State Farm’s Judge State Farm just spent a quarter of a billion dollars to settle allegations that seem like a plot straight out of a John Grisham novel. You may remember that in The Pelican Brief, a wealthy and very shady character with a case heading to the Supreme Court paid for the murder of two Supreme Court […] View
The Linebacker and the Congressman It is not often that football players and Congressmen are indicted for the same wrongdoing, but last month NFL linebacker Mychal Kendricks and Representative Chris Collins from New York were both indicted for insider trading. Kendricks has pled guilty; Collins denies the charges. Both also face civil charges. The federal government alleges that Representative Collins […] View
Systematically Analyzing Three Identical Strangers STOP READING! STOP RIGHT NOW! DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER! Unless you have already seen Tim Wardle’s new documentary “Three Identical Strangers.” In that event, you have my permission to read on. Otherwise, stop and go see the movie. This post contains spoilers and this movie should not be spoiled. Assuming that you have already […] View
God, Trump, My In-Group and Your Out-Group I seldom have an original idea, but from time to time I read things that prompt me to write a blog post nonetheless. Recently I read an article in The Washington Post that explored how the members of a Southern Baptist church in Luverne, Alabama reconciled their religious beliefs with the words and deeds of […] View
Thai Rescue: Difficult Decisions and Ethical Reasoning As I write this blog post, scuba divers are in the middle of a rescue effort to save twelve young soccer players and their coach from a flooded cave in Thailand. Eight of the boys are out. Four players and the coach remain to be saved. The story has the world’s attention; it is terrifying, […] View
Elizabeth Holmes: Scamming Silicon Valley In 1996, I published an article in the Ohio State Law Library on “vaporware” in Silicon Valley. Vaporware is the marketing ploy of preannouncing products that do not yet exist and may never come into existence in their described form. This was a common marketing practice in Silicon Valley at the time, but it carried […] View
Doing the Crime, Not the Time Recently a fired employee at my university, UT-Austin, was arrested and charged with six counts of tampering with government records (his time sheets) as law enforcement officials investigated him for fraud. It appears that Jason Shoumaker often claimed pay for hours worked in his job as a facilities director at the University of Texas School […] View
Sinking in the Swamp There’s been a lot of talk about draining the swamp recently, but not a lot of swamp is getting drained. According to our Ethics Defined video, “[c]orruption is the abuse of power or position for personal gain.” In behavior that could not be swampier, Steve Cohen, the president’s “personal attorney,” has, according to Fox News […] View
The Cost of the Libor Lies I just finished reading The Spider Network by David Enrich. It’s the story of the Libor-rigging scandal, by some people’s lights the biggest financial fraud in history. Just to remind you, Libor is the London Interbank Offered Rate. Libor was supposedly being set by many participant banks sending to a central authority their cost of […] View
Business Ethics Makes the Business I recently finished reading Professor Francis J. Schweigert’s Business Ethics Education and the Pragmatic Pursuit of the Good (2016). I commend this book to your attention. The book is an argument “that business schools should incorporate education for justice into their business and management curriculum as the pragmatic pursuit of the good. This argument is […] View