Walmart accused a woman of stealing and must now pay her 2.1 million dollars

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An Alabama woman who said she was wrongly arrested for robbing a Walmart store and threatened by the company after her case was dismissed will ultimately be awarded $ 2.1 million in damages.

A Mobile County jury ruled in favor of Lesleigh Nurse of Semmes on Monday, local press reported.

Nurse explained in a lawsuit that she was arrested in November 2016 when she was about to leave a Walmart with food that she claimed to have paid for, according to information site AL.com.

Entrance sign to a Walmart in New Hampshire in November 2020.Charles Krupa / AP

The woman claimed that she used the self-checkout boxes, but that the scanning device froze.

The store employees did not accept her explanation and she was arrested for theft.

Her case was dismissed a year later, but then she began receiving letters from a Florida law firm threatening her with a civil lawsuit if she failed to pay $ 200, according to court documents.

That was more than the value of the products she was accused of stealing for.

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Nurse claimed that Walmart ordered the law firm to send the letters and that it was not the only one to receive them.

"Defendants have engaged in a pattern and practice of falsely accusing innocent Alabama citizens of shoplifting and, from there, attempting to collect money from innocent defendants," the lawsuit states.

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The local television network WKRG reported that the trial analyzed the practice used by Walmart and other large retail stores in these types of agreements in states where the law allows it, and that Walmart pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars in this way in two years.

Walmart's defense argued that the practice is legal in Alabama.

A spokesperson told AL.com that the company will file motions in this case because "it does not believe the verdict is supported by the evidence and the damages awarded exceed what is allowed by law."