December 6, 2003. ת The Wal-Mart Trampling Incident Tells us More About American Court Abuse than About American Shoppers.

I forget my source, but I noted down the web address for this interesting report on the woman who was supposedly trampled by selfish Wal-Mart shoppers. It turns out she has filed 16 previous injury claims at places where she has shopped or worked, all of them dubious. And yet she walks free. This is injustice as much as when a court turns down an obviously meritorious claim (does any court ever do that?). Here are the details from WKMG-Local 6 News.

A woman reported "trampled" last Friday by Wal-Mart shoppers desperate for $29.87 DVD players has a long history of claiming injuries from Wal-Marts and other businesses where she worked or shopped.

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The story was picked up by the Associated Press and carried in newspapers and other media as far away as Australia and China, an example -- some commentators have opined -- of American excess during the holiday shopping season.

An investigation by WKMG-Local 6 reveals Vanlester has filed 16 previous claims of injuries at Wal-Mart stores and other places she has shopped or worked, according to Wal-Mart, court files and state records. Her sister, who accompanied her Friday on the visit to Wal-Mart, has also filed a prior injury claim against Wal-Mart, with Vanlester as her witness, a company spokeswoman said yesterday.

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Vanlester has for years complained of head, back, neck, leg or arm pain caused by slipping and falling, objects falling on her and other accidents, according to medical records in a public court file examined by WKMG-Local 6. In fact, her sister says she was wearing a neck brace at the time of last Friday's incident because of injuries from a years-old car accident.

According to state worker's compensation records and court files at the Volusia County courthouse in DeLand, here's some of what Vanlester has claimed over the years under some of her various legal last names: Rastellini, Findley, Crabtree, Platt and Vanlester.

Here are just two of the examples the article gives of her claims. It's interesting because it puts into doubt our workman's compensation scheme as well as our tort law generally. But I am glad to see that she did not always win or extort any money.

In 1978 and 1982, more than $400 in worker's compensation was paid after she claimed injuries from being struck by a falling object and from slipping and falling while working as a machine operator at a now-defunct manufacturing plant in DeLand.

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In 1991, she claimed to have slipped on a puddle of hand lotion while shopping for a curling iron at an Orange City Walgreen's, causing "permanent injury, disability, disfigurement (and) mental anguish." She filed suit in 1993, but it was thrown out in January 1994 after a 10-minute hearing. Walgreen's argued no one at the store had seen any liquid on the floor, so it could not be liable for failing to clean it up.

If I remember rightly, one good thing about tort law is that in civil suits, evidence of previous run-ins with the law is admissible-- or at least, more than in criminal cases. The case of this woman shows that a tort lawyer is well-advised to check on the claim history of any suspicious-looking plaintiff.

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