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Great story from Pasco County, Florida of elderly disabled man fighting back:

Frank Maurer just wanted some blueberries. Instead, the 65-year-old disabled Pasco County resident found himself in a baffling fight with Walmart, the largest retailer in America.

Last week, Maurer's Port Richey Walmart Supercenter ran out of the fresh blueberries advertised at $2.50 a pint. Maurer asked for a rain check. Walmart doesn't offer rain checks, the customer service reps shot back.''

He got so enraged, he had to be escorted out of the store by police. But eventually Walmart folks in Arkansas admitted they'd screwed up in Florida and ensured that the Florida stores change their police.

Read the full story from tampabay.com.

(edited by admin to change type of post to news.)

A man 23 year old Westley Strellis took a bat from the sporting goods section and smashed 29 flat screen TV's resulting in 29 counts of criminal damage to property in the second degree. To see the smashing in action, watch the video below. Note what appears to be some Walmart types coming into view and then backing off when they see the guy with the bat.



Link

The siblings of a worker trampled to death by Wal-Mart shoppers looking for Black Friday bargains have filed a lawsuit against the retailer and the shopping center.

Jdimytai Damour's three sisters and brother filed the wrongful death suit Wednesday, according to their attorney, Jordan Hecht of the Hecht, Kleeger, Pintel and Damashek Law Firm.


"We’re going to be suing Wal-Mart as well as the owner of the mall, the security company, and we’re contemplating an action against the police and the county of Nassau, although we’re waiting to see what our investigation fleshes out about their involvement," Hecht told FOXNews.com Tuesday.

Named in the suit are Wal-Mart, Green Acres Mall in Nassau County, N.Y., Vornado Realty Trust and Securitas Security Services USA.

Damour, a 6-foot-5, 270-pound temporary worker, was asphyxiated at the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, N.Y., Friday morning while trying to shield a pregnant shopper from the throngs of bargain hunters pushing their way in.
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o Black Friday Death

The suit was filed in New York Supreme Court in the Bronx on behalf of Elsie Damour Phillipe, one of Damour's sisters who is the administrator of the dead man's estate.

It alleges that Damour's death resulted from "the carelessness, recklessness, wanton disregard for public safety and gross negligence of the defendants ... in the staging, conducting and advertising for sales events."

Nassau County Police Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey told FOX News on Monday that investigators were scanning surveillance tape in an effort to identify individual shoppers involved in the melee.

"We are reviewing film ... from individual cell phones, from cameras that are in place in the store, trying to identify, if in fact we can identify, people that are culpable in this," Mulvey said. "And it is difficult because a lot of people in the front of the line were pushed forward, and it’s difficult for us to decipher who is more responsible in all of this."

But Hecht said the retailer should have been prepared for the crowds when it offered sale items that included a Samsung 50-inch Plasma HDTV for $798, a Bissel Compact Upright Vacuum for $28, a Samsung 10.2 megapixel digital camera for $69 and DVDs such as "The Incredible Hulk" for $9.

"This is something that as a retailer you need to know about," Hecht said. "You need to forsee and should forsee, and I don’t think that it takes anyone with special training to understand that this is going to happen."

Hecht said Damour's death could have been "easily preventable."

"There’s hundreds of other retailers that have done these types of promotions," he said. "Remember when the iPhone first came out? How many hundreds of people were on line there? You got a card, stood in line, single file, no problem. There are many different things available to Wal-Mart, none of which were used."

Funeral arrangements for Damour, 34, are in the works, but will be kept under wraps to protect the family's privacy.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., in a statement Friday, called the incident a "tragic situation" and said it had tried to prepare for the crowd by adding staffers and outside security workers, putting up barricades and consulting police.


The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Why, Wal-Mart?

The retail giant’s pursuit of funds paid to a severely injured former employee puts hardship on a family.

November 21, 2007 in print edition A-24

Deborah Shank’s story would have been sad enough, considering the devastating injuries she suffered in a traffic accident seven years ago. Nevertheless, Wal-Mart found a way to add a brutal coda.

As chronicled in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Shank, a former overnight shelf-stocker for Wal-Mart in southeastern Missouri, was driving her minivan when she was broadsided by a semi and suffered permanent brain damage. Unable to walk without help, she lost the ability to care for herself or interact meaningfully with her family. Now 52, she lives in a nursing home.

Wal-Mart started out as one of the good guys in this story, paying almost $470,000 of her initial medical bills. But three years after Shank’s husband sued and settled with the semi driver’s employer, the retail giant changed hats. It demanded every penny back, plus interest and legal fees – more, in fact, than the $417,477 the settlement had placed in a special-needs Medicaid trust fund for Shank’s future healthcare expenses.

The company persuaded a federal district court judge and the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to award it the full amount, even though Shank’s family had paid for the lawsuit. Nor did it matter that the settlement covered a fraction of her expenses and losses. Wal-Mart’s healthcare plan clearly states that it gets first dibs on any money recovered by injured employees. Such provisions aren’t uncommon in health plans, and Wal-Mart isn’t the first to enforce one.

Doing what the law allows isn’t the same as doing the right thing, however. The company made itself whole at the expense of a helpless former employee who will never be whole again. Instead of having some resources to improve her care, Shank will receive only the basic services afforded her by Medicaid and Social Security. Nor will the trust fund be in a position to reimburse Medicaid (i.e., taxpayers), which stood to collect any unspent money upon Shank’s death.

Wal-Mart argues that it’s just trying to be fair to those still paying into the company’s healthcare plan. Big payouts to insured workers can drive up the plan’s premiums. The half-million dollars it spent on Shank’s care, however, translates into less than 40 cents per Wal-Mart employee. In its most recent quarter, its stores generated that much in operating income every eight minutes.

Wal-Mart has spent the last few years working hard to rebut healthcare reformers, labor unions, anti-globalization groups and other critics who’ve argued that it puts profits ahead of humanity. While its advertising campaigns try to put a friendlier spin on the company, its behavior toward Shank tells a different story. If Wal-Mart can’t restrain itself, perhaps Congress should prevent health plans from draining settlements won by injured workers with more bills to pay.