The Evil Empire

I have no love for wal-mart. The retail giant has been the focus of a multitude of criticisms over the years. The objections include unfair labor practices, child labor violations, use of illegal workers, safety violations, environmental violations, predatory pricing, and low employee wages. This is only a partial list of issues wal-mart faced in legal disputes, the media, and the court of public opinion. There are even websites devoted to ongoing criticism of the mega retailer as well as a movie documentary titled; "The High Cost Of Low Price" that explores among other things, the retailer's role in the exploitation of foreign labor in sweat shops. It was actually a pretty good film if you get the chance and are curious. The latest wal-mart news story is about a former employee. A 52 year old woman from Missouri and mother of three who suffered severe brain damage in a car accident 8 years ago. Most recently she lost her 18 year old son in Iraq. She won one million dollars in a lawsuit from the other party in the crash which left her a little over $400,000 after legal fees. Her wal-mart medical plan had paid out $470,000 in benefits for her care. She was sued by wal-mart for the money the medical plan paid due to the fine print in her plan which states they have the right to recover funds from an employee if damages are collected in a lawsuit. In a response to one of my forum posts, it was brought to my attention that I forgot to mention what a creep this woman's attorney is. True he did take 60% of her award in fees and fail to realize she would be left with nothing after her health plan was reimbursed. In fairness the attorney, he claimed that he had informed wal-mart and after three years passed he assumed that the woman could keep the money. I do not have to repeat the old saying about what happens to you and me when you assume. Lawyers should not assume. We do not pay them 600k to assume. Perhaps the attorney could refund some of his legal fees to help this poor woman. We would have better luck asking a shark to let go of a juicy tuna. Legally wal-mart is correct but they are morally bankrupt. This is not a huge surprise given their reputation. The most interesting aspect of this story to me by far is just how stupid wal-mart exec's are. Here they have a golden PR opportunity but instead of capitalizing on it, they bring themselves more scorn. The goodwill that the $400,000 could have purchased would have been wal-mart's best bargain of all. (For the record I realize that I did not capitalize wal-mart. They just do not deserve it.)


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