Subscribe to my Feed
« Here’s why Wal-Mart doesn’t have to take Debbie Shanks’ money | Home | Wal-Mart has apologized to the Shanks family! »
How well did the legal system serve the Shanks family?
By Lauren | April 1, 2008
For readers who think I’ve been too hard on Wal-Mart in my last couple of posts, let me say right now that I don’t think the legal system did the Shanks family any favors, either. My interest in this tragic story led me to the website www.walmartwatch.com, where I found an open letter from Debbie Shanks’ son, Christopher, describing his family’s ordeal.
The trouble began when Debbie Shanks was severely injured in an accident with a truck. According to Christopher Shanks, the truck was owned by a small company with little net worth and was insured for only $1 million, which the Shanks’ attorney said was the maximum amount they could receive. Once the suit was settled, the lawyers took a third of the award. Mr. Shanks, who is recovering from prostate cancer and working two jobs to try to make ends meet, took a portion to make up for lost wages, and the rest went into Debbie Shanks’ trust fund.
It wasn’t until three years later, just days before the statute of limitations expired, that Wal-Mart sued to recover the medical expenses its health care plan paid out after the accident. Once in court, Wal-Mart became utterly relentless, pressing its suit through the appeal process and ultimately winning when the Supreme Court declined to take up the case.
Wal-Mart will get Debbie Shanks’ remaining trust assets, and probably a lot more. Christopher Shanks reports that the family still has $150 thousand in medical bills that Wal-Mart wants reimbursed (as well as $500-1000 they must pay each month for his mother’s nursing home care, plus additional bills that arise when she needs special medical attention). Apparently, Wal-Mart can sue Mr. Shanks for the balance, and Christopher Shanks predicts that his father will have to sell his home to pay Wal-Mart’s claim. Christopher Shanks predicts that his youngest brother will have to take out thousands of dollars in loans if he wants to go to college, or join the military. Debbie Shanks has already lost one son in Iraq, and mourns him afresh every time she’s told about it because her short-term memory is gone, destroyed in the crash that started it all. It would be utterly tragic for her to face the loss of another child on top of everything else she’s suffered.
The saddest thing about this situation is that it’s really not all that unusual. Plaintiffs’ attorneys typically charge one-third of whatever they win, which seems to them like reasonable compensation for the many hours they invest in preparing for trial. An accident like this one can be devastating to a small trucking company, and collision insurance is so expensive that it can seem like a good business decision to limit coverage. And, once Wal-Mart decided to sue, the Shanks had no alternative but to hire a lawyer and defend the money they’d gotten from the trucking company. If the Shanks family hadn’t gone to court, Wal-Mart would have won the right to take their money by default.
One of my law professors once observed that no judge likes to go home at the end of a long day and say to his or her spouse, “Honey, I really did an injustice today.” Christopher Shanks certainly feels as though that happened in his family’s case, though. He observes, “I have a feeling that somewhere along the lines, be it by Wal-Mart, the courts, the lawyers, the trucking company, or a combination of it all, we’ve been taken advantage of.” There simply has to be a better way.
Topics: Business Ethics, Legal Ethics, corporate responsibility |