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A former Walmart truck driver was awarded $34.7 million in damages by a jury in California after the company fired him. Walmart had terminated his employment after accusing him of committing fraud.
Jesus “Jesse” Fonesca worked as a truck driver for Walmart for 14 years and had been featured in a Walmart national television commercial before his dismissal. He claimed in his lawsuit that he was a good employee and had received numerous awards for his work.
“Plaintiff trained drivers and was a mentor for approximately 12 drivers,” Fonesca’s lawsuit against Walmart read. “What’s more, Plaintiff was highly respected and admired for his work ethic.”
Fonesca was injured when another truck hit his Walmart truck from behind in 2017. He says he was ordered by a doctor to stop driving a commercial vehicle and filed a workers’ compensation claim for his injuries.
While on medical leave, he went on an RV trip with his family and a cruise with his wife. He said he informed his employer about the trips.
The company’s third-party workers’ compensation administrators investigated his claim and even videotaped him driving the RV. After their investigation, they took no further action with regard to Fonseca and his claim.
“This triggered an internal Walmart fraud investigation,” Fonseca’s lawyer David deRubertis wrote on X (Twitter). “The internal fraud investigator found Jesse to be honest and credible; they found no fraud. Despite this, consistent with Walmart’s policy for this situation, the fraud investigator’s report was turned over to Walmart’s ethics department.”
However, he was still let go by Walmart after the investigation for what Walmart’s ethics department claimed was a violation of the company’s code of ethics.
“Plaintiff went from a leader to a fraud for a company who he committed 14 years of his life to, all because he was injured and needed to be accommodated,” Newsweek reports Fonseca’s lawsuit read.
Last week, a jury determined the company had defamed Fonseca by accusing him committing fraud and firing him. They awarded him $9.7 million in compensatory damages and an additional $25 million in punitive damages.
Fonseca’s lawyer, deRubertis, said following the verdict that the trial “showed that Walmart’s defamation of Jesse was part of a broader scheme to use false accusations to force injured truckers back to work prematurely or, if not, terminate them so that Walmart can cut down workers’ compensation costs.”
Walmart disagreed, telling Law & Crime, “This outrageous verdict simply does not reflect the straightforward and uncontested facts of this case. Accordingly, we will pursue all available remedies.”