Walmart Rapes Head Trauma Victim

Well, that should be the headline. A Walmart employee named Debbie Shank, age 52, was permanently disabled in a car accident. Her health insurance through Walmart paid out some $470K in benefits. She was left in a wheelchair, permanently brain damaged, and will never be able to work again, or even care for herself. Her short-term memory is so poor that though she attended her son’s funeral last summer, every time she hears of his death it is news to her.

So her family sued the trucking company that employed the truck driver who caused the accident. They were subsequently awarded damages of $1 million, of which $417K remained after legal expenses. Debbie’s husband placed that money in a trust fund to care for his wife. And then Walmart sued him to recover their losses of $470K. What Debbie and her husband didn’t know is that the health insurance plan she agreed to contained a clause permitting Walmart to recoup their losses out of any monies awarded to her in a civil suit.

Walmart, who posted profits in excess of $90 billion last quarter, has a legal right to rob this woman of the little money left to care for her for the rest of her life. The State courts have upheld their rights in the matter, and the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear the case. She signed without understanding the fine print and now she must pay.

Remember, Walmart is one of the corporations who engaged in the nefarious practice of taking out life insurance policies on all their employees (often referred to as "dead peasant" policies) and naming Walmart as the beneficiary. So every time an employee died of illness or accident, Walmart got paid for the loss. A stock clerk in Houston netted Walmart $64K when he died of a heart attack, although the family received not a penny. Lawsuits were filed when the scheme was discovered, and most states now have laws on their books preventing the practice.

Let’s do that again. Lobby your state legislature to pass laws preventing Walmart and other rapacious corporations from screwing over their employees by stealing the monies levied in civil matters to provide for their future care. The Debbie Shanks of this world deserve better than to have their jury awards stolen from them by a corporation that offered them supposed health insurance when in fact it was merely a loan. It’s bad enough that the lawyers got such an enormous chunk of it, but for Walmart to take the rest is simply unconscionable. We can’t do anything for Debbie Shank (unless you want to make a personal contribution to her trust fund), but we can stop them from doing this to other trusting employees and their families.