It appears that Wal-Mart is setting a new standard for "stupid PR and HR decisions" by this; after a worker of theirs was rendered permanently mentally and physically disabled in a traffic accident and won a sum of money intended for her long term care, Wal-Mart sued for more than the former worker received in the settlement to recover medical care costs.
Thankfully, a court reminded them that they could, legally speaking, only recover the remainder of the trust fund, but it's really sad to see people thinking that just because "it's legal," that it's somehow moral or ethical to deprive people who cannot support themselves of the resources they have. I'm holding out hope that state bar associations and pastors censure those involved here; the Scripture does, after all, say some pointed things about prosperous people abusing the poor in court!
It's also incredibly poor business; Wal-Mart has more or less just told their workers that they will sue them into the poorhouse if they can find a suitable legal excuse. Given that Wal-Mart has 1.9 million employees, I figure that it took about ten seconds or less for this to actually cost them money.
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5 comments:
in a slightly separate note, sounds to me that the original suit should have been for far more, in order for wal-mart to have recouped their costs.
so, in short, the family's next step is to sue the attorney who drafted their initial case and asked for $x (which, i believe, is typically based on earnings potential over the remainder of the person's life), when he should have been asking for $x+medical costs to repay wal-mart for the medical costs.
of course, the next step for wal-mart would be to restructure their insurance to sue the guilty party for recouping medical costs, rather than the individual.
All in all...this is incredibly tough...but it seems the initial lawyer is largely to blame here for the family's current situation.
...and, in relation to that...
if wal-mart doesn't want to restructure their insurance policy (regulations or precedent may forbid/impede doing so, or structuring in a way that I suggested above), what they would be best served doing is finding a way to make this very, VERY public, so that it doesn't happen again (lawyer screws up and doesn't ask for enough in the suit), and then without releasing their ability to sue to reclaim costs in the future, especially as that is the reason that they have been able to keep their insurance costs down so much, give the amount of money back to the couple, as a sort of private welfare gift, perhaps even while explaining why they did what they did...though that explanation wouldn't be a very easy soundbite, so it's not going to go over well.
better yet, now that this is a story on CNN, the head of walmart comes out, tells people a short bit about why they do what they do, and that it would actually cost them/their employees money to do it differently, and gives the family a check to cover the recouped costs.
Shawn, why should we insist that every possible scenario be accounted for in every court case, when a basic moral rule of "don't sue people who can't work into the poorhouse" would suffice?
I should link to Solzhenitsyn's 1979 Harvard address for another point of view....
The terms that are in the Wal-Mart insurance coverage details are the standard, and everyone has to pay back stuff like that. I have friends who had to pay back to their company the medical care funds they received before the settlement. Thankfully the settlement was for more than the funds had been, but it was still substantial. Everyone has the same payback clause that this lady has.
I agree that the lawyer should be shot/sued for not taking the payback amount into consideration when the suit against the trucking company was made.
The big problem with Wal-Mart deciding that the funds should not be collected from the lady's trust is that it's now open season on these sorts of claims against Wal-Mart. Everybody will be wanting Wal-Mart to make an exception in their case, too!
If it's Wal-Mart's policy to bankrupt disabled former employees, then I look forward to open season on them, J--with the biggest, deadliest, fastest bullets the legal world has to offer.
If their subrogation contract said they'd get it back from the guilty party, or join victims in their legal action (as they were invited to do in this case), I wouldn't have a problem with it. But taking it directly from the victim this way? No way.
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