Walmart Gets Plaintiff’s Lawyer Disqualified in Negligence Suit

Walmart Inc. convinced a federal judge in Wisconsin to disqualify the law firm of a plaintiff suing over a slip and fall at a Walmart store, due to a conflict of interest.

Jennifer Gnaciski sued Walmart and subsidiaries in January, saying their negligence caused the plaintiff to slip and fall at a store in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. The suit was removed to federal court, and the defendants moved to disqualify Eric L. Andrews of Dunk Law Firm due to his previous employment with MHW Law Group LLP, which represents Walmart in that action.

Judge Pamela Pepper of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin granted that disqualification bid on Tuesday, noting that Andrews had been employed with MWH Law Group as recently as December 2021.

The court highlighted the fact that Andrews regularly represented Walmart in slip-and-fall cases, many of them with similar fact patterns as this one.

“There is a substantial risk that Andrews obtained information about the defendants’ confidential litigation strategies obtained through his representation of the defendants that would materially advance the plaintiff’s position in this case,” Pepper wrote in the court’s opinion. “He has had access to the defendants’ settlement pay ranges, payment thresholds, internal interests and motives and nonpublic information about store operations.”

The court further held that, since there has been no showing that Andrews firewalled himself off from the rest of his new firm, Dunk Law Firm must be disqualified, too.

The case is Gnaciski v. Walmart Inc., E.D. Wis., No. 22-cv-159-pp, 8/23/22.