A legal battle with Wal-Mart over injury benefits broke this elderly store greeter’s spirit

It wasn't about the money, about $180 a week before taxes for part-time work, or the benefits (the company provided none to him).

Teague was living off Social Security, savings, and a comfortable pension earned after working more than 30 years as a metallurgist for U.S. Steel, mostly in Wyoming. His primary health insurance was Medicare, and he also had purchased two supplemental policies.

But it had lifted Teague's spirits to be back around people, he'd tell his stepdaughter, Linda Kilfoy, and her husband, Fred. He started living with the couple just a few miles away from the Wal-Mart store after his wife, Cecil, died in 2000.

Teague had been retired for years when Wal-Mart, which is North America's biggest retailer and Arizona's largest private employer, hired him in January 2006 to say hello to shoppers entering the store.

Herm Teague made people around him feel good. He always had a friendly "question of the day" for those he knew and a smile for those he didn't. The idea of getting paid to schmooze a little with customers appealed to him.

Teague was 86 when Wal-Mart hired him, though he looked and acted like a much younger man. He had heart problems and suffered from borderline diabetes and hypertension. But his doctor declared him fit for work, and he did fine for several weeks, winning over customers and his much younger co-workers with his upbeat attitude.

But in late February 2006, Teague complained at home of having a hard time catching his breath. He was out of work for a few weeks, during which time he underwent an angioplasty, a procedure in which doctors use a balloon to open a coronary blockage and improve a patient's blood flow.

But doctors told Teague that he was well enough to return to Wal-Mart, which he did on March 6, 2006.

What happened shortly after he punched in that day would become the focus of a significant court case decided by the Arizona Court of Appeals on April 1.

And, sadly, it marked the beginning of the end of Herm Teague.

What happened was, Teague fainted a few yards from his greeter's "station" just inside Wal-Mart and the back of his head hit the concrete floor, causing a deep wound. He came to before emergency paramedics arrived and said he recalled nothing after sipping on a Coke he'd just bought at a machine near his work post.

On the face of it, you might think that an employer of any size, much less a mega-corporation that registers a profit of about $20,000 a minute, at least would have been willing to pay for the cost of Teague's emergency room services, where the bill for stitching him up came to about $3,500.

But Wal-Mart — whose famous slogan is "Save money, live better" — declined to give Teague even one cent in workers' compensation benefits for the injuries he suffered on the job. In addition to the emergency room fee, that payout would have amounted to about $400 a month until Teague was able to go back to work.

How Wal-Mart dealt with its aged "associate," as the company likes to call its employees, paints a dismal picture that lays waste to what it calls its "Grass Roots Process."

That philosophy, coined by company founder Sam Walton after he opened his first discount store in Arkansas in 1962, calls for Wal-Mart executives to "listen to your associates. They're the best idea generators."

Herm Teague's stepdaughter says she knows what grassroots advice he would have given his bosses had he been given the opportunity.

"Herm lived his life by never asking for anything that he didn't have coming to him, and I never heard him speak out against anyone, including Wal-Mart," Linda Kilfoy says. "For him, there always was a right thing to do and you do it, whether you're a person or a huge company. He would have told them, 'Do what's right, guys.'"

Instead, Wal-Mart denied Teague's claim in the summer of 2006. The company is self-insured, and manages its workers' compensation claims out of a sprawling structure in northwest Arkansas, so big that the rows between workstations have street names.

After Teague appealed to the Industrial Commission of Arizona, Wal-Mart hired one of Arizona's top workers' comp defense attorneys to litigate against Teague's claim.

In early 2007, the case wound up before an administrative law judge at the Industrial Commission. That March — a year after Herm Teague had gotten hurt — Judge Joseph Moore ruled that Wal-Mart did, in fact, owe Teague workers' comp benefits.

But this was not to be an example of David slaying Goliath.

Wal-Mart instructed its attorney, Todd Lundmark, to appeal the ruling, which put the payments to Herm Teague on hold.

Another year passed. Then, last April 1, the Arizona Court of Appeals said Judge Moore had erred in awarding any benefits to Teague.

Herm Teague, the appellate court said, had been engaging in a "personal comfort activity" when he stepped the few feet from his greeter's post to buy his Coke, and hadn't been on an official work break.