Deborah Shank, 52, who suffered severe brain damage in a traffic accident, doesn’t have to pay back the company the cost of her medical expenses.

Eight years ago, in 2000, she was stocking shelves at night for Wal-Mart. She signed up for Wal-Mart's health and benefits plan. That same year, she lost much of her memory and ability to communicate and walk and was confined to a wheelchair after an accident.

Her minivan was hit by a trailer. After her family had sued the trucking company and won $700,000, Wal-Mart sued Ms. Shank to recover medical costs totaling about $470,000. But her family remained with $417,477 after they gave attorney’s fees and paid trial’s costs. The money went into a trust to care for Ms. Shank and the family declared that now the fund was about $270,000, the Associated Press reported.

Wal-Mart announced the family Tuesday that they had decided to drop reimbursement claim.

“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, according to CNN News. “We have all been moved by Ms. Shank's extraordinary situation.”

Ms. Shank’s family was shocked by the decision and they thought it was an April Fool’s joke when they saw the letter.

The company expressed their wish to come to a new health care plan that would allow “more discretion” in individual cases. This decision was communicated after thousands of people had signed an online petition to boycott the company, CNN News reports.

Wal-Mart is one of the nation’s largest nongovernmental employers, with over 1.3 million workers, said Roger Baron, professor of law at the University of South Dakota.

“I’m so pleased to see an element of reason because so much of this subrogation has been about just blindly going after the money,” Mr. Baron told the AP.