Ethical Dilemmas In Civil Action

Jurisdiction played a key role in the outcome of the lawsuit in A Civil Action. The plaintiff’s lawyer, Jan Schlichtmann, filed the original complaint against W. R. Grace and Beatrice Foods in state court. Schlichtmann, a personal injury attorney, spends most of his time there; personal injury is heard much less frequently in federal court. William Cheeseman, the attorney for W. R. Grace, almost immediately removes the case to federal court since W. R. Grace’s headquarters is in New York and the amount in question is clearly over

“Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation” By Dan Fagin explores the economics, scientific, political, and personal tragedy of how a chemical giant known as Ciba-Geigy and entrepreneurs failed to properly dispose the industrial waste which eventually contaminated the ground water of a coastal town. The book delves deeply into the history of the dye industry and the lesson learned from the environmental disaster. Fagin takes on complex issues to address the history of industrial processes in both Europe and the United States. He then explores further about the long struggle that parents and public officials took in Toms River, N.J., to scientifically identify the cancer cluster in children and then to determine the best way to handle the discovery.

There are few things in life that could be worse than loosing you child to such a horrible disease as leukemia. One can only imagine having such a tragedy repeat itself throughout you community time after time. To compound such tragedies, imagine being poisoned yourself and having to fight some of the largest local corporations to prove the truth and get it stopped. This is the community setting for Jonathan Harr's true-to-life legal thriller A Civil Action. The book was an award winner for "Best Seller" in 1995 and was named the 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award.

During Erin’s discovery of the facts of the case we begin to see the breakdown of the ethical values of PG&E. The dramatization focuses on the deception that PG&E has cast over the inhabitants of Hinkley, California. For years, the company has been polluting the environment with a known deadly toxin, Chromium six. The toxin seeped into natural underground water reservoirs then into the unsuspecting town

Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin explores the history of one town’s struggle and analyzed the epidemiology in Toms River, New Jersey. The drama and conflicts between public health, large chemical companies, and actors in this book present real scenarios that occurs in an environmental dilemma. Toxic chemicals, acid-laced wastewater, and private dumping grounds that impacted the community’s health is essential to acknowledge for improvements of waste management and prevention. Indeed, Toms River becomes a lesson for future studies and relevant to the study of environmental

Residents complain that the waste is making the water unsafe for families and their children, and is killing water life and vegetation downstream. Plant managers state that they are doing nothing wrong and are meeting all legal and regulatory requirements. Are the manufacturer's actions ethical? Discuss the reasoning for your opinion. Describe two steps the manufacturer can take to improve their business ethics? (4 Marks)

“Several dead kids isn’t enough for this case”[1] said Jan Schlichtmann, a very successful personal injury lawyer, referring to a case that involves Anne Anderson. Anne lost her child to Leukemia as well has five other families in the movie “A Civil Action.” They strongly believed that their children died due to water contamination in the town of Woburn, Massachusetts. The only reason Mr. Schlichtmann found out about this case was because Anne Anderson heard a lawyer on the radio talking about his clients saying “My client’s pain is my pain”. [1]After Mr. Schlichtmann said no to this case, he went down to the lake and saw what was getting dumped in the lake. He then had

The Andersons, Kanes, Toomeys, Zohners, Robbins and the Aufieros were the plaintiffs in the film, a Civil Action. Their case was to sue two companies (Beatrice and W.R. Grace) for dumping toxic waste into the environment. The toxic waste is trichlorethylene which is a carcinogen according to the EPA. All the families lost children due to leukaemia. “12 deaths over 15 years from leukaemia - eight of them children.”1 This case was hard to make for three reasons. One reason is that certain people are worth more than others in court, and children (especially dead ones) are not worth very much. “a dead child is worth least of all.”1 The second reason

On this session, my classmates and I submitted our social project. It is so empowering to see how different people think of different ways to help enrich our society with positive attitudes. I am so honored to say that this class changed my heart and mind in so many levels. For example, donating blood is such a unique way to support human lives and somehow society takes this for granted. What I learned from this project also is that one does not need a lot of time to invest in helping our city to improve. We were also required to watch and discussed a movie called “A Civil Action” where ethics play an important role during the whole film. In the end, EPA found abnormalities during the lawsuit, and found guilty of multiple charges to Grace

Jonathan Harr wrote a compelling novel, called A Civil Action, on the actual events of a thrilling court case involving two major corporations and the families who were affected greatly. In Woburn, Massachusetts there were twenty-eight children who contracted acute lymphocytic leukemia between the years of 1964 and 1986. The explanation for the contraction of the disease and even the death of some of the children was discovered in the water; two municipal wells near the town were found to be contaminated with toxic chemicals. Eight families filed suit against W.R. Grace & Co. and Beatrice Foods Inc., accusing them for the contamination of the wells and the death of their children. The families only wanted an apology and the truth but when

Respondent L. B. Sullivan was one of the three elected Commissioners of the City of Montgomery, Alabama. The civil libel action case was brought against four individual petitioners, who were Negroes and Alabama clergymen, and against petitioner the New York Times Company, which publishes the New York Times. The Respondent alleged that libelous statements were made against him in a full-page ad entitled, "Heed Their Rising Voices," that was published in the New York Times on March 29, 1960. In the opening words of the advertisement, it states "As the whole world knows by now, thousands of Southern Negro students are engaged in widespread non-violent demonstrations in positive affirmation of the right to live in human dignity as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights." The ad continued, "in their efforts to uphold these guarantees, they are being met by an unprecedented wave of terror by those who would deny and negate that document which the whole world looks upon as setting the pattern for modern freedom…" The following paragraphs sought to describe the "wave of terror" using events alleged to have happened. In conclusion, the text appealed for funds for three purposes: the support of the student movement, "the struggle for the right-to-vote," and the legal defense of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., leader of the movement, against a perjury indictment that was pending at that time in Montgomery.

The second ethical dilemma is Wigand’s decision to tell his story about the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corporation. The movie was made to show his struggle with how hard it was for Wigand to make this decision. He could not keep this kind of information from the public, especially after working with healthcare companies before being employed by Brown and Williamson. He felt personally obliged to tell this story because it could potentially save the lives of countless people. After he decided to do the interview, even knowing the criticism he would receive, the tobacco company then retaliated with campaigns about how awful of a person Wigand was, which then led his wife to divorce him. Wigand made the right decision, and many reasonable people would have done the same thing. There were obviously others who knew about the same information but were too scared of the consequences that Wigand unfortunately had to endure. The CBS interview, in the end, was aired to the public.

The information that Dr. Wigand discovered about his employer created an internal conflict between his ethical beliefs and the lack of moral reasonability by the tobacco industry. Brown & Williamson along with other tobacco companies were causing considerable harm to their consumers and the public. Shockingly, they were targeting teenagers so they could hook lifelong smokers, and Wigand learned that some of the additives were causing cancer in lab mice. Tobacco companies knew about the dangers of their products, but they were intentionally hiding it from the public. Once Wigand identified this serious threat to the users of their product, he completed his own research, wrote internal memos, and notified executives about the dangers of the product. While he looked for ways to address and fix the problem, tobacco executives did not want to remove the additives because it would negatively affect their sales. This fueled an anger within Wigand that it made it “impossible to censor himself because he believed his

Harmful chemicals  have been used throughout time to kill off insects and various plagues that have been considered harmful to the environment. Many have questioned how helpful they really are to our environment. Pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides have proven to be more detrimental to humans, plants, and animals than was ever expected. The use these chemicals has proven to be more costly than beneficial. The use of chemicals has failed to take many ethical values into consideration. One that I will discuss today is the ethic of Utilitarianism. “Utilitarianism 's claim the purpose of morality is to make the world a better place (Ethics S14).” If utilitarianism was practiced more than we wouldn’t have such a big problem with the use of chemical pesticides.

The definition of utilitarianism states an action is right that produces the greatest total amount of human well-being. The generality of the concept of ‘human well-being’ is one of the fundamental problems. In the example of the Pinto case, executives at Ford placed a high value on their financial well-being while placing a lower value on the well-being of the customers that were injured or killed while driving their vehicles. Even after quantifying the injuries and deaths to a monetary value, the cost-benefit analysis performed by Ford allowed them to believe their actions were ethical within a utilitarian framework. This introduces another problem with utilitarianism; actual consequences versus expected consequences. If the consequences of Ford’s decision occurred as they expected, they would have had a stronger moral foundation to justify their decision to not make their cars safer before releasing them for sale to the