MAKING UP IS HARD TO DO
Apr 8th, 1999 • Posted in: Weekly OverviewA major concern of the law and of ethics is making up for some wrong — setting a situation right and giving injured parties what’s due them. Several of our top stories in this week’s edition of Business Ethics Newsline deal with this dilemma.
At the top of our report is a story about another major verdict against a tobacco company, a decision that some observers say signals a new attitude on the part of U.S. juries toward awarding such damages.
Next, a report on the aftermath of the Olympic scandal: According to sources close to the negotiations, Olympic sponsors want the organizing committee to make up for the event’s loss of luster with additional advertising rights and other marketing opportunities.
From our international desk comes a report about the Nigerian president-elect’s visit to the United States — part of his campaign to restore confidence in a nation riddled — and nearly ruined — by corruption.
We follow up with three stories dealing with the intersection of ethics and technology: IBM’s mandate that Web sites carrying its advertising disclose their privacy policies; a verdict relieving the Weather Channel from liability for failing to predict a storm; and Colgate-Palmolive’s decision to end animal testing for some of its products.
And we conclude our wrap of the week’s news in ethics with three stories on various aspects of business practice: a report on bottled water; a European Union claim that some paper companies conspired to fix prices; and a petition by an Amazon tribe that claims a U.S. businessman has no right to patent a plant used in their sacred rituals.
Our Canadian correspondent, Errol Mendes, files two dispatches this week, one concerning international debt relief and the other about a truly universal problem: stress on the job.
Our Trendlines feature links you to two features dealing with ethics: a look at corruption in small companies, and a story about how the medical profession is struggling to keep ethical advances accelerating at the same pace as technological achievement.
This week’s edition concludes with three follow-up stories from our Whatever Happened to… file: a spat over noisy U.S. aircraft, a shipment of toxic waste that predictably no one wants, and Latrell Sprewell’s discrimination suit.
Have a productive, ethical week.
–Carl Hausman
