| Customer disputes Wal-Mart stampede
Legal Affairs Writer Last update: 06 December 2003 |
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DAYTONA BEACH -- A Wal-Mart customer who was right up front where a
woman claimed she was injured in a stampede for Christmas-sale DVDs the
morning after Thanksgiving said there was no such rush.
"There was no stampede; there was no bell ringing like they said," said
Gale Barr of Deltona, who said she was at the Wal-Mart store in Orange
City with her 20-year-old daughter as they took five DVDs for themselves
and helped pass more to others in the crowd behind them.
"We were passing them back to the other customers so they could make
room for us to leave," Barr recalled Friday, adding that Wal-Mart
employees kept the situation orderly despite the large crowd.
Barr's recollection of what happened at 6 a.m. a week ago Friday when
plastic was cut away from pallets by a Wal-Mart store clerk that held a
stack of $29.87 DVDs is a far cry from the claim made by Patty VanLester's
sister, Linda Ellzey. Ellzey had called the other customers "vultures" and
said they acted like a "herd of elephants."
The eyewitness account is the latest twist in an incident that has
gained worldwide attention, from Chinese television networks to a George
Will column, and prompted only an investigation by Wal-Mart so far. No
lawsuits have been filed in circuit court in Volusia County.
Paramedics reported finding VanLester unconscious on top of a DVD
player Nov. 28, the morning after Thanksgiving when customers jammed the
store for the early-bird discount holiday sale. She was airlifted to
Halifax Medical Center where she spent two days before her release Monday.
Mark O'Keefe, a spokesman for EVAC ambulance, which treated VanLester
at the store, wouldn't comment Friday on whether it was possible for
VanLester to have faked her injuries. He noted that she was admitted to
the hospital's trauma center.
"The hospital admitted this woman for two days," he said. "What does
that tell you?"
By mid-week, media reports surfaced showing VanLester, a former
Wal-Mart employee, had filed eight workers' compensation injury claims
against Wal-Mart and at least eight claims against other businesses she
frequented -- either as a worker or customer, according to public records
and Wal-Mart officials. And her sister Ellzey, who claimed she was first
in line with her injured sister, also had filed an injury complaint
against Wal-Mart.
A 1993 deposition VanLester gave in a lawsuit against an Orange City
Walgreen pharmacy showed her first claim was in 1978.
That's when the then-17-year-old VanLester received $117 in workers'
compensation after claiming she suffered an injured knee from a falling
object at a DeLand manufacturing plant. Five years later, she received
another $294 from the same plant where she said she slipped and hurt her
wrist.
The suit against Walgreen's, in which she claimed she slipped on a
puddle of hand lotion while shopping there in 1991, was thrown out after a
10-minute hearing.
Karen Burk, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman at the nation's largest retail
chain, said despite the controversy swirling about how or why VanLester
was injured, the incident is being investigated and her past claims have
no bearing on this one.
Burk said she couldn't comment specifically on what may have happened,
but added, "We think the facts will speak for themselves. We will
investigate this claim as we have the other nine claims she and her sister
have brought against us."
Burk said compensation given to VanLester for past claims was "in the
thousands." She would not elaborate.
The sister, Ellzey, claimed a bell had sounded for the sale and
customers rushed to the front where she and VanLester were standing first
in line. But Barr disputed Ellzey's claim about a stampede, a bell and
that the sister was even up front.
"That woman was first in line," Barr said of VanLester. "She did lean
against the pallet, which I thought was strange because her back was
towards it. There was no stampede. Nobody could move. It was a fire hazard
but there was no stampede."
Because she was busy pulling down DVDs herself, Barr said she did not
see VanLester fall to the floor, but did see Wal-Mart employees tend to
her immediately.
"It was very orderly and professional the way they handled it," Barr
said. "I don't think Wal-Mart was negligent. They got right to her. If I
had heard this story about this woman, I would feel sorry for her, but I
can't because I was there. And now there's all these claims. Who knows?"
That's the question large retail outlets and even mom-and-pop merchants
deal with every day, said Daniel Butler, vice president of the National
Retail Federation in Washington, D.C.
"Even if there's a history of claims that seem suspicious, that doesn't
mean the next time, it's not legitimate," Butler said.
Neither VanLester nor her sister returned calls from their mother's
Orange City home Friday for comment. But the mother, Barbara Rastellini,
68, dismissed allegations of fraud against her injured daughter, saying,
"All of this is nothing but bull."
-- Staff Writer Ellen Koven and The Associated Press contributed to
this report.
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