“Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is dropping a controversial effort to collect over $400,000 in health care reimbursement from a former employee who suffered brain damage in a traffic accident. The world’s largest retailer said in a letter to the family of Deborah Shank of Cape Girardeau County in Missouri that it will not seek to collect money the Shanks won in an injury lawsuit against a trucking company for the accident.” (AP/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Apr. 1; WSJ law blog; Perlmutter & Schuelke; earlier here).
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In Missouri
What amazed me about this case is that everyone focused on Wal-Mart, which was trying to recover legitimate expenses per the plan rules. Where was the outrage at the lawyer who took more than $582K of this poor disabled woman’s million? (more than Wal-Mart was seeking) It’s not like this was a complicated case that went to trial.
Frankly, I’m not a fan of Wal-Mart, but it’s not difficult to see who the real bad guy is in this case.
Don’t they have an obligation to try and recover? By not doing so it ends up costing the rest of the employees. Maybe the plan will get sued for breach of their fiduciary duty?