My TV told me to tell you the story of Debbie Shank. Well, actually it was Keith Olbermann, who has been on top of Debbie's story since it broke. He asked everyone with a voice to tell her story and, since I respect Keith and his staff, I'm happy to oblige.
Debbie Shank is a 52-year old mother of three from Jackson, Missouri. She was involved in a traffic accident almost eight years ago in which she suffered severe brain damage that left her with short-term memory loss and Debbie will spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair, living in a nursing home. Before the accident Mrs. Shank worked for the retailing giant Wal-Mart.
In a court decision two years after the accident, Debbie and her family were awarded nearly $1 million in a lawsuit against the company that owned the truck that hit Debbie's car causing her injuries. After paying her lawyer, her family was left with $417,000 which they placed in a trust to pay for her long-term care.
To add agony to injury, Debbie's son Jeremy was killed in Iraq. Because of her short-term memory loss, Debbie often asks how he's doing and needs to be retold - painfully - that he has been killed in the line of duty. Debbie relives the pain of being told her son is dead every day.
To add insult to agony and injury, immediately following the accident, Wal-Mart's health plan paid for Debbie's medical expenses which, at that point, had totalled around $470,000. But once the Shanks won their lawsuit, Wal-Mart in turn sued the Shanks to recover the money - and won. It seems Debbie's Wal-Mart health plan had a line in the fine print that said if she won a suit they had the right to recover their money. The Shanks were left owing her former employer $53,000 following the case.
When contacted about the case, Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley said (in a prepared statement) "Wal-Mart's plan is bound by very specific rules". Apparently, the monolithic retailer isn't bound by any moral rules. The Shanks attorney had offered a settlement with Wal-Mart to give back $100,000 but the retailer wants it all. Wal-Mart's profit for 2007 was about $11 billion.
Just last week the Supreme Court refused to hear the Shank's case and now they are at the end of their rope. Things have become so bad for the family that Debbie's husband, Jim, divorced her simply because she could receive more money from Medicaid as a single mother. Jim is recovering from prostate cancer and is already working two jobs to pay their bills.
I'm not sure what Mr. Walton would think of Mrs. Shank's situation, but I know how I feel about it and I, for one, will not shop at Wal-Mart until they do the right thing. I was born in Arkansas, Wal-Mart's home state, and I hope someone at the companies headquarters puts away the profit charts and takes their heart out of the safe and uses it.
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