S.C. woman awarded $10M after stepping on rusty nail at Walmart

FLORENCE, S.C. - A Florence woman who suffered multiple amputations after stepping on a rusty nail at Walmart has been awarded $10 million in damages, her lawyers announced.

According to the Anastopoulo Law Firm, the incident happened in June 2015 at the Walmart on Beltline Drive in Florence.

April Jones was injured by the nail in the main aisle of the store, resulting in an infection, surgery and three separate amputations, the law firm stated. Jones has reportedly been wheelchair-bound for six years after losing most of her right leg.

A jury deliberated for less than two hours before returning with the $10 million verdict last week.

“The weakness of Walmart’s case, among other things, was their failure to produce a video that they claim showed their conforming behavior to a company policy calling for employees to perform regular safety sweeps. No such evidence was presented for the duration of the five-day-long trial,” the release stated.

According to the law firm, Walmart’s expert testified on cross-examination that the nail was the cause of injury.

The money, her lawyers say, will enable Jones to purchase a prosthetic, make her home more handicap-accessible and cover medical expenses.

In another Walmart case ...

An Alabama woman who says she was falsely arrested for shoplifting at a Walmart and then threatened by the company after her case was dismissed has been awarded $2.1 million in damages.

A Mobile County jury on Monday ruled in favor of Lesleigh Nurse of Semmes, news outlets reported.

Nurse said in a lawsuit that she was stopped in November 2016 when trying to leave a Walmart with groceries she said she already paid for, according to AL.com. She said she used self-checkout, but the scanning device froze. Workers didn’t accept her explanation, and she was arrested for shoplifting.

Her case was dismissed a year later, but then she received letters from a Florida law firm threatening a civil suit if she didn’t pay $200 as a settlement, according to her lawsuit. That was more than the cost of the groceries she was accused of stealing.

Nurse said Walmart instructed the law firm to send the letters — and that she wasn’t the only one receiving them.

“The defendants have engaged in a pattern and practice of falsely accusing innocent Alabama citizens of shoplifting and thereafter attempting to collect money from the innocently accused,” the suit contended.

WKRG reported that the trial featured testimony that Walmart and other major retailers routinely use such settlements in states where laws allow it, and that Walmart made hundreds of millions of dollars this way in a two-year period.

Defense attorneys for Walmart said the practice is legal in Alabama. A spokesperson told AL.com that the company will be filing motions in this case because it doesn’t “believe the verdict is supported by the evidence and the damages awarded exceed what is allowed by law.”

From reports by WMBF and The Associated Press