Question

In: Finance

An employee at the supermarket you manage mopped one of the aisles in the store and...

An employee at the supermarket you manage mopped one of the aisles in the store and placed signs at the ends of the aisle to warn people not to use the aisle until the floor has dried. One customer walked around the sign, slipped, fell, and suffered serious injuries. Her lawyer comes to you with the following story. She says that she is going to sue the store for the negligence that led to the customer's injuries. However, she says that she doubts that she can win since case law in the state makes it clear that the sign is considered a reasonable warning so that contributory negligence by the customer would eliminate the liability of the store. This means that the customer will get nothing, but one can never be completely sure. The worst part is that the customer has no insurance, has incurred large hospital bills, cannot work for several months, and has no source of support.

The lawyer makes the following deal. She will forgo any fee for the case and will sue only for the amount equal to the medical costs incurred and the wages lost if you will agree to testify that there was no sign in place to warn that the floor was wet. The payment will be made by the insurance company. This will not affect your position with the insurance company, and you will save the attorney’s fees. Should you make such a deal? What if you knew that the law in mist states would provide an award because their laws hold the warning signs are insufficient and a complete physical barrier has to be in place? Discuss ethical issues.

Solutions

Expert Solution

After studying the given case in depth, in my opinion, it is the customer's fault that she did not see the warning sign and met with the accident. But we cannot say that it is entirely her fault because from a psychological perspective, when a customer comes to shop, his/her entire concentration is mainly on acquiring the goods. In this situation they might not be prepared for what may come out of ordinary. When a customer is walking in aisle, most of them would not bother to look what stays at the end of the aisle in general, especially in such crowded areas like a supermarket. Also, from the supermarket's employee, he/she did her job by putting up a sign.

From an ethical point of view, it is neither ones fault in my opinion.

As the supermarket manager, I would consider taking the deal because placement of barrier might have altogether avoided the accident though there is a negligence from her side she suffered the injuries, paid all medical bills, and has no one to support her. Although she has the maximum probability of losing the deal, it is on our ethical sense from psychological perspective for not placing a complete physical barrier in the way of the aisle which might have alerted the customer as she might have seen it or would have stumbled on it, which would have made the case even more one sided (supermarket). With regards to future considerations and avoiding such mistakes from now on as customers are the ones that prosper the business and to avoid bad mouth publicity by the customer I would consider the deal if I were a ethical person.


Related Solutions

Problem Scenario You are the store manager for a regional supermarket chain. Your store employees are...
Problem Scenario You are the store manager for a regional supermarket chain. Your store employees are non-union and management intends to keep it that way. Recently, a local union has attempted to organize your employees to form a union. This incident was reported to top management at headquarters. You later received orders from headquarters to discharge or in the words of one senior manager “Get rid of all Union instigators immediately” from your store who have signed union authorization cards...
A man sued a supermarket because he fell in the store. The supermarket company used its...
A man sued a supermarket because he fell in the store. The supermarket company used its customer database to show that the man regularly bought a lot of alcoholic beverages. 1. What is the term that describes this kind of use of information? How likely is it that supermarket lawyers would have gotten this information before supermarket cards were used to record purchases? (Why?)
Two grocery store checkout systems are being evaluated for adoption by a national supermarket chain. One...
Two grocery store checkout systems are being evaluated for adoption by a national supermarket chain. One of the two systems was set up for testing in an Ormond Beach, Florida store while the other was set up in Portland, Oregon. A sample of 120 customers in the Florida store showed a mean checkout time of 4.1 minutes. An independent sample of 100 customers from the Oregon store yielded a mean checkout time of 3.4 minutes. Historical data maintained by the...
What is PTC doing to manage employee engagement?
PTC is one of the world's largest software companies and employee engagement is one of its primary corporate goals. The company strives to appreciate and recognize employees by making sure that their jobs are meaningful and aligned with the company's corporate goals. PTC offers career development, such as in terms of management development, coaching, and team building. A corporate framework allows employees to see where they are in their current jobs and what they need to do to be in...
A leader's personal bias may impact their ability to manage conflict with an employee. Have you...
A leader's personal bias may impact their ability to manage conflict with an employee. Have you witnessed leader bias in your workplace? How did the leader's bias influence the outcome of the conflict? If you were the leader, how would you manage your own personal bias?
You are asked to create to to-do list program to store and manage to-do items for...
You are asked to create to to-do list program to store and manage to-do items for user. You need to define a class to-do item which holds the following attributes: • Id => number, generated by the program when item is created • Title => string • Description => string • Type (e.g. shopping, housing, work, etc.) => Enum • Priority => number between 1 to 5 • Status => (e.g. done, in progress, hold, etc.) => Enum • Create...
As an employee, write an internal memo to your manager addressing the following: For the Supermarket...
As an employee, write an internal memo to your manager addressing the following: For the Supermarket business, identify the factor that you believe is most likely to limit potential output capacity. Suggest several ways (other than raising prices) the business can maximize the contribution margin per unit of this limiting resource. (Hint: These businesses often do implement the types of strategies you are likely to suggest. Thus, your solution to this case may explain basic characteristics of businesses that you...
Suppose that the time between two absences of a supermarket employee in a company follows an...
Suppose that the time between two absences of a supermarket employee in a company follows an exponential distribution. Based on the past data on number of supermarket employees absent in a particular month, it has been observed that on an average 5 supermarket employees tend to be absent in any given month. What is the probability that the time between two absences for a particular supermarket employee is: Less than 2 weeks Between 2 weeks and 4 weeks More than...
The U-Mart Supermarket is a convenience store company that has five store located in different location...
The U-Mart Supermarket is a convenience store company that has five store located in different location at UTM Skudai. At the end of each year, the management of the UTM wants to know the performance of the company. They have decided to use a computer program to help them in analyzing the company performance based on the total sales of each quarter in all stores. Develop a C program to perform this task using array and function based one following...
A) Using the scenario described by “Each store employs one or more employees; each employee is...
A) Using the scenario described by “Each store employs one or more employees; each employee is employed by one store”, work the following problems: 1. Identify each entity. 2. Identify each relationship type. Justify your answer. 3. Create the basic Crow's Foot ERD using Visio. B) Using the scenario described by “A job assignment can be assigned to more than one employee at a time; each employee can have only one job assignment”, work the following problems: 1. Identify each...
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT