As Walmart reopens its Sam’s Circle location in Chesapeake this week, nearly five months after six people were killed in a shooting at the store, one former employee is continuing her legal battle against the corporate giant — and others are likely to follow.

Briana Marie Tyler refiled her lawsuit in Chesapeake Circuit Court seeking $50 million in damages from the company for failing to fire the shooter despite repeated complaints and concerns raised by other employees about his disturbing behavior. Tyler initially filed suit in December, but she voluntarily dismissed it in January after Walmart argued the case should be heard in federal court and that her claims should be covered by worker’s compensation.

This most recent filing, though, includes the administrator for the estate of Andre Bing, the now-deceased shooter who was a night manager at the store at the time, as a defendant alongside Walmart. Tyler’s new complaint additionally argues that Bing’s estate is liable for her attempted murder, and for the injuries and other long-term health impacts she’s faced as a result.

Bing killed six employees and himself on Nov. 22 after opening fire in the Walmart breakroom during a shift change. The remodeled store reopened Wednesday with an outdoor memorial to the victims included in the new layout.

In its motion to dismiss Tyler’s most recent filing, Walmart states, “Appalled and horrified by Bing’s actions and the resulting tragedies, Walmart stands firmly committed to its deceased and injured employees and grieves with their families,” adding “Walmart provides workers’ compensation coverage to all its employees under the Act for injuries or deaths that occur in the workplace, including those from physical assaults by coworkers.”

It’s unclear how much money would be awarded under workers’ compensation.

Tyler is among three employees who have sued Walmart for the same sum. She and coworkers James Kelly and Donya Prioleau say they were in the breakroom when the shooting began and each narrowly escaped the gunfire.

Kelly and Prioleau voluntarily dismissed their suits against Walmart in January and have not refiled, though they are able to.

“The issue really is, what does this worker’s comp claim really look like? Is it going to be definitive, is it going to end the lawsuits?” said Tyler’s attorney, Mark J. Favalaro, in an interview.

Additionally, the estate of Randall Blevins, another Walmart employee who was killed that November night after 20 years working at the store, filed a wrongful death lawsuit seeking $45 million. This lawsuit was dropped in March, though the lawyer for the estate, Gregory L. Sandler, said they intend to refile.

“(A)t this point we are turning our efforts to investigating further the circumstances surrounding the relationship between Mr. Bing, Walmart and the coworkers in anticipation of refiling the suit with more specific allegations to address better the defenses that were initially offered by Walmart,” Sandler said in an email.

A central issue in the case is whether the injuries to the victims occurred “in the course of” their employment, which would mean their injuries fall under workers’ compensation and that the victims and their families could not seek further damages related to the shooting. Walmart argues that because of the location of the shooting, Tyler and Bing’s ability to access that location and the reason Tyler was there was due to her employment at Walmart, her injuries fall under workers’ compensation.

“Ms. Tyler was working in a location where she was expected to be at the time Bing opened fire on his coworkers, and therefore her injuries occurred in the course of her employment,” reads Walmart’s response to Tyler’s renewed complaint.

In a separate filing by the Blevins estate prior to dropping their suit, Sandler took issue with this framing of the events, asking, “how could a rational mind conclude that the job of a night merchandise stocker in a retail store would expose a worker to being shot and killed?”

J.H. “Rip” Verkerke, a University of Virginia professor specializing in labor law, said that while most U.S. jurisdictions make exceptions in their respective workers’ compensation statutes for “intentional tort” — a wrongful act leading to civil liability that the employees are alleging — the Virginia Supreme Court and General Assembly have not embraced this.

“Instead, nearly all lower court cases in Virginia have held that the statutory term ‘injury by accident’ includes violent assaults like the one Ms. Tyler suffered,” Verkerke said in an email. “Thus, the current state of the law leans strongly towards a holding that Ms. Tyler’s injuries fall within the Virginia Act’s coverage of accidental injuries arising out of and in the course of employment.”

The professor added that there are good reasons to question the adequacy of workers’ compensation for victims of violent assaults in Virginia.

“The (Virginia Workers’ Compensation) Act provides full coverage of medical expenses. But statutory limits on recoverable lost wages and the unavailability of any compensation for emotional distress or punitive damages make workers’ compensation benefits far less adequate for victims as compared to tort damages,” Verkerke said.

Gavin Stone, 757-712-4806, gavin.stone@virginiamedia.com