LOS ANGELES – Target Corp. and a former employee who sued the retail chain, alleging her Dominican/Pacific Islander ethnicity played a role in her being falsely accused of thefts that led to her 2021 firing, have resolved the woman’s lawsuit, attorneys in the case have told a judge.
Lawyers for plaintiff Sierra Vidal and Target filed joint court papers Friday with Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Timothy Patrick Dillon. The papers do not use the term “settlement” and no terms of the resolution were divulged.
The judge had been mulling Target’s motion to dismiss Vidal’s case since hearing arguments on Feb. 24. In their dismissal argument, Target attorneys maintained constitutionally protected free-speech issues related to pending litigation were at issue.
Vidal, then a 21-year-old student at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, had been employed with a Target store in Westwood for a little more than six months when the store security manager, Kyle Kurtz, told her to come with him to the human resources office in January 2021, the suit stated. Vidal had applied for a human resources job and believed she was brought there to discuss her application, the suit stated.
Instead, Kurtz asked Vidal about a voided transaction, an inadvertent failure to return merchandise, incorrect use of price matching and permitting a friend to use her employee discount, the suit filed in December 2021 stated.
Kurtz said he had video footage of the transactions, but never showed it to Vidal, the suit stated. He then told her to write a statement admitting to all of the conduct and to apologize in the hopes that Target would forgive her and not take her to court, according to the suit.
Fearing possible criminal charges and civil damages, Vidal wrote a statement as outlined by Kurtz, the suit stated. She believed she would receive no more than a warning, the suit stated.
However, Vidal was instead fired and forced to sign a second document agreeing to repay the money Target allegedly lost in the applicable transactions, the suit stated. Her final pay check included a $54 deduction to make that payment, according to the suit.
