WalMart sues brain-damaged woman for medical expenses

Doubtful. They would have taken that and said it would be needed to cover future claims.

 

According to what I heard on CNN last night, having this sort of thing in the fine print is fairly common at most companies.

 

There are plenty of laws on the books that are not enforced as written. If police arrested every person they saw committing a crime we'd be screwed.

Wal-Mart already has a PR nightmare with it's employee health insurance and this is just bad business.

 

I'm uncertain whether WalMart or the health insurance plan gets the money. Most likely it's the latter.

Subrogation of awards is common. If you are in a car accident and the other driver is at fault, your insurance company will pay your damages and then come to an agreement to be repaid by the other driver or his insurance company.

When the woman received the $400,000+ settlement from the trucking company, the purpose was to cover her medical and nursing expenses. These expenses most likely, were already being paid by her health insurance plan. As long at the health insurance company keeps paying for her needs, then it seems reasonable for them to have claim to her trucking company settlement. Now, if she reaches her lifetime maximum payout with health insurance, then MedicAid and/or Medicare should kick in since she had a total disability.

While it may bad PR, WalMart's actions may be appropriate. If this woman is left without care, I would gladly retract my comments.

 

What there should be is a statue of limitations law in which if an insurance company wants to claim the proceeds of a lawsuit, then they should have to notify the attorneys before the resolution of the lawsuit. That way, both plaintiff and defendant can take the insurance company's claim into consideration.

Of course, that would be common sense. The pols in Washington would rather just complain about greedy trial lawyers, ridiculous jury awards and protect the impovershed insurance companies.

 

Where I live, there's no-fault insurance for accidents, in which your company pays for your medical care and expenses until you resolve the lawsuit against the other driver. When you settle a lawsuit, that's your money that you get, minus attorney fees, court fees, etc. It's up to your insurance company to battle the defendant's insurance company to get reimbursed for the medical expenses.

A family member of mine had this happen to them, and his insurance company told him that he might have to testify in a trial if the defendant's insurance company wouldn't pay up. The companies did settle it.

 

Ugh, how awful for this woman and her family.

The evil empire did not have to go after this woman. Just another reason I refuse to shop there.

 

I'm really surprised this didn't find its way into Michael Moore's Sicko. I'm not saying WalMart is in the wrong here, but shouldn't it have been the health plan that sued the trucking company to recoup the medical expenses?
Now if we had a universal system, the lady gets treated, WalMart doesn't look like a bad guy and a lawyer misses out on a hefty fee.

 

This has been a long standing policy of Walmart. Interestingly enough the policy was proposed and developed by Hillary Clinton when she served on the Walmart Board.

 

While Wal-Mart was within its rights to sue the woman did she really do anything wrong here or was it just bad luck?
Would she have been better off not suing the trucking company? Would she have been better off going uninsured and relying on this type of settlement to cover her expenses?
What happened to her, I'm sure, was not anything she thought might happen when she started working at Wal-Mart and when she signed up for their insurance policy.
I really don't think she or her family made any choices here that would make any reasonable person say she deserves to be in this situation.
If I were her husband and somebody said "Well you should have thought about this before (fill in the blank)." I'd punch his fucking lights out.

 

I feel bad for her and her family.
I'm sure Wal-Mart could out of the kindness of their heart find a way to pass on this one, or even just take half of the settlement.

But it's like the argument over the damn housing problem. People need to know the contracts they sign and the situations they put themselves in. I don't understand why people think that shit doesn't matter, and then when something happens that they previously OK-ed they cry foul.

Still, you're all right when you say Wal-Mart wouldn't go broke losing this money.