Ohio

Stupid Ethics Tricks: Buns, Mascots, Mottos and Maher

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Advertising Ethics: KFC is marketing its new “Double Down” chicken sandwich by paying college co-eds—who must  meet some secret standard of butt-comeliness—to wear sweat pants with “Double-Down” printed on the seats. The National Organization of Women objects: “It’s so obnoxious to once again be using women’s bodies to sell fundamentally unhealthy products,” says Terry O’Neill, NOW’s president. What an odd comment: is it all right in NOW’s view to use women’s body to sell healthy products? Is O’Neill saying that (not to give KFC any ideas) paying buxom co-eds to wear tight T-shirts advertizing fried chicken breasts would be wrong, but the same campaign for healthy, broiled breasts would be just fine?

I am tempted to say that any ethical condemnation of the “buns as billboards” method is attributable to the “Ick Factor,” not ethics. Continue reading →

Unethical To Be Too “Hard-Working”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Toledo, Ohio attorney Kristin Stahlbush has been suspended from the practice of law for two years for repeatedly over-billing the Lucas County juvenile and common pleas courts for her services as a court-appointed counsel representing low-income clients. On multiple occasions, Stahlbush billed more than 24 hours a day.

From the Legal Profession Blog:

“The Court agreed with the board’s conclusions that by knowingly billing for more hours than she had actually worked, [the attorney] violated the state disciplinary rules that prohibit charging an excessive fee; engaging in conduct involving fraud, deceit, dishonesty or misrepresentation; engaging in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice; and engaging in conduct that adversely reflects on the attorney’s fitness to practice law.”

In the opinion, the Court said it did not impose more stringent penalties because she had no prior record of disciplinary issues,and was known as a competent and hard-working.

More than 24 hours a day? I’d say she’s hard-working, all right.

Bizarro World Ethics: Saving the Prisoner to Kill Him

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Lawrence Reynolds, an Ohio Death Row inmate, was supposed to to be executed by lethal injection this week. Instead, he is in a Youngstown hospital after an apparent suicide attempt late Sunday night. Having rescued him from death by his own hand, Ohio will now pay for Reynolds’ medical treatment until he is healthy enough to be sent to the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville, where executions take place.

Then they’ll kill him. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: The Staff of Milford, Ohio Elementary School

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

A sixth grade boy informed his mother that his teacher and an aide at the Milford Elementary School had forced him to him to stand before his sixth-grade classroom as they put his shoulder-length hair in  ponytails, and then introduced him to his classmates as a new female student. Then the aide took him to other classrooms and did the same thing.

The mother has filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati, seeking  damages for the alleged violation of her son’s constitutional rights and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Continue reading →