The obvious mechanism is something like the cheaper no-fault, no-jury workers' compensation system.
Her lawyer, Brian Panish, told the jury that workers were under pressure at the plant to produce tires as quickly as possible and routinely took shortcuts.
The case against the Sous fell apart when the lead prosecutor, Susan French, conceded that she inaccurately stated to a grand jury that workers could not be charged recruiting fees when they traveled to Hawaii in 2004.
The jury found the workers were owed a total of about $160,000 in unpaid wages and about $80,000 in overtime.
Mr. Stevens, a consistently grim-faced figure, frowned more deeply as the verdict was delivered by the jury foreman, a worker at a drug counseling center.
A federal jury ruled that 83 workers were entitled to payments from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for unpaid overtime.
The video likely would be admissible evidence before the grand jury along with the workers' testimony, said Peter Joy, a professor at Washington University School of Law in St . Louis
In the first case, brought on behalf of five longtime workers, the jury ruled that the workers were wrongly terminated and awarded them reimbursement of their lost wages for breach of contract.
A Wisconsin jury convicted a state worker, Georgia Thompson, on that theory in 2006 (her conviction was quickly reversed in federal court).
At a water reservoir on the edge of the city, workers have jury-rigged strips of bamboo as a filtration system to prevent fish, foliage and trash from entering the pumping station.
A Manhattan jury awarded a construction worker and former all-American college basketball player $15.8 million on Friday for back injuries he suffered in a fall from a ladder in the World Trade Center in 1995.
