A $7,000.00 OSHA fine against Wal-Mart was upheld on March 25, 2011 by Covette Rooney, the chief Administrative Law Judge of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. Judge Rooney concluded that unruly crowds led to the trampling death of a Wal-Mart employee at their Valley Stream, N.Y. store the day after Thanksgiving on Black Friday 2008. The judge ruled this was a recognized hazard and that there were feasible means to control the hazard.

Judge Rooney found that in 2008, Wal-Mart’s “precautions to protect its employees were minimal and ineffective.” She reviewed what had transpired on Thanksgiving 2008 as well as previous Black Fridays. By 3 a.m. on Friday 2008, barricades were positioned 40 feet from the doors but customers had already jumped over them. By 4 a.m., there was no space between the store’s doors and the crowd. Eight to ten Wal-Mart employees attempted to counteract the press of customers trying to force their way in according to one employee’s testimony. When the doors were unlocked, customers fell in the vestibule and employees climbed on top of vending machines to protect themselves. The doors popped off their hinges. A Wal-Mart employee, Jdimytai Damour, was trampled and killed. 

Wal-Mart has vigorously fought to overturn the $7,000.00 fine. OSHA officials state Wal-Mart has spent over $2,000,000 on legal fees in an effort to vacate the violation.  OSHA said federal employees have devoted more than 4,700 hours of legal work in response to the $7,000.00 fine. 

In 2009, Wal-Mart reached a settlment with Nassau County in which the county agreed not to prosecute the retalier if Wal-Mart revised their Thanksgiving Friday security plans for all of their New York stores starting in 2009. Their have been no reports of serious injuries or deaths on Thanksgiving Friday for 2009 or 2010. Judge Rooney ruled the changes showed “feasible means existed to eliminate or materially reduce the cited hazard at the store.”