Meeting videos first offered to Wal-Mart
Posted on Friday, April 11, 2008
The Lenexa, Kan., company that is offering a video library of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. meetings and productions for sale to researchers, lawyers and others first tried to sell the archive to Wal-Mart last year for $ 150 million, according to a letter Wal-Mart posted on its Web site Thursday.
Wal-Mart countered with a $ 500, 000 offer, and Flagler Productions Inc. responded by dropping its price to $ 145 million, according to the letter dated Oct 26, 2007.
Wal-Mart spokesman Daphne Moore declined to say whether negotiations were ongoing.
“All I can confirm for you is the content of the letter,” she said Thursday.
David Sexton, the lawyer for Flagler who wrote the letter, said that when Wal-Mart wanted to buy the tapes but declined to make an offer, Flagler’s two owners, Greg Pierce and Mary Lyn Villanueva, began consulting with others in the business about its value.
“The consensus was it’s priceless. Nobody else has it,” Sexton said.
The suburban Kansas City, Mo., company had arranged and videotaped meetings for Bentonville-based Wal-Mart for three decades under a handshake agreement made by Flagler’s founder, Mike Flagler. The video archive grew to about 15, 000 tapes.
Wal-Mart, which stopped doing business with Flagler in 2006, accounted for more than 90 percent of the company’s business, Greg Pierce said Wednesday.
After shrinking its staff from 18 full-time and six part-time employees down to the two partners, Flagler Productions began offering copies of parts of the video archive for sale.
The loss of the Wal-Mart account “was financial destruction for Flagler and for all the employees at Flagler,” Sexton said.
Plaintiff lawyers with cases pending against Wal-Mart and union-funded critics of Wal-Mart’s labor practices are among those who have accessed the archive.
Sexton said his last correspondence with Wal-Mart on the tapes was in January. Lawyers for the plaintiffs in Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., potentially the largest sex-discrimination case in U. S. history, are looking closely at the video collection. Joseph Sellers, co-lead counsel for plaintiffs, said Wednesday that one of his partners has reviewed several of the videos. Sellers said he and his law firm, Cohen Milstein Hausfeld & Toll in Washington, have not yet decided whether to buy copies of some of the videos.
To contact this reporter: spainter@arkansasonline. com
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