Legal

Teen retailer Deb Shops has filed for bankruptcy protection and is taking steps to liquidate if it can't find a buyer, according to court documents filed Thursday. This is the second time the Philadelphia-based business, which operates 295 stores, has sought bankruptcy protection. The company also filed for Chapter 11 in 2011. Court documents say Deb Shops has about $90.5 million in assets and $120.1 million in liabilities. The latest revenue figures for the company show sales of about $205 million as of Nov. 1, 10 percent less than last year.

A lawmaker in Ohio wants stores in the state to pay triple wages for employees who work on Thanksgiving, an effort that comes as Macy's, the holiday's quintessential retailer, is allowing its workers to choose whether to work that day. Both are attempts to counter frustration among workers and their families over holiday store hours that have expanded into the holiday. State Rep. Mike Foley, a Democrat from Cleveland, said his bill would allow employees to bow out of the holiday shift without job sanctions while protecting family time from excessive consumerism.

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.