Is Wal-Mart really that bad?

so yesterday I heard a story about Wal-Mart and a lawsuit they've just recently been going through. I'll sum up briefly what happened in this lawsuit. there was a person that was hit by Wal-Mart truck and suffered severe brain damage as a result of the accident. Wal-Mart then willingly paid all medical expenses after this, making sure that they had everything that they needed taking care of and place them in the vicinity of $470,000 in a trust fund to cover future medical expenses, as well as past its expenses.

This family then decides to sue Wal-Mart about a year or two later, does not win, but then appeals and wins on their appeal. They had entered into an agreement with Wal-Mart that if they do in fact decide to sue that they would have to give back the money that Wal-Mart initially paid willingly out-of-pocket to cover medical expenses. Wal-Mart and then decided to come back and ask for the money. And when they did they'd been met with nothing but resistance saying Wal-Mart doesn't mean it's not your money we need more than you do. There is even an article in the LA Times at talks about this and presented in this sort of light. Please read this link article.

now, I for one actually agree with Wal-Mart on this one. I don't think Wal-Mart did anything wrong. Sure I do agree with the families reasoning that they need the money more than Wal-Mart. But where do you draw the line? When do you decide who needs the money more and who gets to keep it based on need as opposed to who it rightfully and lawfully belongs to. The money right rightfully and lawfully belongs to Wal-Mart it does not rightfully and lawfully belonged to the individual mentioned in this article. Yes, I'll agree they could use the money more than Wal-Mart can, as Wal-Mart grosses somewhere in the vicinity of $90 billion.

everyone's making Wal-Mart out to be the bad guy in this deal, but if we were to make this on a much smaller scale people would now be calling Wal-Mart, the bad guy and they would be calling the person that I got for going after company. They would be calling them someone that takes advantage of companies and looking for an extra free dollar because they don't want to take responsibility for what happened. I am not in any way saying that that is really what happened with this individual, or the wonder motives may be because I just don't know. All i'm talking about right now is perception, and when Wal-Mart is introduced into the equation the perception is completely changed to big bad business taking advantage of a small person.

as I mentioned earlier, this was in the contract, this was an agreement that the individual went into knowing that if they decided to sue and won, that they were going to have to give the money back. Wal-Mart did not do anything unfair in any way by doing this. The individual's lawyer even went as far as to say that Wal-Mart does not have a right to ask for this money. Since when, can one dictate when the law applies and when it does not?

so you have to ask yourself, is it really that important that Wal-Mart gets their money back? is it really Wal-Mart's right task for their money back?