Thursday, March 27, 2008

Walmart

Here is a link to a nifty site that traces the growth of Walmart from 1962 to 2007.
http://blog.kiwitobes.com/?p=51

Last night, Walmart was named "Worst Person in the World" on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, because of their suit to recover $470,000 in medical expenses they had paid to a former employee. Debbie Shank, the employee, was in an accident 8 years ago and left with severe brain damage and in a wheelchair. Her family sued the trucking company that caused the accident and after lawyer fees received $417,000 which was placed in a trust for her long-term nursing home care. Walmart legally sued her for the money they had paid for her medical care and won. It's all in the fine print apparently. A week after the Shank family lost their final appeal, their 18 year old son was killed in Iraq.
Walmart had net sales of of $90 billion in the third quarter of 2007. Certainly an exception could be made in this case. It would also be great publicity for a company that has gotten a lot of bad publicity in the last few years to allow the Shank family keep the money.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd like to say I never shopped at Walmart for noble reasons, but truth to tell, I never think they have anything I want. I can find better bargains elsewhere if I just want bargains.

Fourdogmom said...

Walmart decided to drop their case against Debbie Shank. Even if they did it for all the wrong reasons,like really, really bad publicity, at least they did it.