Month: February 2024

Shock Ruling: The ADA Doesn’t Require an Employer to Keep Someone in a Customer Service Job Who Can’t Help Calling Customers “Fucking Assholes” or Worse.

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

That this case even got this far is depressing.

Cooper v. Dolgencorp, LLC, decided by the Sixth Circuit this week, involved a Coca -Cola delivery merchandiser who delivered products to customer stores, and who also suffers from Tourette Syndrome. Tourette Syndrome, a rare malady that TV writers find infinitely amusing, causes unwanted, involuntary muscle movements and sudden, often loud verbal outbursts. Cooper, the plaintiff, has a rare Tourette Syndrome problem known as coprolalia, which causes him to shout out obscene, profane, or other inappropriate words, including racial slurs. As you might imagine, this behavior sparked many customer complaints.

Cooper’s employer, Coca-Cola, felt that it had to reassign Cooper to a lower-paying non-customer-contact warehouse position. Cooper’s doctor had advised that while Cooper could work as a driver, another employee had to be with him to handle customer contact. That was not feasible.

Cooper sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act, arguing that that Coca-Cola was not accommodating his disability, and violating the law by taking him out of his more lucrative job just because he might suddenly call a customer a “nigger.” Coca-Cola won in a summary judgement.

The Court stated that it was clear Cooper’s Tourette Syndrome made doing his job at the level the job description required impossible, and that there were no reasonable accommodations Coca Cola could make that would allow someone likely to shout out “Cunt!” while dealing with a customer a safe employee to place in a customer service environment. Because customer service was an essential function of Cooper’s job and the driver’s malady made it impossible to perform it, there was no violation of Americans with Disabilities Act.

In my view, an ethical, competent lawyer should have informed the plaintiff that he had no case. However, the comments on the story at the link below are surprising, for many commenters seem to think Cooper was the victim of “discrimination.”

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Source: Volokh Conspiracy

Biden Scores Yet Another “Bottomless Pinocchio,” But I Guess It Doesn’t Count.

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

President’s Day on Ethics Alarms continues with another Biden Presidency Whopper. Once again, Biden, his mouthpieces at the White House, and VP Kamala Harris have stated in public that “Gun violence is the leading cause of death of children.” It isn’t. They keep saying this and it keeps being repeated by the mainstream news media, but the stat is as much of a lie as other hoary progressive myth narratives, my favorite being that women only earn 70 cents for every dollar men earn for the same jobs.

The reason for the fake gun stat is almost too obvious: it feeds neatly into “Think of the children!” hysteria and the media fearmongering narrative that every child is risking his or her life by going to school. It is an example of the tried-and-true fallacy the appeal to emotion. By all means, lets gut individual rights of self-defense, because if it only saves one child’s life….!!!

Washington Post “Fact Checker” Glenn Kessler, as I’ve noted before, seems to really want to be a fair and objective commentator but somehow can’t quite manage it. That’s Kessler’s
“Bottomless Pinocchio” above—if you can’t see it, it’s because WordPress’s image embedding feature stopped working a few minutes ago. If you recall, it shows a pile of little Pinocchio heads, which Kessler uses to denote a lie that the same public figure uses no matter how many times it’s proven false. The device was created for Donald Trump. In contrast, Biden’s repeated lies are seldom flagged by Kessler or anyone else. As Kessler has explained it, Trump lies, but “Biden loves to retell certain stories. Some aren’t credible” .

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More Smoking Gun Evidence of Where “Advocacy Journalism” Leads…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I almost framed this post as a parody of those public service ads begging us for donations to help “Johnny,” who is suffering from some dread disease. Read the Times op-ed titled “Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden.” It’s like a parody itself, so I decided another layer of satire would be excessive. The author, Ezra Klein, was one of the pioneers of so-called “advocacy journalism.” He founded JournoList (sometimes referred to as the J-List), a private Google Groups forum where 400 progressive journalists, academics and others could plot how they would spread the Left’s propaganda and slant the news. He founded Vox, the all-progressive bias all the time website, which is approximately as trustworthy as a news source as MSNBC or Breitbart.

His Times piece (it’s out from behind the paywall) is both sad and funny. This is whistling a symphony past the graveyard—he’s obviously terrified that his favorite party will lose the White House in November and the evil Donald Trump will undo all of Joe Biden’s good works. I’d feel sorry for him if Klein wasn’t such a long-running dissembling, manipulative hack. The piece is funny, because it is so transparent and Klein’s spinning is so desperate. For example:

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Yes Indeed, Most Presidents Have Had Emotional, Mental or Serious Physical Problems, But That Doesn’t Make Joe Biden Fit to Be One

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I’ve been holding on to this post for a while now, waiting for Presidents Day. An old “Psychology Today” article has been dredged up lately by various pundits desperately seeking a way to deny what is now undeniable. President Biden is in the throes of serious mental decline, and allowing him to run again, at an advanced age and when his memory, stamina, and cognitive health are rapidly receding into the fog, is irresponsible—which doesn’t mean that the Axis won’t do it anyway. The argument being mounted to justify such a desperate and stupid course is a version of the #1 rationalization on the list, “Everybody does it!” Joe’s problems are no big deal, you see, because, as Dr. Guy Winch wrote in 2016: “a study by Jonathan Davidson of the Duke University Medical Center and colleagues, who reviewed biographical sources for the first 37 presidents (1776-1974), half of those men had been afflicted by mental illness—and 27% met those criteria while in office, something that could have clearly affected their ability to perform their jobs.”

Whew! Well, that’s a relief!

I hadn’t seen the study, but it was heartwarming, since its findings echoed those of my American Government honors thesis, now deep in the stacks of Widener Library. I hypothesized that being outside the norm emotionally, mentally and physically was among the factors that selected out the extraordinary individuals who become Presidents of the United States. Leaders, to give an even shorter version, are not normal by definition.

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Update: Recent Law and Ethics Matters….

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Wow, Colbert, that was hilarious! What a great satirical take-down of ignorant and biased Democrats who somehow can’t perceive how abnormal it is—well, not in Russia— for an entire party to seek to eliminate the primary threat to its power by searching for ways to send him to jail! Brilliant! He even perfectly evokes their disdain for due process: “everybody” knows Trump is guilty, so what are the courts waiting for? Wait, what? Colbert wasn’t trying to be funny? But I thought he was a comedian!

Meanwhile, in other ethics news involving law, courts, judges and lawyers—

1. Glenn Greenwald tweeted, “How someone reacts to the Fani Willis testimony yesterday is a litmus test for if they’re a complete partisan hack. Anyone who denies that she clearly lied, could not respond to basic questions, acted inappropriately, and corrupted this prosecution is a mindless Dem partisan.” Almost my entire legal ethics listserv basically reacted to the Fani Willis hearing by concluding that nothing she did was relevant to the prosecution of Donald Trump. The few bold souls among the legal ethics experts who are inclined to dissent are doing so timidly at best. The anti-Trump bias in my sector is shocking, and the rationalizations being grabbed onto to defend Willis are embarrassing. One very prominent legal ethics specialist wrote that he believes the Fulton County DA hiring her lover was innocent because “she couldn’t find any qualified lawyer”—David Wade is not qualified— to take the job.

2. Meanwhile, both ABC and the New York Times adopted Willis’s insulting “This is only happening because I’m a black woman!” defense.

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From India, the Case of the Ethical Burglars

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I am at a loss as to how to categorize this strange story, as Mallory’s outburst above suggests.

Thieves broke into the opulent home of celebrated Bollywood film director M. Manikandan, escaping with gold, silver and cash. A few days later, however, someone left a small plastic bag outside the mansion’s gates. It was carefully fastened shut, and contained an object wrapped in a white handkerchief. Upon unwrapping it, the director discovered a medal he had won in 2021 for one of his acclaimed films. Accompanying the prestigious award was a handwritten note from the burglars (in Tamil, one of India’s many regional languages). “Sir, please forgive us,” the note read. “Your hard work belongs to you alone.”

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FIRE’s Annual Censorship Awards

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

FIRE released its annual “Top Ten Worst Censors” list. They are…

As you see by the EA links, I batted just .500 in covering this topic, and some of the incidents described in FIRE’s report are clearly major ethics breaches that should have been discussed here. Personally, I blame Donald Trump for being a catalyst for so much unethical conduct by the Axis of Unethical Conduct (AUC)—the “resistance,” Democrats and the mainstream media—as well as his own usual forays into the Ethics Twilight Zone that I missed other important matters. Or, as Joni Mitchell might have croaked, “So many things I might have done, but Trump got in my way….”

OK, I’m kidding. Sort of.

The most horrible story that I missed is a tie between the Mayo Clinic outrage and the Marion County Police Dept.’s gestapo act. In that one, FIRE explains,

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“It Wasn’t Our Fault! That Bad Robot Did It!”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Hey, Canada Air! Can you say, “accountability?” How about “responsibility”? Sure you can.

Jake Moffat needed to fly from Vancouver to Toronto to deal with the death of his grandmother. Before he bought the tickets for his flights, he checked to se whether Air Canada had a bereavement policy, and the company’s website AI assistant told him he was in luck (after telling him it was sorry for his loss, of course.) Those little mechanical devils are so lifelike!

The virtual employee explained that if he purchased a regular priced ticket, he would have up to 90 days to claim the bereavement discount. Its exact words were:”If you need to travel immediately or have already traveled and would like to submit your ticket for a reduced bereavement rate, kindly do so within 90 days of the date your ticket was issued by completing our Ticket Refund Application form.” So Moffatt booked a one-way ticket to Toronto to attend the funeral, and after the family’s activities a full-price passage back to Vancouver. Somewhere along the line he also spoke to a human being who is an Air Canada representative—at least she claimed to be a human being— confirmed that Air Canada had a bereavement discount. He felt secure, between the facts he had obtained from the helpful bot and the non-bot, that he would eventually pay only $380 for the round trip after he got the substantial refund on the $1600 non-bereavement tickets he had purchased.

After Granny was safely sent to her reward, Jake submitted documentation for the refund. Surprise! Air Canada doesn’t have a reimbursement policy for bereavement flights. You either buy the discounted tickets to begin with, or you pay the regular fare. The chatbot invented the discount policy, just like these things make up court cases. A small claims adjudicator in British Columbia then enters the story, because the annoyed and grieving traveler sought the promised discount from the airline.

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This Question to the Ethicist Sends Me to the Wood-chipper

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

[That would be my foot sticking out. I’m sure my good neighbor Ted would be willing to get me through…or any one of the thousands of people I’ve infuriated over the years.]

You can read Kwame Anthony Appiah’s answer to the most discouraging question he’s ever been asked (my description, not his) if you like. Essentially “The Ethicist” says (I’m counting here), “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, and no!” As usual the New York Times “Ethicist ” is thorough, but he could have written his response in his sleep, as I could have, and if you’re reading an ethics blog, so could you.

Here’s the question, and hold on to your heads…

A close friend of many years whom I’ve always thought of as an extremely honest, ethical person recently confided in me that she shoplifts on a regular basis. She explained that she never steals from small or independently owned businesses, only from large companies, and only when no small business nearby carries the items she needs. She targets companies that are known to treat their employees badly, or that knowingly source their products from places where human rights are violated, or whose owners/C.E.O.s donate to ultraconservative, authoritarian-leaning candidates, etc.

My friend volunteers in her community and has worked her entire life for nonprofit antipoverty and human rights organizations. While she isn’t wealthy, she is able to afford the items she steals and believes that she is redistributing wealth; she says she keeps track of the value of what she’s stolen and donates an equal amount to charity. She thinks of her actions as civil disobedience and says she will accept the consequences if she’s caught.

When she told me, I thought, Stealing is wrong. But as we discussed it, I realized I was oversimplifying a complex moral issue. Is it wrong to steal food to feed your starving children? What if I stole a legally purchased gun from a person I knew was about to commit a mass shooting? Are those who bring office supplies home from their workplace also thieves? I find myself struggling with the question of whether an individual’s actions are morally defensible if they do more good than harm. — Name Withheld

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When JFK Called Ike: Will We Ever See the Like Again?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

For some reason the Kennedy family waited a long time to release this recording; strange, because it reflects well on the sainted JFK. I just encountered it recently.

In the midst of the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962, President Kennedy called former President Eisenhower to brief him on the situation and extract any wisdom he could from his predecessor.

This is how our system is supposed to work, with leaders, officials and politicians interacting with each other respectfully and in the best interests of the nation. Ike and JFK were hardly pals: after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, White House staff reported hearing Eisenhower reaming out Kennedy from behind a closed door.

Nonetheless, this phone call shows two Presidents from opposing parties working together and showing each other the kind of courtesy and civility essential for productive cooperation. Our republic and our culture were healthier then, even as World War III loomed.