they will actually feel the hurt. When it actually puts a real dent in their pocketbook. When the individuals at the top actually have to go to prison for these things. Then they may rethink it.

[patrickdrazen]

If Walmart chooses to dump without cleaning or mitigating, I can choose to drive by it without stopping and shopping.

[DerekFullerWhoIsGovt]

All these settlements are stay out of jail bribes.

[randymoore]

I totally agree they should be held accountable or throwing toxic waste into the landfills but a lot of these products if they're throwing away aren't we also buying and using and throwing in our trash and into the landfills so what are we going to have to do have them not to sell anything that has any toxic materials in a menthol so that we're not throwing them away in our trash I'm just asking a question I'm not for what happening at all just looking for someone that has the answer

[cliftonmoore]

California is doing what California should be. Pollution stinks. Anyway to lessen it, is good.