Legal

Cosmetics retailer Sephora has blocked the online accounts of scores of customers with Asian names because it suspected them of buying discount items in bulk to resell them, a new lawsuit claims. The proposed class action was filed Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan by four U.S. women of Chinese descent who say their accounts were deactivated earlier this month because they have Asian surnames. The suit stems from a Nov. 6 promotional sale that caused Sephora's website to crash. 

A federal jury in California awarded nearly $186 million to a San Diego-area woman who sued AutoZone saying she was demoted and fired after being told pregnant women can't do the job of managing a store, her attorney said on Tuesday. "This is the third or fourth time they've been hit with punitive damages for doing the same thing," said Sean Simpson, who is part of the legal team representing plaintiff Rosario Juarez, 43. The award by a six-person jury, which follows a two-week trial, includes $872,720 in compensatory damages and another $185 million in punitive damages.

As if you don't have enough to worry about this holiday season, a report came out earlier this month that American retail staff steal a lot more from their employers than actual dedicated thieves. According to The Global Retail Theft Barometer report released by Checkpoint Systems, employee theft cost U.S. retailers $18 billion in 2013.

Macy's CEO Terry Lundgren said he's increasingly concerned about the threat of a labor strike at West Coast ports, so he's enlisting retail heavyweights to lobby the White House for help. After Lundgren and the National Retail Federation urged President Barack Obama to take action, the executive said he also sought the help of friend Doug McMillon, the CEO of Wal-Mart. 

Walgreen Inc.'s former Chief Financial Officer Wade Miquelon sued the drugstore operator on Thursday, alleging company executives defamed him in news reports that blamed him for errors in its earnings forecast. Miquelon sued Walgreen in a state court in Chicago claiming that CEO Gregory Wasson and director Stefano Pessina, the company's biggest shareholder, had made "false and disparaging" comments about him in a report by The Wall Street Journal, court documents showed. The Journal reported in August that Miquelon and another top executive lost their jobs after a $1 billion forecasting error in Walgreen's Medicare-related business.

Nike's Converse sued Wal-Mart and Hennes & Mauritz (H&M), along with other retailers and shoe importers, accusing them of selling knockoffs of its iconic Chuck Taylor All-Star sneakers. Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, and H&M, Europe's second-biggest clothing chain, sell shoes that are "confusingly similar imitations" of the trademarked All-Star shoes that date back to 1917, Converse said in separate complaints filed in federal court in Brooklyn, New York. The distinctive high-top sneakers were renamed in 1934 for Chuck Taylor, a Converse salesman and basketball player, according to court filings. 

Jesse Busk spent a 12-hour shift rushing inventory through an Amazon.com warehouse in Nevada to meet quotas. His day wasn't over, though. After clocking out, Busk and hundreds of other workers went through an airport-style screening process, including metal detectors, to make sure they weren't stealing from the web retailer. Getting through the line often took as long as 25 minutes, uncompensated, he and others employed there say.

The U.S. Supreme Court said yesterday that it will consider whether a Muslim woman denied a job at an Abercrombie & Fitch clothing store because she wears a head scarf was required to specifically request a religious accommodation. The nine justices agreed to hear an appeal filed in the closely watched case by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency that sued the company on behalf of Samantha Elauf. She was denied a sales job at an Abercrombie Kids store in Tulsa, Okla., in 2008.

Many online merchants have been watching closely the saga of the Direct Marketing Association's (DMA) constitutional challenge to a 2010 Colorado law targeting remote sellers. This legislation would require out-of-state catalog and internet retailers that do not collect Colorado state and local sales tax to turn over customer transaction information to the Colorado Department of Revenue.

Wal-Mart was ordered by a federal judge in Arkansas to face a pension fund's claims the retailer defrauded shareholders by concealing corruption tied to bribes allegedly paid by officials of its Mexican unit. U.S. District Judge Susan Hickey in Fayetteville rejected Wal-Mart's bid to throw out the Michigan-based fund's lawsuit accusing it of making misleading statements to regulators about claims it paid bribes to facilitate Mexican real estate deals. Wal-Mart said it's spent $439 million since 2012 in connection with investigations into allegations that employees paid bribes in Mexico, China, India and Brazil.