Wal-Mart Settles Lawsuit Over Insurance

Is there any bottom to the depths to which Wal-Mart will go to squeeze another dollar out of its employees and customers? There doesn't seem to be. We now learn that Wal-Mart was buying life insurance policies on many of its employees without their knowledge -- of course, the beneficiary of all the policies was Wal-Mart.

The families of 73 deceased former employees in Oklahoma discovered this, and they were not happy about it. They sued to recover the insurance benefits they believed that Wal-Mart had wrongfully received. The lawsuit claimed that Wal-Mart did not have an "insurable interest in the lives of its rank-and-file employees".

Wal-Mart tried to get the case dismissed by saying that corporate-owned life insurance policies were a common and well-intentioned product in the corporate world. U.S. Chief District Judge Claire Eagan in Tulsa, disagreed and refused to dismiss the lawsuit. Wal-Mart has now settled the case, and will pay the entire $5.1 million it received from the policies of the Oklahoma employees, to their families and lawyers.

Wal-Mart is claiming that it has discontinued the practice of insuring employees without their knowlege. Oklahoma families have taken care of the practice in their state, but how much money has Wal-Mart collected by doing the same thing in the other 49 states. I suspect that the $5.1 million was just a drop in the bucket. If they collected $5.1 million in Oklahoma, you can imagine how much they collected in larger states like Texas, California, and New York.

Maybe it's time for some smart and greedy lawyers to look into this thing in the other states. Wal-Mart may not think anything is wrong with this practice, but I do. I suspect a jury would also.