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Archive for September, 2010
« Previous EntriesSelf-pity is no reason to give in to greed
Tuesday, September 28th, 2010The Wall Street Journal reported last week on a fascinating new study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association. In a randomized trial, over 300 resident physicians were asked about the acceptability of receiving gifts from pharmaceutical companies. However, one group was first asked about the sacrifices - lost sleep, long [...]
Cool it!
Friday, September 24th, 2010Continuing my Friday series on keeping your business out of court, let’s take a look at a recent situation faced by McDonald’s. You undoubtedly remember that, a few years back, McDonald’s was sued by the family of an elderly woman who reportedly suffered serious burns when she dropped a cup of the company’s coffee [...]
When is a business too big to manage?
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010Interstate egg farmer Austin DeCoster apologized yesterday at Congressional hearings into August’s recall of 550 million factory farmed eggs that were contaminated with salmonella. More than 1,600 people were reportedly sickened by eggs from DeCoster’s farms, and DeCoster sounded reasonably sincere when he said that he “pray[s] several times each day” for all of [...]
The recession may be over, but the misery is not
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010We’ve all seen the headlines about how a group of economists has declared the recession to be officially over. Glad they think so, but does anyone else? Unemployment is still at unacceptable levels, foreclosures continue to accelerate, and a record number of Americans are living below the poverty level. The recession may [...]
Keep the faith … to yourself
Friday, September 17th, 2010Continuing my Friday series on keeping your business out of court, let’s focus on a news story that should be getting a lot more attention. After all the hoopla around Reverend Terry Jones’ threat to burn the Quran on September 11th, you’d have thought that his mean-spirited behavior was the biggest available news about [...]
Why don’t regulators talk to one another?
Thursday, September 16th, 2010Outgoing BP CEO Tony Hayward took a beating before Parliament yesterday, defending his company’s safety record in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill. It would be great to report that Parliament was investigating the accident as part of maintaining strong diplomatic relations with the U.S., but its reasons for grilling Hayward were more [...]
Did U.S. Foodservice pay enough for its alleged fraud?
Monday, September 13th, 2010The Wall Street Journal reported today that U.S. Foodservice, a food distribution company, has agreed to pay $30 million to settle civil charges that it fraudulently inflated the prices it charged the U.S. government for food products purchased over a five-year period. According to the Journal, prosecutors claim that U.S. Foodservice created shell companies [...]
Be careful whom you fire … and when!
Friday, September 10th, 2010Continuing my Friday series on keeping your business out of court, let’s look at the mess that’s brewing between HP and its former CEO, Mark Hurd. The circumstances of Hurd’s departure from HP are, as one of my high school teachers liked to say, “clear as mud.” Hurd was accused of sexually harassing [...]
Is BP trying to fix the problem, or just the blame?
Thursday, September 9th, 2010BP has taken a beating in the media since the release of its internal report on the Deepwater Horizon accident. The report identifies a number of interrelated failures that, together, led to the explosion that killed eleven people and massively polluted the waters of the Gulf. The report attributes some of those failures directly [...]
Is it ethical to make Terry Jones an instant celebrity?
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010I was more than a little appalled to learn that Reverend Terry Jones, pastor of the fifty-member Dove World Outreach Church in Gainesville, Florida, plans publicly to burn copies of the Quran on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the September 11th bombings. Everyone from President Obama to General Petraeus has asked Reverend Jones [...]
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