After an employee was murdered on the job, an insurance firm is denying workers’ comp because the killing was supposedly race-related, but not work-related.

Taneka Talley, an African-American employee at a Dollar Tree store in Fairfield, CA, was murdered in March 2006. Because prosecutors say her killer’s only motive was that she was African-American, Specialty Risk Services is refusing to pay $250,000 in death benefits to Talley’s son.

The insurance company’s lawyers claimed that because Talley’s murder by Tommy Joe Thompson was entirely personal, it shouldn’t be considered an on-the-job injury. Compensation law doesn’t consider an injury to be work-related if motives were personal — for example, if an ex-lover or spouse comes to the workplace and attacks an employee because of a personal grudge. Even though Thompson did not know Talley before he murdered her (he walked into the store and attacked the first African-American he saw), the fact that it was race-related made it “personal.”

But Moira Stagliano, the Talleys’ lawyer, said Taneka’s murder was entirely work-related. She “was at work, doing her job, when she was killed,” said Stagliano. “If she had not been in that store, she would not have been available to the killer, and she would still be alive.”

After word of Specialty’s treatment of the case was publicized, the company decided to abandon its position and has now given Talley’s mother and son the full amount allowed under California compensation law.

A statement issued by Dollar Tree and Specialty claims the companies felt it was “the right thing to do.” Stagliano’s claim: “I think they wanted this to be done with. The media helped settle this claim.”