Whistleblower 2 Essay

Submitted By Tmtmc9G
Words: 1267
Pages: 6
Open Document
Whistleblowing and Sarbanes-Oxley

Tina-Marie Cole
Law, Ethics, and Corporate Governance LEG 500 - Lecture Course
Prof. Lisa M. Morris
January 20, 2015
Whistleblowing and Sarbanes-Oxley

Trinity Industries, or TRN (NYSE), manufactures roadway guardrails, which are a highway public safety feature. In 2005, TRN changed its rail head design saving the company two dollars per rail head but failed to notify the Federal Highway Administration which is required by a federal ruling. The newly designed rail heads that TRN has installed on U.S. roads nationally do not propel the guardrails away from crashing vehicles in head on collisions. The lower cost railheads can send the guard rail slicing through a car potentially injuring passengers unlike there predecessors design that pushed the rail away from the wreck and oncoming traffic. The new railheads known as the ET-Plus model failed five crash tests which were also undisclosed to authorities. Joshua Harman, a competitor to TRN discovered the changed design had gone unreported and sued TRN on behalf of the federal government (Davis & Polcyn, 2014). Joshua Harman stands to make one third of a potentially billion dollars in his law suit (Ivory & Kessler, 2014). As a whistleblower, Joshua Harman is saving potential lives and injuries, fighting back at corporate greed and earning a fortune in the process. A whistleblower exposes all forms of alleged misconduct on behalf of an organization which can be illegal and or immoral. Whistleblowers frequently expose fraud, corruption, safety, health, and environmental violations as well as violations to the law, regulations and public interests. Whistleblowers can make their allegations known to individuals within the organization or through external means such as law enforcement agencies, media or regulatory agencies. Whistleblowers can gain financially but often have negative repercussions happen after leaking allegations. They can be reprimanded over broken confidentiality clauses, fired, black listed by other organizations or suffer legal troubles themselves. The key characteristics of a whistleblower are a dissent, a breach of loyalty, and an accusation. If the individual does not side with the way the company is operating they have a dissenting opinion. This can cause them to be at moral conflict with operations or violations which can cause someone to go public with accusations. Whistleblowers can feel a struggle between loyalty to colleagues and loyalty to the public and which one has the greatest overall pull will move the individual. Whistleblowers largely face an ethical dilemma. They may see wrong doings or illegal activity but not feel comfortable reporting them. They often report incidents to their superiors within the company but when resolutions don’t occur quickly enough the whistleblower struggles with escalating reporting. Whistleblowers have to fear a loss of their employment, personal status, reputation, friends and colleagues, and their ability to earn future income. Most whistleblowers struggle in making the decision to accuse their companies of wrong doings and can suffer depression and psychological strain during the process (Halbert & Ingulli 2012). The ET-Plus railheads TRN installed nationally saved the company two dollars in production cost by having four inches of metal cap instead of the original five inches. That missing one inch of metal has been the cause of guardrail break away failure causing vehicles to flip or sending the guard rail straight through the vehicle causing extensive injuries and deaths. Joshua Harman drove from Virginia to Wisconsin inspecting the rails installed on the highways. Due to Harman’s lawsuit TRN is facing losing a billion dollars (Davis & Polcyn, 2014). The Federal Highway Administration did not go along with the lawsuit Harman initiated so under Dodd Frank he can
Show More

Related Documents: Whistleblower 2 Essay

Case Study 2 The Whistleblowers

MGT 495 Case Study #2 “The Whistleblowers” 1) The Whistleblower Protection Act, gives a legal protection to those employees who engage in Whistleblowing. It provides privacy and protection from reprisal to federal employees, former employees or any others who report a claim of mishandle of gross, fraudulence, or misuse of power. This Law was enacted in 1989 and its primary purpose was to strengthen and make better the defense and security for the rights of federal employees to avoid any unfair…

Words 956 - Pages 4

Sarbanes-Oxley Act Essay

employees of publicly-traded companies and employees of contractors and subcontractors of publicly-traded companies. The whistleblower protection provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act prohibits a broad range of retaliatory adverse employment actions, including discharging, demoting, suspending, threatening, harassing, or in any other manner discriminating against a whistleblower. This paper will critically analyze the whistle blowing protections under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, SOX. Characteristics of…

Words 641 - Pages 3

Essay on Whistleblowing

Strayer University Jan Jones July 19, 2015 Describe the key characteristics of a whistleblower, and briefly summarize one (1) researched instance of whistleblowing in one (1) publicly traded company within the last 12 months. Include the details of the issue that the whistleblower reported and the effect of the whistleblower’s actions on both the whistleblower himself and the company. A whistleblower is a person who exposes any kind of information or activity that is deemed illegal, dishonest…

Words 1281 - Pages 6

Essay about Week 3 Assignment 1 04 20 15

Week 3 Assignment 1: Whistleblowing and Sarbanes-Oxley Act Who are Whistleblowers and what do they do? Could you be a Whistleblower? There are several definitions for the term whistleblower. The most accurate and significant definitions to the subject of this paper are the definition given by the Black’s Law Dictionary and the one by the Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA). The Black’s Law Dictionary defines a whistleblower as a worker who declines to participate in and informs on the unlawful…

Words 1067 - Pages 5

United Arab Emirates and Mohamed Salem El-hadad Essay

embassy’s cultural attaché. El-Hadad who was known for his work ethic and integrity, reported the fraud, resulting in the dismissal of the cultural attaché and five other embassy employees. Two years later, El-Hadad suffered a fate common to many whistleblowers, namely, recriminations. UAE government officials who had apparently been embarrassed by the fraud uncovered by El-Hadad “got even” with him by producing false documents that indicated he had been involved in the fraud. The scrupulously honest…

Words 1596 - Pages 7

Week 5 Knowledge Check Study Guide 2 - Challenges in business ethics and social responsibility Essay

Week 5 Knowledge Check Study Guide Concepts Mastery Score: 9 / 9 Questions Challenges in business ethics and social 100% 1 2 3 100% 4 5 6 100% 7 8 9 responsibility Corporate social responsibility Complications associated with whistleblowing Concept: Challenges in business ethics and social responsibility Mastery 1. 100% Questions 1 2 3 What is one of the challenges in business ethics? A. Business ethics is completely independent of the law. B. Business ethics does not assert…

Words 992 - Pages 4

Edward Snowden Violating Individual Rights

They claim themselves whistleblowers and defend their actions as whistleblowing. Whistleblowing is publicly exposing what they believed to be wrongdoing in the U.S. government and military with the hope of stopping it (Pg 5). GAP (Government Accountability Project) is a national whistleblower protection and advocacy organization which noted that Snowden met the legal test required to be considered a whistleblower. They claim “what he has revealed evidences illegality…

Words 1311 - Pages 6

Essay about Assignment: Internal Control and Fraud

devaluation of her investment in Worldcom stock. This is all because at that time there is no whistleblower hotline in practice and whistleblower took on great risk and may fear of retaliation for the rest of their life. To ensure the potential misconduct to be revealed before it causes severe consequences, an effective whistleblower hotline processed should be established. The main objective of the whistleblower hotline is to reduce employee misconduct and reduce organizational risk by identifying and…

Words 3042 - Pages 13

Assignment 4 Essays

Judy should file a claim with the EEOC for the first step. (2) (a) She was a member of a protected class, (b) She was qualified for the job, (c) She suffered an adverse employment action, (d) She was replaced with someone outside her protected class. (3) When discrimination has occurred, Utaz can find bona fide occupational qualification. It allows employers to discriminate in hiring on basis of gender when doing a reasonable for job. 2. (1) In summer, I teach dance to the teenagers in a famous…

Words 392 - Pages 2

Edward Snowden: Hero Or Traitor

Hero. Whistleblower. Patriot. Traitor. These are just a few of the names that Edward Snowden has been called. In June 2013 Snowden, a former system administrator for the CIA and counterintelligence trainer for the DIA, leaked thousands of classified documents on surveillance programs to the media. This leak triggered a security melt down. The leaks included the government’s methods and reasons for collecting on American people. In an interview with one of Britain's newspapers, The Guardian, Snowden…

Words 470 - Pages 2