Update

Debbie Shank dies a little every time she hears about her son’s death. Each time, she’s told her 18-year-old son died in Iraq, she cries, and then promptly forgets that’s he’s dead.

And asks about him again.

And when her husband, Jim, gently reminds her they have a child who’s no more, she cries again. And dies a little more.

Debbie Shank is brain damaged. A trucking accident left her with severe short-term memory loss, and she is confined to a wheelchair. The 52-year-old has become a symbol of the malaise in corporate America. She is currently involved in a lawsuit with Wal-Mart over medical expenses that the company paid for her medical care after her accident.

Eight years ago, the 52-year-old was a stocker at Wal-Mart in Cape Giradieu, Missouri, when a truck accident left her brain damaged. The injuries were severe enough for her to have to be admitted to a nursing home bound to a wheelchair. She now suffers severe short-term memory loss.

Debbie and her husband Jim turned to Debbie’s health plan with Wal-Mart to cover her medical expenses. She had signed on for the company’s new health plan, and the company paid out $470,000 for her medical expenses. Two years after the accident, the Shanks successfully sued the trucking company that had caused the accident, and received a compensation of a million dollars. After all legal fees had been paid, she was left with a sum of $417,000, which was immediately placed in a trust fund for her. She needs nursing home attention, and is expected to need it for the rest of her life. Justice was done, it seemed.

Except that Debbie had not read the fine print of Wal-Mart’s health contract. The company had a clause called “subrogation”, that’s becoming common with employee insurance providers, which says that in the event of the woman receiving a legal settlement, the company would be entitled to recoup all medical expenses. Wal-Mart announced it wanted back the amount it had spent on Debbie’s medical bills - a total of $470,000 against the money in her trust fund from the settlement, which was $417,000.

The company sued.

It sued a woman so brain damaged, she has no hopes for a normal relationship with her husband or her children ever again, a woman who will spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair, forgetting the people around her.

There is no doubt that Wal-Mart has a higher legal ground here. It is within its legal rights to demand that the Shanks hand over the money. But laws were designed to protect the defenseless and the weak. What’s shocking is not that Wal-Mart so coldly sues a sick woman, but the way that they defend their actions There is this moral “We are right - she may be really sick, and we feel so sorry for her, but we are right and we want our money” kind of posturing that’s beyond disturbing.

There is something very sick about a $90 billion company snatching a trust fund away from a brain damaged woman. And because the company in question is Wal-Mart, a symbol of corporate America and so closely identified with this country, it casts a pitiful reflection on our culture. As a law firm, we are always staunchly for what the law says, but exceptions could have been made. Wal-Mart says that not pursuing the money would be unfair to the millions of associates who all are part of its health plan. Do they really believe their associates or shareholders would be up in arms about making an exception in the case of a severely injured woman? What does Wal-Mart think Debbie’s going to do with the money? Splurge at Prada?

For the Shanks, the turmoil of the past few years has taken its toll, as now Jim is battling prostate cancer. Their situation is so dire he has had to divorce his beloved wife so she can receive more Medicare as a single woman.

For now, the Shanks have no choice but to go on with their lives. Their last appeal has been turned down, and there doesn’t seem to be any course of action left open to them.