Professions

The Fourth Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The Worst of Ethics 2012 (Part 1)

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Trayvon

Welcome to the Fourth  Annual Ethics Alarms Awards

Recognizing the Best and Worst of Ethics in 2012!

This is the first installment of the Worst. (Part 2 is here, the Best is here.)

2012 inspired over 1000 posts, and Ethics Alarms still missed a lot. And the last week of 2012 was sufficiently ethics packed that the Awards are late this year. My apologies.

In a depressingly unethical year, these were the low points:

Ethics Train Wreck of the Year

Was there ever any doubt? The Trayvon Martin- George Zimmerman fiasco, naturally, which is far from over. This year’s winner may be the worst ethics train wreck since Monica and Bill were dominating the news.  So far it has involved dubious, unprofessional or clearly unethical conduct by, among others, Martin’s parents, their lawyer, Zimmerman, his wife, the police, Zimmerman’s first set of lawyers, the prosecutor, the Congressional Black Caucus, NBC (which repeatedly broadcast an “accidentally” truncated tape of Zimmerman’s 911 call that made him sound racist), the rest of the broadcast media, conservative talk radio and bloggers (who decided their contribution would be to try to show that Martin deserved to be shot), Spike Lee, Rosie O’Donnell, the New Black Panthers, and President Obama, who ratcheted up the hate being focused on Zimmerman by implying that the killing as racially motivated, and by connecting himself to the victim. Runner-up: The 2012 Presidential campaign.

“Incompetent Elected Officials of the Year” Division Continue reading →

The East Harlem Lockdown Drill: Is Stupid Unethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 64 Comments

paris-puppet-show-children

I was tempted to make this jaw-dropping incident an Ethics Quiz, but my mind is unalterably made up. While mistakes are not unethical, staggering stupidity on the part of professionals is, even if one of the consequences of that stupidity is the good faith belief that a cruel and irresponsible act is the right thing to do.

Less than a week after the Sandy Hook shootings, Greer Phillips, the principal in East Harlem’s P.S. 79 decided that this was the perfect time to conduct an unscheduled, unannounced lockdown drill. Not a fire drill. A “a stranger with a gun who might kill everybody is in the school!” drill.

Brilliant!

Thus at 10 am on December 18, a woman’s voice came over the Horan School’s loudspeaker and announced in shaky tones that there was a “shooter” or “intruder” in the building, and that teachers needed to “get out, get out, lockdown!”

Did I mention that the school serves students with special needs like autism, severe emotional disabilities, cerebral palsy and other disorders? Boy, I bet they were fooled! What a great drill! I mean, it scared the piss out of the teachers; imagine how those students must have felt! Continue reading →

A Compliant, Law-abiding and Unethical Murder House Sale

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments
Immaterial

Immaterial

We last considered the issue of realtors sneaking murder houses by trusting purchasers nearly two years ago, when Jon Benet Ramsey’s home and place of death came up for sale. We had a knock down, drag out argument about it too. My position: while it might be legal for a seller not to disclose that a home was the site of a murder or worse (and in most places it is), and while many regard sensitivity on such matters mere superstition not worthy of serious respect, the seller and the realtor have an ethical obligation to inform  potential buyers when the property for sale is a murder scene As I wrote in the conclusion to the post about the Ramsey home:

“The truth is still this: there is something about the $2,300,000 house that makes it undesirable to a lot of prospects, and that means that even if the law doesn’t require the seller to tell interested house-hunters the story of the little dead girl in the basement, fairness and the Golden Rule do.”

This applies to the case at hand, where Pennsylvania’s Superior Court recently ruled that a murder-suicide occurring in a home is not a “material defect” that requires disclosure in that home’s sale. While a murder-suicide occurring in a house might be “psychological damage” to the property or its reputation, the court said, realtors don’t have to disclose it. Continue reading →

Some Ethics Observations On A Ridiculous Sean Hannity Segment

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Last night, Fox New host and conservative radio talk show star Sean Hannity moderated what purported to be a debate on the topic of —guess what?— gun control on his cable TV show. The  guests were “civil rights attorney” Leo Terrell (I’ll explain the scare quotes in a second) and conservative lawyer Jay Sekulow. The two adversaries—and Hannity, who was hardly neutral—discussed The Journal News’ recent decision (Covered and criticized on Ethics Alarms) to publish the names and addresses of pistol permit holders in two New York Counties. The ensuing dialogue, if you can call it that, was painful to watch (but you’ll have to watch it to know what I’m referring to.)

Some observations on the miserable ethics of a nauseating episode: Continue reading →

Hollywood’s Ridiculous Hypocrisy on Guns

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments
"Say hello to my little friend! And while we're on the topic of guns, don't you think it's time to be sensible about gun control?"

“Say hello to my little friend! And while we’re on the topic of guns, don’t you think it’s time to be sensible about gun control?”

In a move stunningly unconscious to outrageous hypocrisy, the group “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” have posted a video on on its website and Youtube (of course), featuring an impressive array of solemn Hollywood celebrities chiding Americans for not doing something about guns “yesterday” and to “demand a plan” to end gun violence. The problem? Many of these same celebrities owe their presence on the video to Hollywood’s obsession with gun violence, without which they would be just anonymous pretty faces. They owe their mansions and private planes to that gun violence too, which they have happily, willfully and lucratively acted out in scores of violent films and television shows. How can they presume, given how they make their living, to lecture anyone on the topic of guns?

I have some theories. Many of them are dumb as bricks. Most of them are automatic co-signers of the manifesto for any cause branded as liberal, the Hollywood religion,and don’t bother to think about whether it is consistent with their life choices or not. Probably all of them, working every day in one of the most ethics-free, cut-throat, dishonest and hypocritical sub-cultures that has ever existed in the United States are completely numb to the concept of hypocrisy, as apparently are the mayors, who work in the culture of politics, which is only somewhat better. Continue reading →

Professional Discipline For Unethical Law School Deans?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Why not?

What the North Carolina Bar considers a trustworthy lawyer...

What the North Carolina Bar considers a trustworthy lawyer…

Law professor Ben Trachtenberg has caused a stir by suggesting in a law review article for the University of Missouri Law School Journal  that law school administrators responsible for intentional and egregious misrepresentations in advertising for their schools have violated the professional ethics codes and could, and should, face discipline, such as disbarment.

I don’t want to cause Nando a fatal cognitive dissonance attack, really I don’t, but I agree with the professor wholeheartedly. I have long believed that the Model Rules prohibition of dishonesty in Rule 8.4 should be applied to lawyer conduct not related to the practice of law more frequently and stringently than it is. Lawyers, for their own protection, are fond of the fictional Clinton myth that one can be an upright and trustworthy lawyer while displaying deceitful and dishonest conduct in their “personal lives,” as if lawyers are ethically schizophrenic. The proof: John Edwards still has his license.

The law school deans that Trachtenberg targets, however, don’t get the benefit of this pass. They are lawyers who were dishonest in their professional duties that, while not requiring a law license, have a clear impact on the legal profession.  Trachtenberg writes,

“In light of the common application of Rule 8.4(c) to lawyers who engage in dishonesty unconnected with the practice of law, there is little doubt that dishonest law school marketing conducted by members of the bar justifies professional discipline. Paul Pless lied repeatedly, over a period of years, about the quality of incoming students at the University of Illinois College of Law, deceiving the ABA and U.S. News, along with prospective students and others who relied on statistics they compiled.191 Mark Sargent conspired with colleagues to engage in similar conduct at Villanova.192 Can anyone dispute that these men engaged in “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation”? Surely serial dishonesty—committed with the purpose of gaming the rankings used by prospective students deciding whether and where to spend tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars—is at least as serious a violation as falsifying a resume and transcript.”

Sure it is. As with Edwards, however, the profession is unlikely to be willing to expand the range of activities by lawyers outside of actual practice that will trigger discipline. Continue reading →

The Legal Ethics Forum’s Top Ten Legal Ethics Stories of 2012

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

top-tenOne of my most consulted ethics resources, both for my ethics practice and Ethics Alarms, is the Legal Ethics Forum, created and operated by attorney John Steele with able assistance from some of the best legal ethics experts and scholars in the nation. John has posted the Forum’s Top Ten Legal Ethics Stories of 2012, which you can, and should, read about in detail here. These are John’s headlines: (Ethics Alarms, which is not written for an exclusively legal audience, has covered six of them, #4, #5, #6, #7, #9 (as well as this gem), and #10.) Continue reading →

Torii Hunter and The Bigoted Teammate Principle

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
No, this isn't Detrot Tigers outfielder Torii Hunter. This is gay-bashing "Teacher of the Year" Gerald Buell. Six of one, half-dozen of the other...

No, this isn’t Detrot Tigers outfielder Torii Hunter. This is gay-bashing “Teacher of the Year” Gerald Buell. Six of one, half-dozen of the other…

Over at the NBC Sports baseball blog Hardball Talk, the baseball  writer/lawyer Craig Calcaterra explained today why the quoted comments of Detroit Tigers outfielder Torii Hunter regarding gay professional athletes are not just wrong, but misconduct. My message to Craig: “Bingo.”

In its recent article about closeted gay athletes, the Los Angeles Times quoted Hunter explaining why he felt having a gay team mate would be divisive:

“For me, as a Christian … I will be uncomfortable because in all my teachings and all my learning, biblically, it’s not right. It will be difficult and uncomfortable.” Continue reading →

“Should CNN Fire Piers Morgan?” It Should, But It Can’t.

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments
If only.

If only.

In the wake of the tsunami of criticism directed at CNN talk show host Piers Morgan for his anti-gun rantings, particularly during his interview with Gun Owners of America president Larry Pratt, Slate posted a Quora response to the question, “Should CNN Fire Piers Morgan?” from internet entrepreneur Mark Rogowski, who begins his answer (summary: “no”) with the rejoinder, “For what? For having an opinion?”

No, Morgan should be fired for allowing his opinion to lure him into thoroughly rude, unprofessional, abusive and inappropriate interview practices, which a major news network like CNN shouldn’t permit, endorse, tolerate or risk recurring. That’s why. Continue reading →

Why Professionalism Is Essential: TSA Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments
The man behind the curtain is pointing and laughing....

The man behind the curtain is pointing and laughing….

Taking Sense Away is a fascinating blog operated by a former TSA screener. It is essential reading for air travelers, libertarians, critics of the TSA and anyone else interested in the strange, often infuriating  airport security procedures that have evolved since the events of 9/11/2001. His perspectives are not universally accurate in all cases (he reminds us frequently), but it can’t make air travelers happy to read the following, which he recently revealed as part of his answer to an inquiry from a reader about the unseen aspects of screening:

“Now, the I.O. Room (the image operator room, where your nude images are viewed at airports that still use the backscatter x-ray full body scanners), that, my friend, is a whole different story. In the image analysis room, no one is permitted to leave or enter without ample warning (part of TSA’s promise to the public that officers “would never see the passenger whose nude image they just viewed,” although I did occasionally witness this being violated, see Confession #1) and, like the private screening room, recording devices of any kind are prohibited. So in summation: what you have are one to two to three TSA officers locked in a room, viewing nude passenger images, with a guarantee that no one can barge in on them, and that no surveillance cameras can legally be present.

“Just use your imagination on the stories among TSA officers of what has gone on in the I.O. room. Personally, in the I.O. room, I witnessed light sexual play among officers, a lot of e-cigarette vaping, and a whole lot of officers laughing and clowning in regard to some of your nude images,  dear passengers.  Things like this are what happens (at the very least) when you put people who are often fresh out of high school or a GED program (although there are actually a few TSA screeners with PhDs, which I guess is sad on so, so many levels) with minimal training and even less professionalism, into the position of being in charge of analyzing nude images of people in a hermetically sealed room.”

Nice, huh? Continue reading →