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Ethics and corporate governance
Ethics and corporate governance
Ethics and corporate governance
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A Civil Action The movie A Civil Action brings up an interesting idea that many people in the public don't see or hear about very often. The idea that the big corporations often don't take into account the safety of the people that work for them or the people that live around the factories. These big corporations are run entirely by money and the idea of what things will cost and how much money they can possibly make. Too many times money is more important than the lives of human beings and the people that run these places only see in dollars and cents. The moral issues that this dilemma brings up are immense. This has been happening for centuries since the industrial revolution. Workers were subjected too harsh conditions and unsafe factories so that more goods could be produced. They had children as young as seven and eight years old working 15 hour days. In our modern times, toxic waste now plays a big part in the safety of people. The waste that these companies produce and dump under our noses don't seem to bother them in the least. The way microeconomics effects this must be fully explored to realize the way the corporate world thinks and acts. The goal of any corporation is to make the maximum profit that they can providing a good or service to the community while doing it as inexpensively as possible to them. Too many times producing these goods, toxic by-products are also produced. Nuclear power plants create plutonium, factories let poisonous gasses into the atmosphere, and chemicals are dumped into the drains and washed into our water everyday while being unknown to the people around them. The issue then becomes what to do with these poisons at the cheapest cost to retain the most revenue. In A Civil Action the W.R. Grace company decided that the best place to dump the T.C.E. was in the river behind the plant. It's too bad that all the people who lived down stream were also effected by the carelessness of this company. It got into the drinking water and gave kids cancer and seizures among other health conditions. These companies try to cover up these kinds of things as much as possible by buying people off. They think that if they give people money for their losses than everything will be alright. For huge corporations dealing with billions of dollars these payoffs are only a drop in the bucket for them.
At the turn of the 21st century, the already vulnerable residents of Mesquite, NM, were receiving an unequal distribution of air, water and other types of pollution because of a nearby multinational company called Helena Chemical. I will examine Helena Chemical Company by using justice theory, considering vulnerability and examining cases between the Mesquite community and Helena Chemical.
Exxon/Mobil, one of the nation’s leading oil producers, has its main refinery located in Beaumont, Texas. Each year, the residents of Beaumont/Port Arthur have to contend with the 39,000 pounds of pollution spewed each year by the Exxon refinery. Exxon’s emissions are 385% above the state refinery average. In 1999, the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Committee (TNRCC) allowed the plant to increase their emissions, without allowing the public to have a say in the matter. Interestingly, 95% of the people living near the plant are of African American descent and are in the poverty range. Some believe that this, along with the lack of education in the area, allows Exxon to get away with such high emissions. Residents in nearby neighborhoods have been complaining of headaches, nausea, eye, and throat irritation for years. Since 1997, Mobil has repeatedly violated health standards in its emissions of two key air pollutants: sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide, These “rotten egg” smells are so strong, one can smell it through a car driving past the refinery. After numerous complaints and one record of a refinery worker becoming unconscious because of the fumes, the EPA awarded Exxon with a $100,000 environmental justice grant in October of 1998. Hopefully, Exxon has put the money to good use and cleaned up their emissions.
On March 28, 1979, at 4:00 A.M. Eastern time, the worst accident in commercial nuclear power history happened. It was a nice day in Dauphin county, Pennsylvania, and then it all happened. This accident was rated a 5 on a scale that only goes to 7. The scale is called International Nuclear Event Scale. It all started inside the secondary-system where the pilot-operated relief valve was stuck open releasing large amounts of nuclear reactor coolant. This horrific accident caused many scientists to worry about nuclear energy, as well as concerning scientists that it could be a danger to the world, so this caused many safety concerns among activists and the general public which resulted in in new regulations for the nuclear industry, and has been cited as a contributor to the decline of a new reactor construction program that was already underway in the 1970s. Even though this sounds like it should have caused many people to develop cancerous cells, epidemiological studies analyzing the rate of cancer in and around the area since the accident, determined there was a small statistically non-significant increase in the rate and thus no causal connection linking the accident with these cancers has been substantiated. After
In the movie Erin Brockovich not only were children affected by the water contamination but the adults were also negatively affected. In this film the families were directly exposed to carcinogens that were used for water pressure in a multi-million dollar company located a few miles away from the home. One particular family that caught my attention was the first family that filed a case against Pacific Gas & Electric Company. Donna Jensen and her family filed a lawsuit again this company because of a real estate issue. Fortunately, Erin Brockovich worked as the lawyer's assistant and was the first individual to realize that this company was hiding the truth about the chemicals used in the facility.
The movie, A Civil Action, relates to a true story of two corporation’s improper disposal of trichloroethylene and its consequences on a small town in Massachusetts. High incidences of leukemia arise and the affected families seek support to address the responsible parties by employing small firm, personal injury attorney, Jan Schlichtmann. Upon taking the case, he is greeted with unanswered questions and claims of improper hazardous waste disposal by local tanneries and corporations. The clients make clear that they are simply seeking ownership of those who caused the incidents and apologies for the committed actions that resulted in the deaths of their loved ones.
Pollution has always been a big concern for anyone who has seen films or pictures from some of the Southeast Asian countries, where smog sometimes fills the whole sky of cities. Indeed, pollution is a terrible thing, but unfortunately it is a real concern for our modern times. There is always a price to pay for advancing, and in many cases that price is the creation of harmful substances to the environment around us, and sometimes even to us. One shocking example of this happened not so long ago right here in the United States, when one of the five great lakes, Lake Erie, was so full of pollution around Cleveland that almost all of the wildlife died and people could literally walk across the top of the pollution on the lake. Obviously, nobody wants anything like this to ever happen again. Fortunately, the lake was eventually cleaned up, but the damage was done, both to the environment and to the psyche and mindset of the American people. Some people see big box retailers as a cause of much pollution, and for some people that’s all they need to hear in order to be eternally opposed against big box retailers.
The movie “A Civil Action” released on January 8, 1999 provides viewers with an extraordinary story of the nightmare that occurred in Woburn Massachusetts in the late 1970’s. The people of this small town at the time had no idea what was going on until there were various cases of Leukemia in small children that ultimately resulted in the early passing of them. The people eventually had gone to find out that the drinking water in this small town was contaminated and there were many women that stepped in to get answers. This movie is a tremendously jaw dropping, eye opening account of a heartbreaking true story incident. There are various elements of negligence in this movie including, duty, legal cause, proximate cause and damages.
While it seems somewhat illogical, especially in markets, to take a precautionary approach for every single case, nature and the human interaction with it can have much more dramatic effect if not treated more carefully. Flint, Michigan was a clear case where risks were not taken very seriously and as a result many people caught diseases and died. The biggest mistake that causes these types of situations is due to the perception of risk and partisanship. Grouping cultures and political affiliations can cause many of those in power to not see true problems that stand before them. They take voluntary risks that are clear and dangerous and spin them into involuntary risks. Because of this, issues such as the Flint water crisis can easily be pushed aside as “propaganda” or as the chief and staff referred to it as “political football.” Without correctly assessing risks and hazards and being more cautious towards our perceptions towards risk, dramatic problems such as the Flint water crisis will continue to happen across the
...nerators, the Anti-Toxics movement is another important movement that has added to the struggle with Environmental Justice. The Anti-Toxins movement began in the late 1970s as soon as President Jimmy Carter acknowledged Love Canal, New York, a catastrophe spot. Carter in due course evacuated the area for safety reasons. Ever since the evacuation the former citizens of Love Canal got together to form the Citizens Clearinghouse of Hazardous Waste. Its goal is to aid thousands of neighboring clusters to fight against deadly waste exposures. Several anti-toxics movement have formed during the past several years to advocate for stricter government policy with regard to pollution prevention. These groups argue for the abolishment of toxic waste, arguing that some areas would be affected by pollutants given the structure of the economy of the United States of America.
The Chesapeake Bay is polluted with agricultural waste. We see things like 1.5 billion pounds of chicken waste that no one wants to take responsibility for. Ignoring standards, a waterway was tested for E. coli; the standard is 125 FCU/100ml of water. Yet this waterway’s level was at 48392 FCU/100ml. An industry that will go to great lengths to make sure that Congress doesn’t impose sanction against them.
Love Canal is one of the most infamous toxic waste disaster in history. The Love Canal site began its life as a project linking “the upper and lower Niagara Rivers” in western New York, in order to provide power to the homes and industry that William T. Love intended to build (Beck, 1979, para. 5). In 1910 William T. Love Rn out of funding for this project, and the land was subsequently sold to Hooker Chemical Company. The Hooker Chemical Company purchased this land for the specific reason of dumping their toxic waste. At one-time process of dumping toxic waste directly into the ground was legal, as long as it was your land. However, we did not understand the future problems it would cause. Around
There are few things in life that could be worse than loosing you child to such a horrible disease as leukemia. One can only imagine having such a tragedy repeat itself throughout you community time after time. To compound such tragedies, imagine being poisoned yourself and having to fight some of the largest local corporations to prove the truth and get it stopped. This is the community setting for Jonathan Harr's true-to-life legal thriller A Civil Action. The book was an award winner for "Best Seller" in 1995 and was named the 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award.
It was clear that the governments in America would not issue a permit to Union Carbide plant under such circumstances, which lacked severe environmental standards and permitted slum dwellers to live near the plant and so on. Such actions were the ones that led to more deaths. Before the major gas leakage from the MCI unit on December 3, 1984, some people were killed because of phosgene gas leakage. However, no one took it seriously, despite the media report. One of the reasons that people ignore this was because people didnt know the potential danger of the chemical plant.
Corporations, through guidance of new laws, in the future in the United States, should be held more accountable for environmental crimes, because without these new laws corporations will continue to pay meniscal fines and serve little to no time in prisons for destroying the environment in which we have to live and survive.
A framework of such kind would push initiatives of justice for families that are burdened to this form of disrespect. Many lives would be saved and it would force the government and these companies to own up to their transgressions. No community should have preventable diseases thrown onto them when it could have been avoided if the government was honest. The environment itself would be much more safe and healthy if communities weren't targeted for placement of these toxic facilities. It would make people more aware and vocal of what is going on and the standard of living for human life would be preserved. Moreover, communities and the government would share the responsibility of keeping the environment healthy.