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Nancy Smith And Suicide Case Study Essay

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Case study number 2 talks about Nancy Smith’s decision to resign after having been demoted by her management team. Nancy Smith was the Director of Medical Research Therapeutics at a pharmaceutical company. During this time Nancy, had been working on developing a new drug and while doing so she and the others in her team discovered that the formula had too high of a continent of saccharin, 14 times higher than stated by the Food and Drug Administration permitted. With this knowledge, everyone in the team had unanimously decided that the project should not be distributed to people in the United State. They had agreed to continue to research to find a better alternative to having so much saccharin content. The management for the …show more content…

Since she was considered an at will employee the employer is able to terminate her for any reason so if they wanted to terminate her for refusing to participate in the clinical testing they legally could. I do not think that the pharmaceutical’s management should have the right to terminate Nancy simply because she refused to be a part of the clinical testing. I do believe she could be taken out of the team because she would not be able to participate in the research or making of the drug. However, I do not think it is a reason for her termination. Management had no complains of her work prior to this situation so therefor I believe she should be removed from the project but not terminated. Her ethical reasoning made sense and she was following the Hippocratic Oath that prevented her from giving the drug to children and elderly. Nancy Smith was considered an “employee at will” which gives the employer the right to terminate her for any reason or no reason at all. Since she was not employed with a fixed contract it would be difficult for her to fight the company. This can also go both ways since there is no fixed contract the employee is also free to quit from their job at any time with a reason or without one. However, there are some exceptions to being an employee at will, which are public policy, implied contract, and implied covenant of good faith. If Nancy is able to prove her situation falls under one of those exceptions, then she

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