BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Walmart was ordered to pay $101.2 million after a Fayetteville jury agreed the Bentonville-based company had breached its contract with rubber glove supplier, London Luxury LLC.
The recent verdict came down on April 9, just over two years after the case was transferred to the Western District of Arkansas U.S. District Court from the Southern District of New York, where London Luxury LLC is based.
London Luxury first filed its complaint in January 2022, stating that Walmart had agreed to purchase 80 million boxes of gloves over five years in February 2021. That deal was valued at over $500 million, according to the complaint.
However, London Luxury said that after Walmart paid $3.4 million for the first shipment of the rubber gloves, the retail giant denied any future shipments, citing shipping delays and concerns over the quality and source of the gloves.
In the suit, London Luxury argues that a month before Walmart refused the shipment, the company had confirmed the quality of the gloves and approved the manufacturer after communicating with Walmart's Malaysian affiliates.
While initially preparing for the huge deal originally approved by Walmart, London Luxury said it used large amounts of resources to coordinate the shipping of the gloves, due to several obstacles in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. There was a large need for PPE, like gloves and masks, during a time when the world's labor market was halted.
"Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the demand for PPE generally, and nitrile gloves specifically, soared, and the supply of nitrile gloves was severely constrained at the time," London Luxury stated in the suit.
Walmart countersued London Luxury for tortious conduct, arguing that London Luxury CEO Marc Jason had offered Garrett Small, the director of global sourcing at Walmart, financial incentives to overlook London Luxury's "repeated breaches of its contractual obligations" and offering Small a future job at London Luxury.
In that claim, the jury awarded Walmart $350,000, agreeing that the New York-based company had interfered with Walmart's relationship with Small, who according to our content partner Arkansas Business, no longer works at Walmart.
This comes just after a class-action lawsuit accused Walmart of overcharging for weighted groceries, leading to payouts for many customers.
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