After reading Sleazy in Seattle (click to access), please comment here to each of the following questions. These questions are taken directly from the article and your answers should refer to the article and to your text reading as appropriate.
- How does the behavior of the attorneys at Bogle and Gates raise concerns about legal ethics in this case? Include specific examples from the discovery process.
- What do you think of the attorney’s duty to “zealously advocate” for their clients in this case? Do you agree with the experts that the behavior of the law firm was appropriate and responsible, or do you agree with Washington State Supreme Court’s interpretation, and why?
- Reflect on your course UCOR 2910: “Ethical Reasoning in Business,” or any other ethics course you took in the UCOR. Depending on when you took it, and who your professor was, you may have used different terms or a different framework to think about ethical values. But you likely can at least appreciate these five values:
- Autonomy: a person’s ability to govern herself and to order her own life (as the ethicists say, to be an ‘end in herself’) implies that she must not be used as a means to an end that she did not choose (most closely associated with deontology)
- Non-pain/Pleasure: a person’s capacity to experience pain or pleasure implies that I must not cause him pain unnecessarily (most closely associated with utilitarianism)
- Equality: a person must not be regarded or treated as inferior to or superior to other persons
- Cooperation: when people cooperate, they form trust, and living in a high- trust environment makes possible many of the things we associate with a good life (most closely associated with contractarianism)
- Character Excellence: I should want to be the kind of person who enjoys doing ethical things and doesn’t enjoy doing unethical things. If so, I am a person with an excellent or virtuous character, and this is widely regarded as a source of personal well-being. However, by doing unethical things, I may harm or corrupt my own character (most closely associated with virtue ethics)
Which values ought you to focus on if you were a manager at Fisons, the pharmaceutical company in the case? What course of action would you have taken if you were the manager and you were aware of the case specifics regarding drug testing and what the company knew about the effects of taking the drug?