Walmart Settles With Family Of Comedian Killed In Tracy Morgan Crash

NEW YORK (AP) — The family of a comedian killed in the New Jersey Turnpike crash that seriously injured Tracy Morgan last summer has settled a wrongful death claim with Wal-Mart.

The out-of-court settlement between Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and the estate of James McNair is the first stemming from the June 7 crash in which a Wal-Mart truck slammed into a limo van carrying Morgan and others home from a show in Delaware.

Morgan, the former "Saturday Night Live" and "30 Rock" star, suffered a traumatic brain injury in the accident, according to his lawyer. Criminal charges against truck driver Kevin Roper are pending in state court in New Jersey.

McNair, 62, of Peekskill, grew up with Morgan in Brooklyn and was a friend and mentor to him over the years.

The terms of the settlement are confidential, but McNair family attorney Daryl Zaslow told The Associated Press that they were pleased with the outcome.

Wal-Mart "caused extensive damage" to the family but accepted responsibility and "more than stepped up to the plate and took care of this family," Zaslow said.

"Ultimately they did the right thing by the McNairs," he said.

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said the company was working toward settlements with others injured in the accident.

"We know there is nothing we can do to change what happened to Mr. McNair," Buchanan said. "We're committed to doing what's right."

In an interview with the AP on Wednesday, McNair's children — Denita, 19, and Jamel, 26 — described their father as a humble, grounded man. They said he attained a level of fame but cared less about the trappings of celebrity than about helping others, whether through advice to young comedians or giving out free Thanksgiving turkeys to needy families in his hometown.

"You don't have to be a celebrity to make a difference in a lot of people's lives," Jamel McNair said. "My dad made a huge difference in a lot of people's lives."

Denita McNair was about to graduate from high school at the time of her father's death, and she said she hopes to go to college eventually after taking some time off. Jamel McNair is pursuing a singing career. Both said they haven't been contacted by Morgan or his representatives since the accident.

An attorney representing Morgan didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the settlement Wednesday. The lawyer, Benedict Morelli, said last month that Morgan hadn't fully recovered from his brain injury and that it was uncertain if he would be "the Tracy Morgan he once was."

Passengers Ardley Fuqua, of Jersey City, New Jersey, and Jeffrey Millea, of Shelton, Connecticut, also suffered serious injuries in the June crash. A lawsuit filed against Wal-Mart by Morgan, Fuqua and Millea is proceeding in federal court.

Under terms of the settlement, Wal-Mart admitted no liability in the crash, Zaslow said, adding that the settlement was reached before the formal filing of a lawsuit.

Roper, the driver, has been charged with death by auto and four counts of assault by auto. According to the criminal complaint, Roper was operating the truck without having slept for more than 24 hours.

A preliminary investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board estimated that Roper was driving 65 mph in the 60 seconds before he slammed into the limo van. The speed limit on that stretch of the turnpike is 55 mph and was lowered to 45 mph that night because of construction.

You Can Now Get Your Tax Refunds In Cash At Walmart

This tax season, Walmart is luring shoppers into stores with cash -- their own cash.

The retail giant is offering people the chance to pick up their state and federal tax refunds in cash at its stores across the country, it announced on Tuesday.

The program, called Direct2Cash, is the first of its kind at any retailer, according to Walmart. In order to use it, customers must get their taxes done by a participating tax preparer, including some in Walmart stores.

Typically, tax filers get their refunds either through a check or a direct deposit to their bank account. But those options create problems for the so-called “unbanked” -- the 10 million U.S. households that don't use banks.

“Leveraging our size and scale to take on big challenges and create better ways to serve our customers is something we’re always working on,” Daniel Eckert, senior vice president of services for Walmart U.S., said on a conference call with reporters announcing the program.

The service won't necessarily be free: Though Walmart will charge nothing for it, participating tax preparers can charge up to $7 for helping with Direct2Cash, Walmart said. And tax preparers often charge a fee for preparing and filing returns. Right now, the Walmart cash option isn't available to e-filers or people who file themselves.

Still, it will be cheaper than many other options. Unbanked Americans, who are likely to be low-income, often rely on expensive check-cashing services or borrow against expected refunds at “usurious” rates, according to Mehrsa Baradaran, a professor at the University of Georgia School of Law.

“Walmart is definitely doing more for the unbanked than the government at this point,” said Baradaran -- adding that, ideally, a government entity not motivated purely by profit, such as the Post Office, would offer this service.

Of course, the service also benefits Walmart, which has been struggling in recent years as shoppers increasingly turn to the internet and smaller, urban stores for their needs.

It fits with the retailer’s mission to be a one-stop shop for basically everything. Shoppers can already cash checks, get their taxes prepared, see a health-care professional or get their hair done inside Walmart stores.

By offering the unbanked a cheap way to get their refunds in cash, Walmart can lure these people into its stores, where they might want to spend that cash.

Walmart could use the traffic. Until its most recent quarterly earnings report, Walmart U.S. had gone nearly two years without an increase in sales at stores open at least a year, an important retail metric.

Tax-refund time is typically a good one for Walmart and other retailers who cater to low-income customers, because shoppers often use the extra income to make big purchases they may have been putting off. Walmart executives blamed a less-than-stellar first quarter in 2014 partly on delayed and reduced tax refunds.

“It’s always a good thing, we believe, to have customers in our stores that have a jingle in their purses and in their wallets,” Eckert said. “That’s something we like to see.”

Obama's Free College Plan Is A Great Way To Give America A Raise

Putting Obama's free community college plan into action could cost $60 billion over the next decade. But the economic boost it provides could be even greater.

If enacted, the proposal will offer two tuition-free years of community college to students who maintain a C+ grade-point average and attend classes at least half-time. The federal government would cover 75 percent of the cost, with participating states covering the rest.

Studies find that community college investments pay themselves back to the government many times over and vastly raise students' earning potential. Nationwide, community colleges are already a major part of the U.S. economy, contributing an estimated $809 billion in 2012, according to a study by the Economic Modeling Specialists Intl. On the local level, community colleges mean better jobs, higher wages and more spending power for graduates, as well as a larger skilled workforce for local employers.

"Rising levels of education yield a more skilled workforce, which is a crucial driver of economic growth," Shai Reshef, founder and president of University of the People, a nonprofit online university, said in a recent interview with The Washington Post. "I think Obama’s proposal is an effort to revive education as one of the drivers of economic growth, and this is a good thing."

California, home to the largest community college system in the country, exemplifies the kinds of economic gains Obama's plan could bring.

A recent analysis found that a 2 percent increase in people with an associate’s degree and a 1 percent increase in people with a bachelor’s degree would result in $20 billion in additional economic input, $1.2 billion in additional state and local tax revenues every year and 174,000 new jobs.

For every dollar spent on economic and workforce development programs at community colleges, there is a $12 increase in California’s business income and employee wages, according to the Foundation for California Community Colleges. Furthermore, the state receives a $4.5 net return for every dollar it invests to get students through college.

Community colleges have come to serve as an affordable stepping stone for California students who go on to pursue bachelor’s degrees. More than half of California State University graduates started at community colleges, as did nearly a third of University of California graduates. The state’s community colleges are major training centers for some of the most in-demand careers. Over 70 percent of the state’s nurses graduated from the system. It also provides credentials to 80 percent of the state’s firefighters, law enforcement officers and EMTs.

Though the state's community colleges are the cheapest in the nation, severe budget cuts limited access to these opportunities and brought enrollment to an all-time low in 2013. Meanwhile, students have flocked to for-profit colleges, which offer less competition to get into courses and ply students with false promises about their graduates’ success rates. Nationally, the rate of default on student loans is higher at for-profit colleges than it is at public and private nonprofit institutions. The free community college plan could funnel students away from predatory institutions.

Maxwell Strachan contributed to this report.

Chipotle Pork Shortage Is Proof Of A Larger Problem Facing The Food Industry

Americans increasingly want grocers and restaurants to carry meat they can feel good about eating. But that meat is scarce, as Chipotle's pork problem revealed this week.

Chipotle, which has won over diners partly for its commitment to sustainability and animal welfare, recently discovered that one of its pork suppliers wasn’t meeting its “Responsibly Raised” standards. Chris Arnold, a Chipotle spokesman, explained in an emailed statement that the chain refuses to sell pork that comes from conventional farms because such pigs “generally do not have access to the outdoors, [and] spend their lives in densely crowded buildings,” among other issues.

But there is so little quality pork on the market that, for now, Chipotle has stopped offering the meat in hundreds of its locations.

“We would rather not serve pork at all, than serve pork from animals that are raised in this way,” Arnold said. "Replacing the supply we have lost in these ways will take some time, but it is important to us to maintain our high standards for pork and we will continue to see some shortage while we work to increase the available supply. "

Chipotle’s predicament illustrates the challenge in running a big chain committed to humanely raised meat. Less than 5 percent of meat in the U.S. is raised according to humane standards even using the broadest definitions, according to Andrew Gunther, the program director of American Welfare Approved, which certifies farms as humane.

Chipotle occasionally runs into this issue with beef as well, substituting meat from conventional farms when there isn’t enough available from suppliers that meet its standards. But in the case of the pork, the chain won't budge on its requirements. In an email, Arnold said that the differences in animal welfare are greatest with pork.

Other big chains taking a stab at selling humanely raised meat are also struggling for supply. Carl’s Jr. launched its “All Natural Burger” in December, and the chain is sourcing its grass-fed, antibiotic- and steroid-free beef from Australia because there isn’t enough supply in the U.S., the company’s CEO told USAToday last month.

And the market for this meat is only getting more crowded. Smaller chains with a similar feel-good ethos -- Shake Shack, Sweet Green and Native Foods -- are growing increasingly popular as diners demand fresh, natural and ethically raised food.

The problem is that the mass meat market, particularly the segment that caters to fast-food restaurants, is driven largely by price, said Aaron Allen, the founder of Aaron Allen and Associates, a restaurant consulting firm. "That's really the way that the industry has been oriented for the last three to four decades: How do we get it cheaper? Quicker?" Allen said. In that kind of environment, there's little reward for suppliers to spend the time and money ramping up their quality standards.

In the case of pigs specifically, converting farms to raise animals more humanely is expensive and may not be financially feasible for many farmers, said Adele Douglass, the executive director of Humane Farm Animal Care, another program that certifies farms as humane. The most controversial pig farming practice is keeping pigs in "gestation crates," which leave them with barely enough room to do anything other than lie down.

Increasing standards would mean putting the pigs into group housing or larger group pens that give them more room to move, Douglass said. Chipotle's pork suppliers also have to give their pigs outdoor access or house them in deeply bedded pens, and keep them free of antibiotics

In Douglass’ ideal world, the government would step in and offer farmers loans or grants to convert their farms. But short of government intervention, companies can help speed up these changes. The bigger the restaurant chain, the more influence it has over suppliers and the whole system. Gunther noted that restaurants can make long-term commitments to suppliers that agree to overhaul farms and raise animals more humanely.

“These companies can build these supply chains if they think it’s a good idea,” Gunther said. “It can be done, it just requires commitment.”

The risk in this approach is that restaurants might not want to get locked into a specific supplier and a specific price for a long period of time, making them less flexible.

Still, there’s hope. McDonald’s announced in 2012 that it would stop using pork that came from farms using gestation crates by 2022. The announcement came after controversy over the crates became too loud to ignore -- several states had already banned or restricted their use.

At the time, McDonald’s said it would work to help U.S. suppliers comply with the directive, but it was impossible to make the switch immediately.

“There are not enough sows housed in non-gestation crates right now,” Bob Langert, McDonald's vice president of corporate social responsibility and sustainability, told Reuters.

10 Most Hated Companies In America

This story was originally published by 24/7 Wall St.

To be truly hated, a company must alienate a large number of people. It may irritate consumers with bad customer service, upset employees by paying low wages, and disappoint Wall Street with underwhelming returns. For a small number of companies, such failures are intertwined. These companies managed to antagonize more than just one group and have become widely disliked.

The most hated companies have millions of customers. With such a large customer base, it is critical to keep employees happy in order to promote high-quality customer service. Poor job satisfaction among employees can lead to unsatisfied customers. McDonald’s and Walmart have risked alienating workers, and therefore also customers, by not adequately addressing protests against their employees’ low wages. While pay may be low enough to put some workers below the poverty line, executives at these companies often make millions. The total compensation of McDonald’s CEO Donald Thompson, for example, was nearly $9.5 million in 2013 and nearly $13.8 million in 2012.

Layoffs, or even the prospect of layoffs, can also contribute to low employee morale. Sprint announced it would cut 2,000 jobs late last year. Workers at Comcast can reasonably expect layoffs should its planned merger with Time Warner Cable receives government approval.

Many of the most hated companies angered the public because of quality issues with their products.. Comcast has long been one of the worst companies in America in terms of customer service and satisfaction. Another example is the General Motors recall scandal. GM announced a recall in early 2014 due to faulty ignition switches in a number of its cars, now believed to have cost 42 people their lives. The company’s problems were compounded by the realization that it had known about the defect for over a decade.

Nothing harms the long-term reputation of a company in the eyes of investors more than a steep drop in its share price. In the past 12 months, shares of Sprint have fallen by more than 50%, as hopes for a tie-up with rival T-Mobile were dashed while the company had little success in retaining customers.

It is worth noting that some of the companies on the list may have performed very poorly by some measures but relatively well by others. A few of the most hated companies have had good stock performances. Others have relatively satisfied customers. All of these factors were taken into account in compiling the final list.

Click here to see America’s most hated companies

Several companies from last year list have improved their public perceptions enough to be removed from this year’s list. For example, J.C. Penney is in the midst of a modest turnaround. Abercrombie & Fitch’s controversial long-time CEO Michael Jeffries resigned last December. However, the retailer still has problems attracting teenage customers.

To identify the most hated companies in America, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed a variety of metrics on customer service, employee satisfaction, and share price performance. We considered consumer surveys from a number of sources, including the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) and Zogby Analytics. We also included employee satisfaction based on worker opinion scores recorded by Glassdoor.com. Finally, we reviewed management decisions and company policies that hurt a company’s public perception.

These are America’s most hated companies.

How To Pack For Davos, Like A Boss

A conundrum: You're going to a conference in the Swiss Alps, bigshot CEOs will be there, so will A-List celebrities. It will be snowy and cold. You want to look fantastic. You don't want to wipe out on the ice.

So what do you bring?

Welcome to the annual puzzle of packing for the World Economic Forum, a power-player conference that draws thousands of the world’s business, media and political elites. Past attendees include Google CEO Eric Schmidt, JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and actor Matt Damon.

They'll need to pack a clever mix of ski vacation garb and chic business attire.

“They’ve tried to keep it casual, but most people go for business meetings and in business meetings you don’t want to feel like an underdressed shmo,” Henry Blodget, the editor-in-chief of Business Insider, told The Huffington Post in an email. “Also, there’s a chance you’ll meet Charlize Theron or Angelina Jolie, etc., and even billionaires don’t want to blow that one.”

Here are some a few tips for getting by at this year’s conference, which runs from January 21 to 24:

Dress warm

It’s cold in Davos. Being 5,052 feet above sea level in the middle of January can be frigid. Temperatures are forecasted to drop next week to about 30 degrees Fahrenheit, and it may get even colder. Pack a winter coat, hat, gloves, scarves, warm boots, and thermal underwear.

Bring a day bag

Participants at the conference end up swapping slush- and salt-encrusted boots for slick dress shoes. Parkas come off and jackets come on. Sure, you can probably fit a pair of dress shoes heels in your purse. But will that be enough?

“Unless you’re Mick Jagger or Bono or a twenty-something tech god, you’ll want a suit,” Blodget said. “You’ll also want a hat, gloves, and a jacket -- it’s cold. And boots! You’re tromping around in ice and slush and salt, so you don’t want to be slipping around and ruining your dress shoes. If you’re the confident sort, you can stick with the boots 24/7, but most people carry dress shoes around and swap whenever they go inside.”

That means a knapsack-sized day bag, equipped with all your changes of clothing, could be a good addition. It may behoove men to learn how to properly fold a suit.

Get an outlet converter

In Europe, electric outlets are different. In place of the two vertical slits on American plugs are two circles. That means you will need an adapter to make sure your laptop and phone stay charged. Fortunately, they sell for as little as $2 on Amazon. In the past, the conference has provided power strips that fit with American plugs, but why risk relying on that?

Wear boots or shoes you can walk in

As Forbes’ Clare O’Connor found, it’s really difficult to book a place to stay in Davos proper. You’ll probably get stuck outside the main town.

You’re not getting a hotel room in Davos proper your first time around. They’re booked up months, if not years, in advance. No-one told the newbie this. When I started my online search back in November, I had two choices. First: a studio apartment swathed in fur throws, dotted with expensive candles and owned by a woman called Mitzi who thought Forbes might cough up $1,000 a night (ha!). The other option: a basement hostel so grim I’d rather have tried my luck sleeping on the chairlift. So I’m staying 15 minutes down the road in the resort town of Klosters. Yes, admittedly a first world problem of the highest order, but the mark of a clueless newbie if there ever was one.

Now, go hit Davos like a boss:

Why We're Picking Walmart And CVS Over Doctors' Offices

The American health care system may finally be catching up to the rest of the 21st-century economy, in which convenience is not only expected, but demanded -- and massive retailers are driving the change.

Patients suffering everyday complaints like chest colds or ankle sprains have long faced the lamentable choice between waiting days to see their family doctors or enduring time-sucking, unpleasant and expensive visits to hospital emergency rooms, especially at night and on weekends when physicians typically aren't open for business. It's one of the most annoying aspects of the way medical care is provided in the United States.

Big chains like CVS, Walgreens and Walmart are stepping in to try to correct this market failure. These and other retailers are opening hundreds of new walk-in clinics, staffed by medical professionals such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants. They're betting that Americans craving speed, convenience and easy-to-understand prices will be willing to break their habit of expecting a doctor to handle all of their medical issues.

"People are demanding health care to react similarly to other service industries, where people have a need and they want it relatively easy," said Nancy Gagliano, a primary care physician and chief medical officer for CVS Health's MinuteClinic. "The traditional health care system really is not adequate to support the need."

Although still vastly outnumbered by doctors' offices and hospitals, retail clinics are spreading rapidly: There currently are almost 1,900 across the U.S., up more than sevenfold since 2007, according to data compiled by Merchant Medicine, a consulting firm that tracks the sector.

The time seems right for the health care landscape to include places such as CVS MinuteClinic, Walgreens Healthcare Clinic and Walmart Care Clinic, along with similar locations housed inside retailers such as Kroger, Target and Rite Aid.

For starters, patients appear eager for the clinics. When the Advisory Board Co., a Washington-based consulting firm, surveyed consumers last year, it found respondents valued being treated by a physician less than the convenience of night and weekend hours, getting seen without an appointment, and being able to fill prescriptions on-site.

"People are also more sophisticated than, I think, in the past, health care has given them credit for," Gagliano said. "They have a really good sense of when the MinuteClinic-type visit is appropriate for their needs and when it's worth waiting for their doctor for a more complex issue or more chronic and preventative-care follow-up."

CVS Health's MinuteClinic, the market leader with close to 1,000 locations in 31 states and the District of Columbia, had more than 18 million patient visits in 2013, up from 5 million just two years prior, according to the company. It plans to have 1,500 clinics by 2017.

Eric Knudtson of New York might be the prototypical retail clinic patient. Knudtson, a 23-year-old student, visited a clinic inside a New York City Duane Reade -- owned by Walgreens -- last week for a check-up. He opted for the clinic because it was convenient and because he doesn't have a regular doctor in the city, he told HuffPost.

"I just came here because it was on my way home from school," said Knudtson. The two times he used the Duane Reade clinic weren't as time-consuming as visiting a physician's office, he said. His visit last week took less than an hour, including wait time. "It seems like it's gone pretty quickly."

Locations like these offer basic check-ups plus vaccinations and treatment for minor ailments, and their medical professionals can write prescriptions. Unlike the pharmacy and grocery chains, Walmart is positioning itself as a true primary care provider, while both Walmart and Walgreens tout their services for patients with chronic diseases. Walmart sets a flat price of $40 per visit (or $4 for company employees), while CVS Health and Walgreens charge less than $100 for most treatments. Lab work, drugs, vaccines and other things carry additional fees.

Retail clinics can't replace the physician's office or the emergency room, retail executives emphasized. Doctors are better-trained than nurse practitioners and physician assistants and are more knowledgeable about their patients' medical histories. ERs are equipped to handle life-threatening medical problems that retailers cannot, and can admit the sickest patients directly to the hospitals. Retail clinics also typically offer a less-comprehensive set of services than urgent-care centers, and don't have as much high-tech equipment.

Medical societies like the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Academy of Pediatrics have expressed other concerns about these clinics.

Records of what services a patient gets at a retail clinic may not be shared with their doctors, even though retailers can transmit them electronically or on paper. That could lead to problems such as unsafe mixing of medicines, physicians being unaware of changes to their patients' health, or tests and treatments being needlessly duplicated.

But there's also a well-documented shortage of primary care physicians in the U.S., making it harder for people to get timely appointments or even to find a family doctor. And medical schools can't churn them out quickly enough to meet the demand. This problem could become even more acute as millions of Americans get health care coverage because of the Affordable Care Act. Inadequate access to doctors also has prompted some states to loosen restrictions on what non-physician practitioners are allowed to do.

Between 40 percent and 50 percent of the patients who have visited the clinics at CVS, Walgreens and Walmart reported they have no regular primary care provider, according to executives at those companies.

At the same time, health insurance -- from employers and from the Obamacare exchanges -- increasingly requires patients to pay more when they get medical care. Retail clinics offer services at clearly marked prices that often are lower than at physician's offices and hospitals.

"We have what I term as a new age of consumerism," said Patrick Carroll, the chief medical officer for Walgreens Healthcare Clinics and a primary care physician. "They're making choices based on convenience and economics."

Another draw is that Americans are working longer -- and less flexible -- hours. Employers and employees alike welcome retail clinics that can treat workers' minor ailments quickly and get them back to work sooner, said Jennifer LaPerre, senior director of health and wellness at Walmart U.S.

"It's hard to leave work during the day hours when you need to get care. But if they need to, they certainly don't want to be gone long," LaPerre said.

For the struggling retail industry, medical clinics offer both a new source of revenue linked to the massive and growing U.S. health care market, as well as a means of driving foot traffic into their stores, where customers may buy other products.

"We really want to be able to serve that audience who probably is shopping in our stores, but who may not have access to affordable health care," LaPerre said.

Jillian Berman contributed reporting.