Corporate Greed--UPDATE

From CNN:

(CNN) -- A former Wal-Mart employee who suffered severe brain damage in a traffic accident won't have to pay back the company for the cost of her medical care, Wal-Mart told the family Tuesday.

"Occasionally, others help us step back and look at a situation in a different way. This is one of those times," Wal-Mart Executive Vice President Pat Curran said in a letter. "We have all been moved by Ms. Shank's extraordinary situation."

In this case, the "others" are CNN, who ran this article last week and the sources who comprise the over 130,000 hits on Google for the search term "Debbie Shank", the 141,000 for the name "Deborah Shank" not to mention all of us who left letters deploring the greed exhibited when WalMart sued a brain-damaged woman for the money she won in a lawsuit, kept in trust for her FUTURE care.

Did it do any good to raise hell about this? Apparently it did.

More from CNN:

The Shanks appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court declined in March to hear the case. CNN told the couple's story last week, prompting thousands of angry blog responses and at least two online petitions to boycott the company.

On Tuesday, Wal-Mart said in a letter to Jim Shank that it is modifying its health care plan to allow "more discretion" in individual cases.Video Watch Wal-Mart reverse its decision »

"We wanted you to know that Wal-Mart will not seek any reimbursement for the money already spent on Ms. Shank's care, and we will work with you to ensure the remaining amounts in the trust can be used for her ongoing care," Curran said.

"We are sorry for any additional stress this uncertainty has placed on you and your family."

It's still a sorry-assed thing to find that it took an enormous public outcry to get WalMart to do the right thing, but at least they eventually did.