Chapter 41: Employment Law
One of the arguments that Mark Hunger was wrongfully terminated is that he had a right
under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, to report something if it was hazardous and
causing any serious harm or even death. Hunger knew that Grand Central Sanitation wasn’t
legally licensed to be handling anything hazardous, but found out that when they were picking
garbage up from a center company that there were things in there that weren’t supposed to be. He
followed the right protocol by going to the owner and vice-president of Grand Central Sanitation,
but when they didn’t do anything, he went to the state police. He wanted to make sure that the
employees handling these hazardous items weren’t hurt. He was doing what he thought was best
for everyone. This act says that employers are supposed to make sure their employees were
working in a safe and healthy work environment, but in this case they weren’t. They were
handling hazardous items, which some of the employees most likely had no idea this was going
on. Hunger was just doing what he thought was best for the work environment that he was
working in, but got fired for trying to do the right thing.
One of the arguments that Mark Hunger was legally terminated is that he reported his
company was illegally disposing of hazardous items, but didn’t give them much time to take
action in their own ways. The company had many ways they could have gone about getting
down to the bottom of the problem. One of the leaders of the company could have gone directly
to the other company and ask if they were disposing of theses types of items, employees
could’ve inspected the trash before actually putting it in their truck, or Grand Central
Sanitation’s owner could’ve instructed his employees not to pick up the waste at all. Instead,
Hunger took it upon himself that they weren’t going to do anything about it and brought in the
state police to inspect the items that were on the truck, but to their surprise nothing was found.
No matter if Hunger was really telling the truth or not, when nothing was found there was
nothing that was violating the law. They weren’t licensed to dispose of hazardous waste, but
there was no proof that they were. So, in this case he was legally fired because when he filed the
complaint and nothing was violated, the company had the right to fire him because he wasn’t
doing what he thought was best for the company he worked for.
I don’t believe that Hunger will prevail. When Hunger made his claim to the police, he
was right to do so because that company was not licensed to carry hazardous items at all. He saw
that they were, so he wanted to make sure that everyone was working in a safe environment, so
he reported it. When the police searched the truck there were no hazardous items found
anywhere, which means the company wasn’t violating any laws like Hunger claimed they were.
If Hunger would have found something when the police were searching that was violating the
law, then was fired, I do believe he would prevail. But, in the case that they are in and nothing
was found, I don’t believe he will prevail at all.
Chapter 42: Antitrust
One argument that the per se standard applies to this case is the complaint that was
imposed on dentists from contending with each other on certain things that they are wanting to,
such as the discount fees. The people of the CDA are only allowed to offer the final price of the
services, they are not allowed to advertise any type of discounts on their services in prices at all.
According to the book, this would be considered a price discrimination because they are
advertising to customers about their prices that have dropped. In this case, price discrimination is
considered an illegal per se. An illegal per se is a presumed to be unreasonable, so in that case it
is illegal. This is why the per se stand applies to this case.
One argument that a rule of reason standard applies to this case is that it has to do with
