Business Law

Q1: Describe four types of costs that businesses must absorb due to the regulatory process
Q2: You are chief executive officer of a toy manufacturing firm. Your firm has
been inspected by officials at OSHA, the federal Occupational Safety and Health
Administration, for alleged violations of workplace safety regulations. The evidence
presented to the agency was confusing and conflicting. You feel strongly that the
company should not be penalized. Nevertheless your firm has been ordered to pay
a substantial fine, and an administrative law judge ordered you to make some very
expensive modifications in its manufacturing processes.
Should you continue to seek review of your case before the agency’s officials?
Should you appeal by filing a lawsuit to reverse the agency’s decision?
If you are successful in court, under what circumstances can you recover your
attorney’s fees?
Q3: In some cases, U.S. antitrust authorities have approved mergers that were rejected by European
antitrust authorities. How might such inconsistencies create problems for multinational corporations
and what are some possible solutions?
Q4: You are feeling very good about your life. This positive feeling is due in large part to
your recent promotion to national sales manager of Ever-Present Technologies Inc. Your
company offers full-service consulting and computer sales to manufacturers, especially
those in the consumer products areas.
Two weeks into your new responsibilities, you are beginning to lose your good
feelings. This change of spirit results from hearing about various activities among your
sales personnel. First, you learn one of your new sales representatives has been visiting
with a competitor’s salesperson about each focusing on particular customers while
agreeing not to call on the other’s customers. Second, a district manager reports that
a large, extremely valuable customer is asking for a pricing structure that is more favorable
than prices offered to any other customer. The district manager expressed concern
that your company may lose this customer’s business.
What legal worries do you have about each of these situations?
What type of information should a training/education program for your sales force
include?
What are the ramifications if you decide to ignore these situations as you try to
return to your “happy” state of mind?