An Alabama jury just ordered Walmart to pay $2.1 million to a woman who was accused of shoplifting

• Walmart has been ordered to pay $2.1 million in damages to a woman who was accused of shoplifting.
• The lawsuit stemmed from 2016, when she said employees did not believe she paid for groceries.

A jury in Alabama has ordered Walmart to pay $2.1 million in damages to a woman who sued the company after she said she was wrongly accused of shoplifting and arrested.

Lesleigh Nurse said Walmart associates stopped her from leaving the store when they did not believe she had paid for her groceries at a self-checkout station.

Nurse was later arrested on charges of shoplifting, but the criminal case was dismissed a year later for "want of prosecution," the lawsuit said, according to AL.com.

She said she then began receiving letters from a law firm that said it represented Walmart, which threatened to file a civil suit against her unless she paid a $200 settlement fee — more than the cost of the groceries in question.

Randy Hargrove, a Walmart spokesperson, told Insider the company believed its employees acted properly. He added that it considered the $2.1 million damages to exceed legal limits and would file an appeal.

In making its award, the jury found Walmart had abused a process known as civil recovery, but the same jury did not find Walmart or the law firm liable for the suit's allegations of false arrest, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, or slander.

"The defendants have engaged in a pattern and practice of falsely accusing innocent Alabama citizens of shoplifting and thereafter attempting to collect money from the innocently accused," the suit said.

Civil recovery is legal in Alabama and other states. It's one way for retailers to recoup losses from shoplifting. But Hargrove said Walmart discontinued its civil-recovery program "several years ago."