MINNEAPOLIS — A judge has ruled against Wal-Mart in a class-action lawsuit, saying the discount retailer violated state labor laws more than 2 million times, including cutting worker break time and "willfully" allowing employees to work off the clock.

Dakota County Judge Robert King Jr. on Monday ordered Wal-Mart to pay $6.5 million in compensatory damages, but Wal-Mart could end up paying more than $2 billion after a jury in October considers civil penalties and punitive damages.

"We believe that this award not only helps the individual clients, but it also sends a message to Wal-Mart that it has to pay for its mistakes," said Justin Perl, an attorney representing the former Wal-Mart employees named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Daphne Moore said yesterday that the Bentonville, Ark.-based company disagrees with portions of the judge's decision and is considering an appeal.

The class-action part of the lawsuit represented 56,000 Wal-Mart and Sam's Club employees in Minnesota and covered a period from September 1998 through January 2004.

The ruling, which was given to the parties Monday evening, comes after judgments against Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania and California found similar violations. In Pennsylvania, workers won a $78.5 million judgment in 2006 for working off the clock and through rest breaks. A $172 million verdict against Wal-Mart in 2005 found the company illegally denied lunch breaks in California. Wal-Mart is appealing those rulings.

Perl said the former employees involved in the Minnesota case were able to show that Wal-Mart violated their rights.

"It's been a long and tough road for them," Perl said of his clients. "These are individuals working hard to make a living at roughly less than $10 an hour, and many of them testified and many records established that they were missing breaks, missing meals and working off the clock."

Moore pointed out that the 3 1/2-month trial also revealed that some Wal-Mart employees had missed breaks or meals voluntarily. "We don't believe the employer is at fault when that's the case," she said.

But the judge ruled otherwise, finding that Wal-Mart violated its contract nearly 70,000 times by failing to pay employees for off-the-clock work. The judge said Wal-Mart should have known the employees were working off the clock while at computer-based training terminals and "willfully allowed" it to continue.