James Stevens v. VONS

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Headline Legal News: James Stevens v. VONS

The Law Offices of Allred, Maroko & Goldberg and the Law Offices of Davis & Gavsie, PLC. are featured in an exciting, exclusive, in-depth and inside interview, discussing the case against Vons supermarkets.



James Stevens v. VONS. Nathan Goldberg and Roxanne Davis, both of whom represent Mr. Stevens, discuss his case against Vons supermarkets. Joining them is Mike Lief, who served as the jury foreman in the trial James brought against Vons. James was employed by Vons for 26 years as an Inventory Control Clerk. After complaining to management about ongoing sexual harassment by a female supervisor, he was transferred to a less desirable store. Mr. Stevens filed a complaint with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH). Vons allegedly lied to the DFEH, and the DFEH closed its file. The company then allegedly falsely accused Mr. Stevens of donating water and soda to a church that fed the homeless and fired him. On October 27, 2006, after a 6-week trial, the jury in Simi Valley awarded Mr. Stevens $1.67 million in compensatory damages and over $16 million in punitive damages. The case has been appealed by Vons.

Tell us what do you think about it!

I never had a problem there and worked there for 8 years.

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I'm happy for the person who has worked at Vons 8 years and never had an issue. I was going on vacation and the day before I was to leave, I was called into a room with an H.R. Person Michael McHugh and Jayson Clarke, and I was sat down and told I was being suspended for multiple reasons. A few were interesting for the fact I was not working on the days in question. I was told of an incident that had occurred on my day off and when I explained, "I never work Friday" the tone had changed to aaaaaa!
I was written up for in-stock conditions a week earlier and I was shocked, cause I have always been where the company wants me to be. The mistake I made was saying "Ok this is how it's going to be, then don't expect me to keep my eyes closed to all of the things I have seen" From that day, it took them a week to get rid of me. I knew something was up when the store manager kept saying, "You can check my integrity, and I am doing my job!"
Then people I worked with had started acting a little strange around me, come to find out, these are the people who H.R. rep had come into the store and talked to, too get a statement of something they had seen or heard me do wrong. I asked one of my friends at work what was the deal; she told me she was sorry, she had no choice they made me write something.
Being a salary manager, it's quite amazing all I got was "you can pick your last check up on Thursday or Friday" and nothing else. I asked what was the final reasoning for the dismissal and I got "I don't really know!" I asked if Mike McHugh could find out and still a week later, I have no idea why I was let go from Vons.
I do feel though, when they want to get rid of you, they will find anything and everything to do so. I have seen this in the past, they terminated an employee for a cup of 25-cent ice that she had paid 10 cents for, policy had just changed and no one knew, not even me. And I truly think they hope most people are too stupid to question their reasoning’s and just slip away into the crowd.
This is a company who yes does have a zero tolerance policy, yet the last two managers I have worked under have been sexually active with employees. One manager at store 2390 Monty Brand, would place a "Knock first" on his office door, incase someone would walk in. Security did walk in one day and found both in the office. Now all that happened was the female was moved to another store and the manager kept his position, they're still a couple. Another manager I have worked under, Susan Martinez (Her last name now being the name of the male she was involved with) she was married as so was the male, who was her dairy clerk. She has had other relationships with other employees and management knew about this also. An Assistant manager named Jesse H was sleeping with 3 people at store 2390 and when I informed the D.M. Dean Willhite, from that moment I was moved to another store and then it seemed like every other day someone was checking up on my work and even my vendors commented on how it seemed like some person from corporate was here every other day! I could see why the D.M. would do nothing about this, cause he is guilty of the same thing, a bookkeeper and a couple of cashiers.
Even in the last meeting, I made the comment "This is nothing more than a witch hunt and I angered the wrong person" of course not said so nicely!
After that, neither Mike nor Jayson would look at me...

And still a little over a week now and still no reason for my dismissal. I have tried to contact Greg Rutkin and have sent faxes to H.R. in California to get me records and will see from there, maybe I too need to get some sort of counseling!

Vons Company has no integrity, if someone says I sound like an angry employee, maybe a little! I was working 13-15 hours a day and working on my days off to get a little ahead of the game. They have cut the schedules down so much; you are guaranteed to fail unless you put in those types of hours. Actually I'm not angry! I am happy to be gone, I feel a huge weight has been lifted, even friends have noticed in only a week, I just want someone to hear and maybe explain how a company can do this to people! I'm glad that Mr. Stevens won his settlement; I wish people weren't so afraid to say something.
Case in point; we have a mystery shopper program where a person comes by and grades the store on a moment. I know managers that purposely hire disabled people, for the fact they know if they lose a point on the shop, if the person is disabled they get the point back.
I told the district manager about stores cheating on out of stock counts, how they were pulling tags and covering holes, I was told that "This doesn't happen in my district and I needed to keep my comments to myself" Then we had some people from corporate come and do some counts; they do counts in a way the store cannot entirely cheat, some of the counts were 4x higher than normal, when I told someone "I told you so!" I had 5 visits from district people that week...

So you tell me!