Please assist with the given problem found in the textbook: Business Law: The Ethical, Global, and E-Commerce Environment 13th edition written by Jane Mallor, A. James Barnes, Thomas Bowers, and Arlen W. Langvardt (2007). Please answer question in detail.
Since at least early 1950s, the International Harvester Company’s gasoline-powered tractors had been subject to “fuel geysering.” This was a phenomenon in which hot liquid gasoline would shoot from the tractor’s gas tank when the filler cap was opened. The hot gasoline could cause severe burns and could ignite and cause a fire. Over the years, at least 90 fuel geysering incidents involving International Harvester tractors occurred. At least 12 of these involved significant burn injuries, and at least one caused a death.
International Harvester discovered the full dimensions of the fuel geysering problem in 1963. In that year, it revised its owner’s manuals to warn buyers of new gas-powered tractors not to remove the gas cap from a hot or running tractor. In 1976, it produced a new fuel tank decal with a similar warning. Because of an industrywide shift to diesel-powered tractors, however, this warning had a very limited distribution to buyers of new tractors, and it rarely reached former buyers. International Harvester never specifically warned either new or old buyers about the geysering problem until 1980, when it voluntarily made a mass mailing to 630,000 customers.
In 1980, the FTC issued a complaint against International Harvester, alleging that its failure to warn buyers of the fuel geysering problem for 17 years violated FTC Act 5. Agreeing with the initial decision of an administrative law judge, the full commission held that International Harvester’s failure to warn was not deceptive but was unfair for purposes of FTC Act 5. In the Matter of International Harvester, 104 F.T.C. 949 (1984).
Applying the three-part analysis discussed earlier in this chapter, the commission weighed the consumer injury caused by fuel geysering against the cost of providing effective warnings about it. The commission concluded that the 12 instances of serious burns and the one death caused by fuel geysering were injuries that might have been avoided by a warning and were sufficient to outweigh the $2.8 million apparently required for an effective warning. However, the commission’s method clearly left open the possibility that in some cases, a practice’s benefits to consumers or to competition might outweigh the harm it causes.
Required to answer:
Problem 1. Is it morally right to balance personal injury and human life against economic gain?
Isn’t each human life valuable beyond measure? Can decision-making processes such
As the FTC’s ever be justified?
Problem 2. On the other hand, if you think that the commission’s balancing exercise is justifiable, how is one to strike the balance? How would you have decided International Harvester if ethical analysis, rather than legal standards, controlled the decision?