ethics

Ethics Dunce: Tag Heuer

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Swiss watch company Tag Heuer announced today that it would drop Tiger Woods from its advertising.  The CEO of the company told  Swiss paper Le Matin, “We recognize Tiger Woods as a great sportsman but we have to take account of the sensitivity of some consumers in relation to recent events.”

Translation: We, of course, would never presume to question the character and integrity of a husband and father who engages in serial adulterous affairs with any cocktail waitress, lingerie model, porn star, reality star or other owner of two x chromosomes as long as she had the physical dimensions of Jessica Rabbit, but such conduct apparently displeases some of our customers, heaven knows why, and though we’d use Martin Bormann as a spokesperson if he sold enough watches, our guess is that Tiger won’t. So he’s out.

This is called “doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.”

But these are the Swiss, after all. They wouldn’t even take a stand against Hitler.

Ethics Hero: Rep. Bobby Scott

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

A popular, effective and unethical prosecutorial practice among federal investigators is to coerce  businesses and individuals into waiving the attorney client privilege by threatening indictments. The privilege of having absolutely private communications with one’s attorneys in order to get legal advice is a linchpin of the justice system and each citizen’s access to fair treatment under the law.  Forcing individuals to give the privilege up under threat of prosecution is and has always been wrong; after all, a waiver made under a threat is hardly “voluntary.”  U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, (D-Va.), has now introduced H.R. 4326, complementing legislation filed in the Senate earlier this year by U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, to bar this practice. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“Nice try, Ted Alvin Klaudt, of Walker, S.D.”

The South Dakota Daily Republic, in an editorial commenting on former state lawmaker Ted Klaudt’s warning to South Dakota’s media this week that they cannot use his name without his prior authorization.

Klaudt claimed that he name was protected by his recent copyright of it, a transparent attempt to avoid news media mention of Klaudt’s 2007 sentencing to 44 years in prison for four counts of second-degree rape. The ex-legislator was convicted of touching the breasts and genitals of his two foster daughters while conducting phony examinations on the girls on the premise that he would help them sell their reproductive eggs.

He apparently wants to have the sole legal right to call such conduct “Klaudting.”

Ethics Alarms salutes the Daily Republic for having the courage and wit to immediately challenge Klaudt’s efforts to muzzle the press.

Proof of Dead Ethics: Attacking Your Adversary’s Family

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

It is a standard threat in movies about the Mob and TV dramas about thugs: “Do what I tell you, or your family’s dead.” The tactic of going after loved ones as a particularly awful form of revenge is a calling card of the truly despicable. That is why the Valerie Plame scandal so damaged the Bush Administration’s popularity, even though it was never clear (and still isn’t) that anyone there really did try to “out” Plame’s CIA status to get even with her obnoxious husband’s fueling opposition to the Iraq invasion. Just the plausible suggestion that Vice President Cheney’s gang may have committed such an ethical outrage was too much to bear.

You would think, then, that those who most revile Cheney’s no-holds-barred approach to political combat would be the least likely to emulate him. You would be wrong. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Sen. Al Franken

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

In the midst of the increasingly tense and contentious Senate debate over its health care reform bill, Sen. Joe Lieberman asked for unanimous consent to extend his remarks “an additional moment.”  Sen. Al Franken was taking his turn presiding over the Senate, and to  Lieberman’s amazement, refused. Continue reading →

“Operation Chokehold” and the Protest Ethics Checklist

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Some disgruntled iPhone users are trying to organize a protest by paralyzing the ATT network with a flood of data this Friday. The mastermind is the so-called “fake Steve Jobs,” Dan Lyons, who calls his protest “Operation Chokehold.”

Blogger Lauren Weinstein [special thanks to Gabe Goldberg for the tip] has effectively identified this juvenile plan for what it is, namely “childish, stupid, irresponsible, and potentially extremely dangerous.”  Continue reading →

The Casinos and the Whale

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Japanese tycoon Terrance Watanabe gambled away nearly $127 million at the Caesar’s Palace and Rio casinos in 2007, and now is suing the casinos even as he faces criminal charges for refusing to pay them over $15 million in additional debts. He claims that the gambling establishments allowed him to gamble while intoxicated in violation of state casino regulations, and otherwise share blame for his outlandish losses, believed to be the most any gambler has amassed in a single year. Continue reading →

The Leaked Exam: Teaching Ethics Unethically

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Some University of Oregon law students preparing for exams when the full text of an exam for one of their classes, Administrative Law with Professor John Bonine, inexplicably appeared on a university list-serve. Someone in the registrar’s office had pushed the wrong button.

Oops! Yay? Uhhh…now what? Continue reading →

Law Students, Lawyers and Judges With Broken Ethics Alarms, 2009

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

I won’t keep you in suspense: my favorite is the Harvard law school whiz who celebrated his job offer from a top law firm by getting drunk and burning down a church. Forgot to check the batteries in the ol’ ethics alarm, I guess!

Here are two cautionary end-of-year lists: from the Avvo blog, the “Top Lawyers Behaving Badly” list for 2009, and, though not rich a source for  black humor, the even more disturbing “Year’s Most Infamous Lawyers” from the Business Insider.

Ethics Alarms thanks  Robert Ambrogi for finding them, as well the Avvo and the Business Insider for doing such an excellent job of compiling them.

Ethics Dunce: Sen. Charles Shumer

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

It’s a minor news event with a couple of ethics lesson, but as usual, the media’s focus is on the wrong one.

New York’s U.S.  Senators, Gillibrand and Shumer, were talking away on their cell phones before take-off.  The flight attendants announced, as they have been doing on flights since before Cher’s first retirement tour, that it was time to ditch the electronic devices and turn off the cell phones. The senators ignored the instructions, and kept talking anyway, because, you know, their work is So Very Important. Continue reading →