Local lawsuit Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Local lawsuit - Essay Example In one of such incidents, Monsanto had incorrectly advertised its herbicide as being biodegradable and further asserted that it left the soil clean. The event happened in the year 2009 and it had to pay a fine of 15000 Euros (BBC, 2009). It has also been identified that the senior manager of Monsanto ordered one of the consulting firms which is in Indonesia to offer a bribe of $50000 to a top bureaucrat working with environment ministry of Indonesia in the year 2002. Therefore, in this regard, Monsanto had to pay a fine of $1.5m (BBC, 2009). Risk Management Strategies Companies often face with lawsuits as they tend to violate the governments’ requirements or tend to break the criminal laws. Once the companies have identified the risks, it becomes significant to minimize the risks and thus manage them to a greater extent. The company needs to ensure that there is better supervision and therefore there must be clear communication of the policies. The key to reduce the risks of w orkplace related lawsuits is to be proactive. It becomes significant for the companies to execute policies and trainings which are designed to avoid the lawsuits (Pakroo & Pakroo, 2011). Risk management can be identified as a procedure meant to prevent any sort of physical, financial and time loss in an organization (Chan, 2010). Monsanto should not have advertised wrongly since doing so not only leads to lawsuits but also ruins the reputation of the company. The company could have ensured that the staffs are made aware of the problems of such illegal activities and therefore should have provided the staffs with proper information on risks and consequences of such illegal activities. Such risks could have as well been avoided if Monsanto was capable of identifying the critical point in the business processes where such illegal activities are likely to occur. The company could as well designate internal structures so that the staffs can report problems, risks and people those are sus pected with such activities. If all these strategies were adopted by Monsanto previously, then lawsuits could have avoided. Ethical Considerations Reflected In the Laws Applicable To This Case The case is related to fraudulent trade practices and bribery. Therefore, the laws related to these two illegal trade practices need to be considered. The ethics and anti-bribery rules try to raise the problems of ethical and moral attitude towards both bribery and corruption. In the ethical considerations related in the laws, offering bribes is as offensive as receiving it (Sosnow & Narayanan, n.d.). According to US law of deceptive advertisement, it is unethical if any company communicates a deceptive claim to 20-25 percent or greater than this amount of the target audience. Deceptive advertising is considered as wrong since it harms competitors, consumers as well as society as a whole. Deceptive advertisement is considered as wrong since the person practicing it tends to violate the need of morality (Carson, 2002). Sources of Law The cases are related to bribery and deceptive advertising practices. Therefore, bribery law of US has been demonstrated under 18 U.S. C. Â § 201 (United States Office of Government Ethics, 2011). It has been found that both the state and federal laws are responsible to regulate deceptive advertising. It is the Lanham Trademark Act that controls false advertising at the federal level. The Federal Trade Commission and state consumer protection agencies are mainly