And another

This could be put in the "Why We Can't Trust Management" folder, except that it's pretty crammed right now. So move it to "Scumbags, Misc."

Nearly three years ago, in March 2006, Taneka Talley was at her job at a Dollar Tree store in Fairfield, California. A white man entered the store and attacked her because she was black. He stabbed her in the heart. She died.

Carol Frazier, Talley's mother, adopted Talley's eight year-old son and two years ago set about filing a workers' compensation claim in order to establish a college fund for the boy.

After filling out mounds of paperwork and finally being able to prove to the workers compensation board that she was Larry's guardian and, therefore, eligible to receive Talley's death benefits, a judge suggested she get a lawyer - her claim had been denied.

Denied? Why? On what basis?

California law states an employer must pay death benefits if the employee was killed on the job and if the death was a result of the person's employment, [Moira] Stagliano[, Frazier's lawyer,] said.

But the law also allows benefits to be denied if the death stemmed from a personal connection between the victim and the attacker, such as a husband who kills his wife on company grounds.

Dollar Tree successfully opposed granting the death benefit on - get this, now - the claim that the fact that the murderer was driven by hatred of blacks established a personal connection between himself and Talley despite the lack of any known previous interaction between them and therefore her death was not work-related.

Oh. My. Word.

Well, fast forward to today:

Three weeks after a slain woman's family went public with her employer's refusal to pay out death benefits because she was killed in a racially motivated attack on the job, the company offered a settlement to the woman's son.

In a statement e-mailed to ABCNews.com, Dollar Tree's vice president of investor relations, Tim Reid, did not detail why the company reversed its decision to deny death benefits to Taneka Talley's family, but said that Dollar Tree had offered the full worker's compensation benefit permitted by California law.

"While we were advised that the claim would not be covered under the state worker's compensation law," Reid wrote, "we feel this is the right thing to do for Taneka's son."

Which you suddenly decided - doubtless by the purest of coincidences - soon after the matter became public.

Stagliano says that Dollar Tree in fact has not offered the full amount, but "We're pretty close and I believe we're going to settle it," she said.

However, something needs to be noted clearly: Dollar Tree executives continue to insist that her death was not work-related and they are just offering a settlement out of the goodness of their hearts. Put another way, they are trying to present their scumbaggery as an act of nobility.

I understand Carol Frazier's desire for a settlement and her focus on being able to send her adopted son to college. I fully understand why she would accept that settlement even as it's falsely presented as a selfless act of kindness. But I am so flaming sick of these - I can't think of an appropriate noun right now, but it would be one that would be spit out with contempt - getting away with walking away from their responsibilities as human beings, dammit, not even as employers. If it had been me, I would have accepted a settlement of lawyer's fees and expenses plus $1 - along with a requirement that Dollar Tree take out a full-page ad in the largest-circulation paper in Fairfield, California to say they were flat out wrong and indecent to have opposed the workers' comp claim in the first place.

God, they're vile.