fired over facebook case study

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Case Study: Should He Be Fired for That Facebook Post?

• Mary Anne Watson
• Gabrielle R. Lopiano

A small-business owner deals with a prized employee’s very public misstep.

By the time Susannah Winslow remembered that her ringer was off, she had seven text messages from her father, Dell, who was also her boss. Dell was the president of Downcity Motors, which owned BMW, Range Rover, and Mercedes-Benz dealerships in Charlotte, North Carolina, and had been in the Winslow family for three generations. Susannah, the general manager, was poised to take over in five years, when her dad retired.

• MW Mary Anne Watson is a professor of management and the associate director of the TECO Energy Center for Leadership at the University of Tampa.
• Gabrielle R. Lopiano is a PhD candidate in organization and management at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.

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Fired Over Facebook: Using Social Media to Complain Essay

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• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
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Evaluation of Solution

The case study “Fired over Facebook” by Gossett (2012) from Case Studies in Organizational Communication is concerned with employers monitoring workers’ social media. This problem is high on the agenda in the modern world because a significant amount of communication and information sharing happens online, and general access to such information is nowadays unlimited. The largest issue, in this case, is associated with the variety of ways whereby employees’ organizational responsibilities may come into direct conflict with their rights (Gossett, 2012). In this assessment, a situation reflecting the problem under consideration will be discussed along with solutions for addressing such incidents. Because an employee of BRIXX restaurant made a negative comment online that mentioned the company’s name, she was fired instantly regardless of the situation not being as transparent as it first seemed. The solution was rather ineffective because it raised questions about the appropriateness of monitoring employees’ behaviors online, prompting arguments on social media policies in the workplace.

The ongoing increase in the number of social media platforms has blurred the boundaries between personal and workplace privacy. From the perspective of ethical theory, some level of controversy arises between supporting an employee’s duty to an organization and supporting individual rights (Gossett, 2012). The key conflict, in this case, arises when bosses monitor the activities of their subordinates online because they are afraid of their reputation being ruined. On one side of the argument, workers must support the rules and interests of their companies online if they want to retain their positions. On the other side, collective systems have a responsibility to protect the interests of employees. Overall, the issue is complex and requires serious collaboration between employers and employees to establish boundaries that all parties will find acceptable.

The case study mentioned the example of an employee being fired because of her online behavior. In this case, a waitress, Ms. Johnson, complained about a customer who left a small tip after occupying a table in her station for three hours. Upset with the customer, she posted the following on her Facebook page: “Thanks for eating at BRIXX, you cheap piece of **** camper” (Gossett, 2012, p. 210). The restaurant’s management justified firing the waitress because she violated a policy clause that prohibited workers from making negative online statements involving the company. Thus, the company sought to solve the problem of a negative post on social media by firing a worker without considering the array of accompanying details (“Managing and leveraging workplace use of social media,” 2016). While this may seem an open-and-shut case, the problem lays in the fact that the waitress used a privacy setting that shared her Facebook posts with only a small number of friends. As a result, the solution to the problem received a mixed response from the general public that was aware of the case.

The BRIXX case is important to consider because it can be interpreted in numerous ways. Some may say that an employee who does not like the rules set by an employer should find another job. For example, a commenter left the following observation: “The girl violated company policy. Her fault, not the company’s” (Gossett, 2012, p. 211). Another common response to the situation was that it is fine to complain online about one’s job as long as all tracks are covered, for example: “Had Ashley not mentioned BRIXX then it would be just another person complaining about her job” (Gossett, 2012, p. 212). Other comments on the situation included such opinions as “complaining is acceptable but offline” and “Ms. Johnson did not violate the policy because her post was not visible to the general public.”

The debate about whether it is right for workers to make negative online comments about an organization where they work is directly related to the policies that companies establish. Any business can enforce any rules regarding online behavior, and employees have the right to choose whether they will work for companies that have strict rules. However, it is important that these rules are as specific as possible and do not violate the laws and regulations established in a given jurisdiction. The power of unions also plays a significant role in creating guidelines associated with media use because, after all, they represent the interests of workers and will not allow employers to set standards that cannot be achieved.

Thus, the solution to the issue of monitoring employees’ online behavior is associated with combining corporate social media policies that consider and respect privacy rights. These policies should provide answers to the main question regarding what extent a message posted online showing a negative attitude toward a company may differ from a private email sent by a worker to a third party (Gossett, 2012). Other questions should include the following:

What are the limits for employers in terms of the ability to fire workers because of their private statements online?

• Does an organization have the right to monitor what workers say on social media?
• When does online monitoring restrict the personal right to free speech?
• Does it matter what workers say about a company in their free time?
• Is positive feedback okay, but negative is forbidden?

When a company establishes a policy that gives answers to all the questions mentioned above, fewer confrontations will likely take place between employers and employees. This solution will work when both bosses and subordinates comply with their responsibilities and perform their due diligence in pointing out whether a party has violated the established rules. Unfortunately, violations and misunderstandings are bound to occur due to the nature of human error; however, in investigating cases of their employees’ unethical online behavior, employers should exercise caution and consider all aspects of the situation.

In conclusion, the case of an employee being fired because of her negative comments posted online has proved to be extremely complex. Companies that monitor what their workers say online are deeply concerned with their image and public perception. The issue of being fired over Facebook posts is controversial because every individual has likely complained about his or her work at least once, and social media is a common vehicle for doing so. The case of BRIXX firing a waitress for making a negative online comment received major attention, with opinions being divided into: “the post should not have been published” and “such posts are made every day.” The solution of firing a worker over a Facebook post was not effective because the management did not explore the issue in great detail, thus failing to consider all circumstances of the situation. Thus, it is a good idea to establish a clear workplace policy outlining the pros and cons of social media posting before firing workers because of non-compliance.

Managing and leveraging workplace use of social media. (2016). Web.

Gossett, L. M. (2012). Fired over Facebook: Issue of employee monitoring and personal privacy on social media websites. In S. May (Ed.), Case studies in organizational communication: Ethical perspectives and practices (pp. 207-217). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

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IvyPanda. (2021, June 30). Fired Over Facebook: Using Social Media to Complain. https://ivypanda.com/essays/fired-over-facebook-using-social-media-to-complain/

"Fired Over Facebook: Using Social Media to Complain." IvyPanda , 30 June 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/fired-over-facebook-using-social-media-to-complain/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Fired Over Facebook: Using Social Media to Complain'. 30 June.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Fired Over Facebook: Using Social Media to Complain." June 30, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/fired-over-facebook-using-social-media-to-complain/.

1. IvyPanda . "Fired Over Facebook: Using Social Media to Complain." June 30, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/fired-over-facebook-using-social-media-to-complain/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Fired Over Facebook: Using Social Media to Complain." June 30, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/fired-over-facebook-using-social-media-to-complain/.

Who really gets fired over social media posts? We studied hundreds of cases to find out

Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Monash University

Assistant researcher, Monash University

Disclosure statement

Brady Robards receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Darren Graf does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Monash University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

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What you say and do on social media can affect your employment; it can prevent you from getting hired, stall career progression and may even get you fired. Is this fair – or an invasion of privacy?

Our recent research involved a study of 312 news articles about people who had been fired because of a social media post.

These included stories about posts people had made themselves, such as a teacher who was fired after they came out as bisexual on Instagram, or a retail employee let go over a racist post on Facebook.

It also included stories about posts made by others, such as videos of police engaging in racial profiling (which led to their dismissal).

Racism was the most common reason people were fired in these news stories, with 28% of stories related specifically to racism. Other forms of discriminatory behaviour were sometimes involved, such as queerphobia and misogyny (7%); workplace conflict (17%); offensive content such as “bad jokes” and insensitive posts (16%); acts of violence and abuse (8%); and “political content” (5%).

We also found these news stories focused on cases of people being fired from public-facing jobs with high levels of responsibility and scrutiny. These included police/law enforcement (20%), teachers (8%), media workers (8%), medical professionals (7%), and government workers (3%), as well as workers in service roles such as hospitality and retail (13%).

Social media is a double-edged sword. It can be used to hold people to account for discriminatory views, comments or actions. But our study also raised important questions about privacy, common HR practices and how employers use social media to make decisions about their staff.

Young people in particular are expected to navigate social media use (documenting their lives, hanging out with friends, and engaging in self-expression) with the threat of future reputational harm looming.

Read more: Doxxing, swatting and the new trends in online harassment

Are all online posts fair game?

Many believe people just need to accept the reality that what you say and do on social media can be used against you.

And that one should only post content they wouldn’t mind their boss (or potential boss) seeing .

But to what extent should employers and recruiting managers respect the privacy of employees, and not use personal social media to make employment decisions?

Or is everything “fair game” in making hiring and firing decisions?

On the one hand, the capacity for using social media to hold certain people (like police and politicians) to account for what they say and do can be immensely valuable to democracy and society.

Powerful social movements such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter used social media to call out structural social problems and individual bad actors.

On the other hand, when everyday people lose their jobs ( or don’t get hired in the first place ) because they’re LGBTQ+, post a photo of themselves in a bikini, or because they complain about customers in private spaces (all stories from our study ), the boundary between professional and private lives is blurred .

Mobile phones, emails, working from home, highly competitive employment markets, and the intertwining of “work” with “identity” all serve to blur this line.

Some workers must develop their own strategies and tactics , such as not friending or following workmates on some social media (which itself can lead to tensions).

And even when one does derive joy and fulfilment from work, we should expect to have some boundaries respected.

Employers, HR workers, and managers should think carefully about the boundaries between professional and personal lives; using social media in employment decisions can be more complicated than it seems.

A ‘hidden curriculum of surveillance’

When people feel monitored by employers (current, or imagined future ones) when they use social media, this creates a “ hidden curriculum of surveillance ”. For young people especially, this can be damaging and inhibiting.

This hidden curriculum of surveillance works to produce compliant, self-governing citizen-employees. They are pushed to curate often highly sterile representations of their lives on social media, always under threat of employment doom.

At the same time, these very same social media have a clear and productive role in revealing violations of power. Bad behaviour, misconduct, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of bigotry, harassment, and violence have all been exposed by social media.

So, then, this surveillance can be both bad and good – invasive in some cases and for some people (especially young people whose digitally-mediated lives are managed through this prism of future impact) but also liberating and enabling justice, accountability, and transparency in other scenarios and for other actors.

Social media can be an effective way for people to find work , for employers to find employees , to present professional profiles on sites like LinkedIn or portfolios of work on platforms like Instagram, but these can also be personal spaces even when they’re not set to private.

How we get the balance right between using social media to hold people to account versus the risk of invading people’s privacy depends on the context, of course, and is ultimately about power.

Read more: As use of digital platforms surges, we'll need stronger global efforts to protect human rights online

• Social media
• Online harassment
• Invasion of privacy
• Employee rights
• Online harm
• Right to privacy

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Related Practices & Jurisdictions

• Civil Procedure
• Constitutional Law
• Corporate Business Organizations
• Criminal Law Business Crimes
• Labor Employment
• Litigation Trial Practice
• 6th Circuit (incl. bankruptcy)

On August 19, 2020, in  Marquardt v. Carlton, et al. , No. 19-4223, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed summary judgment for the City of Cleveland on a former employee’s claim that the city had terminated his employment in retaliation for his exercising his rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The city had discharged Jamie Marquardt, an emergency medical services (EMS) worker, due to inflammatory social media posts he allegedly made regarding the police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014, which garnered national attention. The Sixth Circuit’s decision applies only to public employers, but it is noteworthy because it sheds light on how courts determine whether an employee’s off-the-clock social media speech constitutes a “public concern” so as to warrant protection under the First Amendment.

In November 2014, Cleveland police officers responded to an alert claiming that a male was pointing a pistol at people at a Cleveland recreation center and park. The officers arrived on the scene and shot and killed the suspect. The purported “suspect” was, in fact, 12-year-old Tamir Rice and the “pistol” was a toy. This incident made local and national headlines and was followed by protests about police officer use of lethal force.

Marquardt was a captain with the Cleveland Emergency Medical Services (EMS). Approximately 14 months after Rice was killed, disturbing posts containing dehumanizing language appeared on Marquardt’s social media feed expressing satisfaction with the killing. The posts were removed from Marquardt’s social media feed within hours. Marquardt denied making the posts and instead claimed that “an acquaintance” with access to his phone had made them while he was sleeping.

Several Cleveland EMS employees expressed concern about the posts. The City of Cleveland ultimately terminated Marquardt’s employment. Marquardt’s termination letter advised him that he had violated the City of Cleveland’s social media policies and that his posts “‘did not involve a matter of public concern.’”

Marquardt sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which gives public employees a cause of action for public employer violations of the U.S. Constitution. Marquardt alleged his employment had been unlawfully terminated in retaliation for his protected speech in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The district court granted summary judgment to the City of Cleveland, concluding that Marquardt’s posts were not protected speech because the speech involved a matter of private interest—not of public concern.

The Sixth Circuit’s Analysis

To determine if a public employer unlawfully retaliated against an employee for the employee’s speech, courts ask three questions: “one, whether the employee engaged in protected speech; two, whether the action taken against the employee would discourage an individual of ‘ordinary firmness’ from engaging in the activity that led to his discipline; and three, whether the employee’s protected speech was ‘a motivating factor’ behind the adverse action taken against the employee.”

Here, the Sixth Circuit focused only on whether Marquardt’s social media posts constituted “protected speech” under the first prong. The Sixth Circuit stated that to resolve a question of whether an employee engaged in protected speech, it employs “a separate two-part test.” It first asks whether the speech was on a “‘matter of public concern,’” and if it was, it “balance[s] the interests of the employer and employee, asking whether the ‘employee’s free speech interests outweigh the efficiency interests of the government as an employer.’”

The district court granted summary judgment for the City of Cleveland because it determined that the social media posts had not addressed a matter of public concern, and instead related to the author’s personal interest in Rice’s death. The district court therefore did not address whether Marquardt’s free speech interests outweighed the efficiency interests of the City of Cleveland. The Sixth Circuit held that this was a reversible error for three primary reasons.

First, the Sixth Circuit noted that the fatal shooting of Tamir Rice had sparked “fierce public debate over whether the officers’ actions were justified.” To demonstrate this point, the Sixth Circuit cited various national and local news stories published in or around the time that the social media posts were made. Second, the court observed that the author of the posts “seem[ed] to assert that Rice’s shooting was justified because he was ‘terroriz[ing]’ people by pointing a gun at them,” and that “[Rice] … should not be treated as a hero by Clevelanders.” The Sixth Circuit held that these aspects of the posts directly related to a “‘subject of general interest and of value and concern to the public.’”

Finally, the Sixth Circuit was careful to note that as a matter of law “the shocking and no doubt painful aspects of Marquardt’s comments,” which included profanity, racist language, and an expression of pleasure in Rice’s death, did not, by themselves, “alter the broader subject of the speech or transform it into a ‘personal grievance.’” In so doing, the Sixth Circuit further noted that “expressions of opinion, even distasteful ones, do not become matters of personal interest simply because they are phrased in the first person or reflect a personal desire.”

For these reasons, the Sixth Circuit reversed and remanded the case to the district court.

Key Takeaways

Employers are navigating in a time of a global pandemic, political protests, hate crimes, racial tensions, economic disruption, and a potentially divisive upcoming U.S. presidential election. Employees increasingly use their off-the-clock time to make political and social statements on social media. Public employers may want to be mindful of the Sixth Circuit’s decision in  Marquardt  as they make employment decisions that implicate free speech. Despite the toxic language and views expressed in some social media posts, the Sixth Circuit held that “these disturbing first-person sentiments do not, as a matter of law, alter the broader subject of the speech or transform it into a ‘personal grievance.’”

Importantly, the Sixth Circuit did not decide whether the speech in  Marquardt  was actually protected. Instead, it remanded the case to the district court to address whether Marquardt’s free speech interests outweighed the interests of the City of Cleveland in the efficient administration of its duties.

As public debate continues to intensify, the Sixth Circuit’s holding in  Marquardt  will only become more salient for public employers.

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Yes, You Can Get Fired for Your Social Media Posts: 9 Times People Learned This Lesson the Hard Way

People say it all the time: “Watch what you post on social media, it could get you fired from your job!” But in reality, how often does that happen? And wouldn’t you have to royally screw up for your employer not to give you a second chance?

Real talk: Yes, even a Snapchat or Instagram post that seems innocuous could be grounds for your dismissal. Don’t believe me? Read these nine cautionary tales from people who’ve been in that position.

• When she posted an Instagram photo after her team landed a new client, one young professional learned the importance of keeping company news a secret, no matter how exciting it might be. (The Financial Diet)
• These bankers somehow didn’t get the memo: Pretending to be a deadly terrorist group is just plain stupid (not to mention, wildly insensitive). (The Huffington Post)
• This one’s unbelieveable: A former high school teacher publicly tweeted about her partying lifestyle and drug possession. Easy lesson learned: Keep your personal life offline. (The Daily Dot)
• In one of the most public “Someone said what? ” moments, communications executive Justine Sacco posted a racist tweet when she boarded a flight to Africa and was promptly fired upon landing. Yes, having a filter is important. (The Guardian)
• Chances are you’ve probably worked a job or two that you didn’t love. But here’s a tip: Don't post about your sheer hatred for your role on Facebook. (The Washington Post)
• Something we should all do a little more of: Stay off Twittter at work. It doesn’t always ends well. (SFGate)
• Regardless of what industry you’re in, make sure you don’t post anything that insults your company’s customers . (NBC News)
• A pro tip for job seekers: Don’t talk about your potential or new employment until the dust has settled. (Business Insider)
• That rumor that companies do social media background checks on potential new hires? Yep, it’s true . (The Daily Muse)

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Company Accused of Firing Over Facebook Post

By Steven Greenhouse

• Nov. 8, 2010

In what labor officials and lawyers view as a ground-breaking case involving workers and social media, the National Labor Relations Board has accused a company of illegally firing an employee after she criticized her supervisor on her Facebook page.

This is the first case in which the labor board has stepped in to argue that workers’ criticisms of their bosses or companies on a social networking site are generally a protected activity and that employers would be violating the law by punishing workers for such statements.

The labor relations board announced last week that it had filed a complaint against an ambulance service, American Medical Response of Connecticut, that fired an emergency medical technician, accusing her, among other things, of violating a policy that bars employees from depicting the company “in any way” on Facebook or other social media sites in which they post pictures of themselves.

Lafe Solomon, the board’s acting general counsel, said, “This is a fairly straightforward case under the National Labor Relations Act — whether it takes place on Facebook or at the water cooler, it was employees talking jointly about working conditions, in this case about their supervisor, and they have a right to do that.”

That act gives workers a federally protected right to form unions, and it prohibits employers from punishing workers — whether union or nonunion — for discussing working conditions or unionization. The labor board said the company’s Facebook rule was “overly broad” and improperly limited employees’ rights to discuss working conditions among themselves.

Moreover, the board faulted another company policy, one prohibiting employees from making “disparaging” or “discriminatory” “comments when discussing the company or the employee’s superiors” and “co-workers.”

The board’s complaint prompted Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, a law firm with a large labor and employment practice representing hundreds of companies, to send a “lawflash” advisory on Monday to its clients, saying, “All private sector employers should take note,” regardless “of whether their work force is represented by a union.”

The firm added, “Employers should review their Internet and social media policies to determine whether they are susceptible to an allegation that the policy would ‘reasonably tend to chill employees’ ” in the exercise of their rights to discuss wages, working conditions and unionization.

American Medical Response of Connecticut denied the labor board’s allegations, saying they were without merit. “The employee in question was discharged based on multiple, serious complaints about her behavior,” the company said in a statement. “The employee was also held accountable for negative personal attacks against a co-worker posted publicly on Facebook. The company believes that the offensive statements made against the co-workers were not concerted activity protected under federal law.”

The case involves Dawnmarie Souza, who had to prepare a response to a customer’s complaint about her work. Ms. Souza, the board said, was unhappy that her supervisor would not let a representative of the Teamsters, the union representing the company’s workers, help prepare her response.

Ms. Souza then mocked her supervisor on Facebook, using several vulgarities to ridicule him, according to Jonathan Kreisberg, director of the board’s Hartford office, which filed the complaint. He also said she had written, “love how the company allows a 17 to become a supervisor” — 17 is the company’s lingo for a psychiatric patient.

The labor board said that her comments “drew supportive responses from her co-workers” and led to further negative comments about the supervisor. Mr. Kreisberg said: “You’re allowed to talk about your supervisor with your co-workers. You’re allowed to communicate the concerns and criticisms you have. The only difference in this case is she did it on Facebook and did it on her own time and her own computer.”

An administrative law judge is scheduled to begin hearing the case on Jan. 25. Marshall B. Babson, a member of the National Labor Relations Board in the 1980s, said a broad company rule that says one cannot make disparaging comments about supervisors is clearly illegal under labor law. But he said an employee’s criticizing a company or supervisor on Facebook was not necessarily protected activity.

“There will arguably be cases where it is not concerted activity,” Mr. Babson said, suggesting that if a worker lashed out in a post against a supervisor but was not communicating with co-workers, that type of comment might not be protected.

If the Facebook conversation involves several co-workers, however, it is far more likely to be viewed as “concerted protected activity,” he said.

But employees might cross the line into unprotected territory if they disparage supervisors over something unrelated to work — for instance, a supervisor’s sexual performance — or if their statements are disloyal.

Courts often view workers’ statements as disloyal when they are defamatory and are not supported by facts. Mr. Babson cited a case upholding the firing of airline workers who held signs saying their airline was unsafe. But, he said, if employees held signs accurately saying their airline or restaurant had been cited for dozens of safety violations, that would most likely be protected.

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Should We Fire Him for That Post? – Case Solution

The "Should We Fire Him for That Post?" case study deals with social media etiquette in relation to work ethics. Kenton was considered one of the best salespeople in Downcity Motors. He disagreed with the company's strategy in launching a project. The problem was he published his disagreement on a Facebook post, which apparently maligned the company's image and against the company's policy. What recourse does the company have against Kenton and his post?

​Mary Anne Watson and Gabrielle R. Lopiano Harvard Business Review ( R1603X-PDF-ENG ) March 01, 2016

Case questions answered:

• Should Downcity Motors fire Kenton or not?
• What would you do in this situation?

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Should We Fire Him for That Post? Case Answers

Should we fire him for that post – case study.

This “Should We Fire Him for That Post?” case study deals with labor laws and social media etiquette in relation to work ethics.

Downcity Motors owns Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Range Rover dealerships in Charlotte, North Carolina. Kenton, one of Downcity’s employees and the best salesperson in the company has recently posted a controversial picture and comment on Facebook.

Kenton disagreed with the Sales Manager’s decision to serve BBQ and plastic ware during a Mercedes launch because it does not represent the luxury product the car dealership is selling.

Dell, the President of the company, and Susannah, the General Manager, believe that the post had a negative impact on the company’s image and reputation. Susannah has to decide whether to let Kenton go or retain him.

According to Toby Diller, Downcity Motors’ head of HR, Susannah has 3 options:

First , Susannah can ignore Kenton’s post because the photos he posted of the event were his own, and he was only expressing his opinion.

Second , Susannah may take disciplinary actions against him, which could involve a written warning added to his personnel file or suspend Kenton from work with or without pay.

Third , Susannah may consider firing Kenton.

Additionally, the HR manager thinks that firing him for that post would be completely legal because Kenton violated the employee handbook by being disrespectful of the company image, and this was his second offense.

Communication

I believe lack of communication is one of the most important issues Downcity is facing. As a General Manager, Susannah should know and understand all her employees and always keep an open line of communication with them.

Kenton is Downcity’s best salesperson but is also a professionally inexperienced individual. He joined Downcity Motors directly out of college. Therefore, his professional experience was built only with Downcity.

Having no previous work history, Kenton might not have been aware of any protocols or policies associated with posts on social media. His Facebook posts were a clear reaction to co-workers’ or clients’ actions and a way of expressing his frustration and consternation.

Susannah has not identified Kenton’s level of emotional intelligence, and she did not think that rejecting his proposal would create so much frustration.

It was clearly explained to Kenton that he should not post anything that reflects negatively on the organization or its customers. Yet, Kenton seemed to express a high negative affectivity [1] every time he thought the company’s well-being was at risk.

His previous posts showed his obvious frustration towards events that, in his opinion, could have damaged the organization and its sales.

Kenton is a very enthusiastic young individual. He loves his job, and he is very successful at generating sales. He showed great workplace courage when he expressed his opinion about the launching event to Tyson, the sales manager.

He also showed courage when he went to Susannah to lay out his vision on how the event should be organized and how Tyson’s plan did not align with the brand that Downcity Motors is representing.

According to James Deter, in his article entitled “Cultivating Everyday Courage, “employees whose workplace courage produces good results have often spent months or years establishing that they excel at their jobs, that they are invested in the organization, and that they’re evenhanded.” [2]

Kenton has proven his commitment to the company by becoming their most successful salesperson and by showing his concerns whenever he thinks the organization is at risk.  Deter also argues that “competently courageous people focus primarily on three things: (1) framing their issue in terms that the audience will relate to; (2) making effective use of data; and (3) managing the emotions in the room”. [2]

Kenton showed workspace courage. However, he could not control his emotions or use the information he had at hand to pitch his idea to Susannah and to provide clear data to support it.

This event had been of high interest to him, and he asked Tyson for details about it for weeks. As Kenton’s direct superior in Downcity Motors, Tyson must have…

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17 People Who Were Fired For Using Facebook

With the prevalence of social media, it's getting harder and harder to separate our personal and professional lives.

It's to the point that we need to assume that almost everything we share online, even privately, will be public.

Here are 17 people who lost their jobs for using Facebook. Whether you side with the business or the employee, the lesson is the same: Think twice about what you share online.

A waitress can't deal with a bad tip.

Ashley Johnson, a 22-year-old North Carolina waitress,  blasted two customers over Facebook for stiffing her on the tip and keeping her late. She also took the time to mention her workplace by name.

She was fired for breaking a rule about disparaging customers.

A juror solicits help on the case over Facebook.

A British woman serving jury duty posted details of the case she was serving on . The she wrote, "I don't know which way to go, so I'm holding a poll."

An anonymous tip resulted in the woman being immediately dismissed from the jury.

This football cheerleader might have drawn a swastika on a guy.

Caitlin Davis was fired from her job cheerleading for the New England Patriots when a photo of her surfaced on Facebook. She appears next to a passed-out partygoer who's been covered in phallic symbols, swastikas, and the phrase "I'm a Jew."

She also has a Sharpie in her hand.

She stayed home from work just to browse Facebook.

A woman called out of work at National Suisse in Switzerland complaining of migraines and saying she needed to work in a darkened room at home . She stayed home, and when her Facebook activity started showing up, she was promptly fired.

Some silliness in a hospital results in suspension.

Great Western Hospital staff in Swindon, Wiltshire, England,  were suspended for participating in "The Lying Down on the Job Game," where people photograph themselves lying face-down at work. The staff were lying on the hospital's floors, resuscitation tables, and even the helipad.

This guy doesn't get to be the mascot for the Pirates anymore.

Andrew Kurtz was a pierogi mascot for the Pittsburgh Pirates until one of his Facebook posts, aimed at the team's owner and managers, got some negative attention : "Coonelly extended the contracts of Russell and Huntington through the 2011 season. That means a 19-straight losing streak. Way to go Pirates."

He was fired the next day.

These flight attendants hated on their airline carrier.

Thirteen Virgin Airlines crew members were fired after publicly discussing aspects of their job on Facebook. They shared the number of times that certain airplane engines had been replaced and that the cabins were infested with cockroaches.

They also took the time to insult the passengers who ultimately pay their salaries.

This teacher was fired from "the most ghetto school in Charlotte."

A Charlotte, North Carolina, teacher was recommended for firing by the superintendent after making some remarks that the superintendent perceived as racially insensitive. The teacher listed "teaching chitlins in the ghetto of Charlotte" in her "Interests" section and "I am teaching in the most ghetto school in Charlotte" in her "About Me" section.

This royal guard was offended by Kate Middleton.

Buckingham Palace Guardsman Cameron Reilly isn't Kate Middleton's biggest fan . He posted:

“Hur and william drove past me on Friday n all a got was a shitty wave while she looked the opposite way from me, stupid stuck up cow am I not good enough for them! posh bitch am totally with u on this 1 who reely gives a f about hur,”

Can you guess what happened after that?

Teachers shouldn't Facebook their students.

Bronx high school teacher Chadwin Reynolds got fired for being creepy to his students on Facebook . He posted "This is sexy" under pictures they shared.

This picture was enough to cost this teacher her job.

Ashley Payne was forced to resign from her teaching job after posting this picture to Facebook. She is currently fighting to get her job back.

She was depressed, but Facebook showed her having fun on vacation.

Nathalie Blanchard had been living off of disability insurance for depression since 2008. But when Manulife, the Canadian insurance company making the payments, got into her Facebook page , they saw her "relaxing at the beach, hanging out at a Chippendale's-style club, and generally having a lot of fun."

She immediately lost her insurance benefits.

This one is classic.

This exchange is brutal . Screenshots of this exchange have been floating around for a long time, but here it is again.

This teacher said she wanted her students to die.

The day after a sixth grader died during a field trip to the beach, 15-year teaching veteran Christine Rubio posted the following to her Facebook profile :

"After today, I'm thinking the beach is a good trip for my class. I hate their guts."

The school board is figuring out how to proceed.

This nun was asked to leave her convent simply for using Facebook.

Sister Maria Jesus Galan was asked to leave the Santo Domingo el Real convent in Toledo, Spain, because she was spending too much time on Facebook. Fellow nuns said that her Facebook activity “made life impossible.”

This is all after she used the computer to digitize the convent's archives and help handle banking over the internet.

Don't compare yourself to inanimate objects.

Tania Dickinson identifies her job at the New Zealand Social Development Ministry on her profile as a "very expensive paperweight." She brags that she is "highly competent in the art of time wastage, blame-shifting and stationery theft."

The expensive paperweight was fired.

It also helps to not be racist.

Frank Samuelson was a little league football coach in Georgia with some racial issues . He wrote the following on Facebook:

"I was dining in an Asian buffet today (big surprise), and I heard this morning how Asian students are supposedly so much smarter than American kids. My personal observation is that those fishheads still eat with chopsticks. It took Western ingenuity to invent the fork. I'm just saying. ... they ain't that friggin' smart."

Citizens came down hard on the organization and not the coach himself. He readily admits the comment was in poor taste, but he's hired an attorney.

A $35 computer the size of a credit card can do all kinds of things.

Click here to see what the Raspberry Pi can do »

• Main content

Who really gets fired over social media posts? We studied hundreds of cases to find out

What you say and do on social media can affect your employment; it can prevent you from getting hired, stall career progression, and may even get you fired. Is this fair – or an invasion of privacy?

Our recent research involved a study of 312 news articles about people who had been fired because of a social media post.

These included stories about posts people had made themselves, such as a teacher who was fired after they came out as bisexual on Instagram, or a retail employee let go over a racist post on Facebook.

It also included stories about posts made by others, such as videos of police engaging in racial profiling (which led to their dismissal).

Racism was the most common reason people were fired in these news stories, with 28% of stories related specifically to racism. Other forms of discriminatory behaviour were sometimes involved, such as queerphobia and misogyny (7%); workplace conflict (17%); offensive content such as “bad jokes” and insensitive posts (16%); acts of violence and abuse (8%); and “political content” (5%).

We also found these news stories focused on cases of people being fired from public-facing jobs with high levels of responsibility and scrutiny. These included police/law enforcement (20%), teachers (8%), media workers (8%), medical professionals (7%), and government workers (3%), as well as workers in service roles such as hospitality and retail (13%).

Social media is a double-edged sword. It can be used to hold people to account for discriminatory views, comments or actions. But our study also raised important questions about privacy, common HR practices , and how employers use social media to make decisions about their staff.

Young people in particular are expected to navigate social media use (documenting their lives, hanging out with friends, and engaging in self-expression) with the threat of future reputational harm looming.

This woman said her company fired her after her body-positive photo shoot went viral https://t.co/1eOKFPvZaq pic.twitter.com/dpuIQZJvaW — BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) September 29, 2017

Read more: Doxxing, swatting and the new trends in online harassment

Are all online posts fair game?

Many believe people just need to accept the reality that what you say and do on social media can be used against you.

And, that one should only post content they wouldn’t mind their boss (or potential boss) seeing .

But to what extent should employers and recruiting managers respect the privacy of employees, and not use personal social media to make employment decisions?

Or is everything “fair game” in making hiring and firing decisions?

On the one hand, the capacity for using social media to hold certain people (such as police and politicians) to account for what they say and do can be immensely valuable to democracy and society.

Powerful social movements such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter used social media to call out structural social problems and individual bad actors.

On the other hand, when everyday people lose their jobs ( or don’t get hired in the first place ) because they’re LGBTQ+, post a photo of themselves in a bikini, or because they complain about customers in private spaces (all stories from our study ), the boundary between professional and private lives is blurred .

Mobile phones, emails, working from home, highly competitive employment markets, and the intertwining of “work” with “identity” all serve to blur this line.

Some workers must develop their own strategies and tactics , such as not friending or following workmates on some social media (which itself can lead to tensions).

And even when one does derive joy and fulfilment from work, we should expect to have some boundaries respected.

Employers, HR workers, and managers should think carefully about the boundaries between professional and personal lives; using social media in employment decisions can be more complicated than it seems.

A ‘hidden curriculum of surveillance’

When people feel monitored by employers (current, or imagined future ones) when they use social media, this creates a “ hidden curriculum of surveillance ”. For young people especially, this can be damaging and inhibiting.

This hidden curriculum of surveillance works to produce compliant, self-governing citizen-employees. They’re pushed to curate often highly sterile representations of their lives on social media, always under threat of employment doom.

At the same time, these very same social media have a clear and productive role in revealing violations of power. Bad behaviour, misconduct, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of bigotry, harassment, and violence have all been exposed by social media.

So, then, this surveillance can be both bad and good – invasive in some cases and for some people (especially young people whose digitally-mediated lives are managed through this prism of future impact), but also liberating and enabling justice, accountability, and transparency in other scenarios and for other actors.

Social media can be an effective way for people to find work , for employers to find employees , to present professional profiles on sites such as LinkedIn , or portfolios of work on platforms such as Instagram, but these can also be personal spaces even when they’re not set to private.

How we get the balance right between using social media to hold people to account versus the risk of invading people’s privacy depends on the context, of course, and is ultimately about power.

Read more: As use of digital platforms surges, we'll need stronger global efforts to protect human rights online

This article originally appeared on The Conversation .

• social media and employment
• social medi
• employers and social media
• hiring decisions

Brady Robards

Associate Professor in Sociology

Darren Graf

Research Assistant, School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts

Facebook and the unconscionability of outrage algorithms

Although the social media giant doesn't produce divisive content, it prioritises it, and manipulatively fostering such divisiveness on a mass scale in order to profit, knowing it may be inciting violence, is indefensible.

Episode 59: Are There ‘Good’ Trolls?

On a new episode of Monash University's 'What Happens Next?' podcast, Dr Susan Carland and expert guests discuss retaliation, the difference between call-outs and cancel culture, and how to be an ethical digital activist.

Episode 58: Does Digital Vigilantism Work?

When internet users take justice into their own hands, problems arise. On a new episode of Monash University's 'What Happens Next?' podcast, Dr Susan Carland and experts guests discuss the dark side of digital vigilantism, and answer the question: Does it really work?

Instagram and body issues

The platform can have toxic effects on some young people’s body image — particularly girls — but it is also presents an opportunity for parents to start important conversations about online lives.

You may republish this article online or in print under our Creative Commons licence. You may not edit or shorten the text, you must attribute the article to Monash Lens, and you must include the author’s name in your republication.

If you have any questions, please email [email protected]

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This was published 2 years ago

Who gets fired over social media posts? We studied hundreds of cases to find out

By brady robards and darren graf, save articles for later.

Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.

What you say and do on social media can affect your employment; it can prevent you from getting hired, stall career progression and may even get you fired. Is this fair – or an invasion of privacy?

Our recent research involved a study of 312 news articles about people who had been fired because of a social media post.

These included stories about posts people had made themselves, such as a teacher who was fired after they came out as bisexual on Instagram, or a retail employee let go over a racist post on Facebook.

Many believe people just need to accept the reality that what you say and do on social media can be used against you. Credit: Istock

It also included stories about posts made by others, such as videos of police engaging in racial profiling (which led to their dismissal).

Racism was the most common reason people were fired in these news stories, with 28 per cent of stories related specifically to racism. Other forms of discriminatory behaviour were sometimes involved, such as queerphobia and misogyny (7 per cent); workplace conflict (17 per cent); offensive content such as “bad jokes” and insensitive posts (16 per cent); acts of violence and abuse (8 per cent); and “political content” (5 per cent).

We also found these news stories focused on cases of people being fired from public-facing jobs with high levels of responsibility and scrutiny. These included police/law enforcement (20 per cent), teachers (8 per cent), media workers (8 per cent), medical professionals (7 per cent), and government workers (3 per cent), as well as workers in service roles such as hospitality and retail (13 per cent).

Social media is a double-edged sword. It can be used to hold people to account for discriminatory views, comments or actions. But our study also raised important questions about privacy, common HR practices and how employers use social media to make decisions about their staff.

Young people in particular are expected to navigate social media use (documenting their lives, hanging out with friends, and engaging in self-expression) with the threat of future reputational harm looming.

Are all online posts fair game?

Many believe people just need to accept the reality that what you say and do on social media can be used against you.

And that one should only post content they wouldn’t mind their boss (or potential boss) seeing .

But to what extent should employers and recruiting managers respect the privacy of employees, and not use personal social media to make employment decisions? Or is everything “fair game” in making hiring and firing decisions?

On the one hand, the capacity for using social media to hold certain people (like police and politicians) to account for what they say and do can be immensely valuable to democracy and society.

Powerful social movements such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter used social media to call out structural social problems and individual bad actors.

Blurred lines

On the other hand, when everyday people lose their jobs ( or don’t get hired in the first place ) because they’re LGBTQ+, post a photo of themselves in a bikini, or because they complain about customers in private spaces (all stories from our study ), the boundary between professional and private lives is blurred .

Mobile phones, emails, working from home, highly competitive employment markets, and the intertwining of “work” with “identity” all serve to blur this line.

Some workers must develop their own strategies and tactics, such as not friending or following workmates on some social media (which itself can lead to tensions).

And even when one does derive joy and fulfilment from work, we should expect to have some boundaries respected.

Employers, HR workers, and managers should think carefully about the boundaries between professional and personal lives; using social media in employment decisions can be more complicated than it seems

A ‘hidden curriculum of surveillance’

When people feel monitored by employers (current, or imagined future ones) when they use social media, this creates a “ hidden curriculum of surveillance ”. For young people especially, this can be damaging and inhibiting.

This hidden curriculum of surveillance works to produce compliant, self-governing citizen-employees. They are pushed to curate often highly sterile representations of their lives on social media, always under threat of employment doom.

At the same time, these very same social media have a clear and productive role in revealing violations of power. Bad behaviour, misconduct, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of bigotry, harassment, and violence have all been exposed by social media.

So, then, this surveillance can be both bad and good – invasive in some cases and for some people (especially young people whose digitally-mediated lives are managed through this prism of future impact) but also liberating and enabling justice, accountability, and transparency in other scenarios and for other actors.

Social media can be an effective way for p eople to find work, for employers to find employees, to present professional profiles on sites like LinkedIn or portfolios of work on platforms like Instagram, but these can also be personal spaces even when they’re not set to private.

How we get the balance right between using social media to hold people to account versus the risk of invading people’s privacy depends on the context, of course, and is ultimately about power.

Brady Robards is senior lecturer in sociology at Monash University. Darren Graf is an assistant researcher at Monash University

This article appeared first in The Conversation .

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June 16, 2022

Who really gets fired over social media posts? We studied hundreds of cases to find out

by Brady Robards and Darren Graf, The Conversation

What you say and do on social media can affect your employment; it can prevent you from getting hired, stall career progression and may even get you fired. Is this fair—or an invasion of privacy?

Our recent research involved a study of 312 news articles about people who had been fired because of a social media post.

These included stories about posts people had made themselves, such as a teacher who was fired after they came out as bisexual on Instagram, or a retail employee let go over a racist post on Facebook.

It also included stories about posts made by others, such as videos of police engaging in racial profiling (which led to their dismissal).

Racism was the most common reason people were fired in these news stories, with 28% of stories related specifically to racism. Other forms of discriminatory behavior were sometimes involved, such as queerphobia and misogyny (7%); workplace conflict (17%); offensive content such as "bad jokes" and insensitive posts (16%); acts of violence and abuse (8%); and "political content" (5%).

We also found these news stories focused on cases of people being fired from public-facing jobs with high levels of responsibility and scrutiny. These included police/ law enforcement (20%), teachers (8%), media workers (8%), medical professionals (7%), and government workers (3%), as well as workers in service roles such as hospitality and retail (13%).

Social media is a double-edged sword. It can be used to hold people to account for discriminatory views, comments or actions. But our study also raised important questions about privacy, common HR practices and how employers use social media to make decisions about their staff.

Young people in particular are expected to navigate social media use (documenting their lives, hanging out with friends, and engaging in self-expression) with the threat of future reputational harm looming.

This woman said her company fired her after her body-positive photo shoot went viral https://t.co/1eOKFPvZaq pic.twitter.com/dpuIQZJvaW — BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) September 29, 2017

Are all online posts fair game?

Many believe people just need to accept the reality that what you say and do on social media can be used against you.

And that one should only post content they wouldn't mind their boss (or potential boss) seeing .

But to what extent should employers and recruiting managers respect the privacy of employees, and not use personal social media to make employment decisions?

Or is everything "fair game" in making hiring and firing decisions?

On the one hand, the capacity for using social media to hold certain people (like police and politicians) to account for what they say and do can be immensely valuable to democracy and society.

Powerful social movements such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter used social media to call out structural social problems and individual bad actors.

On the other hand, when everyday people lose their jobs ( or don't get hired in the first place ) because they're LGBTQ+, post a photo of themselves in a bikini, or because they complain about customers in private spaces (all stories from our study ), the boundary between professional and private lives is blurred .

Mobile phones, emails, working from home, highly competitive employment markets, and the intertwining of "work" with "identity" all serve to blur this line.

Some workers must develop their own strategies and tactics , such as not friending or following workmates on some social media (which itself can lead to tensions).

And even when one does derive joy and fulfillment from work, we should expect to have some boundaries respected.

Employers, HR workers, and managers should think carefully about the boundaries between professional and personal lives; using social media in employment decisions can be more complicated than it seems.

A 'hidden curriculum of surveillance'

When people feel monitored by employers (current, or imagined future ones) when they use social media, this creates a " hidden curriculum of surveillance ." For young people especially, this can be damaging and inhibiting.

This hidden curriculum of surveillance works to produce compliant, self-governing citizen-employees. They are pushed to curate often highly sterile representations of their lives on social media, always under threat of employment doom.

At the same time, these very same social media have a clear and productive role in revealing violations of power. Bad behavior, misconduct, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of bigotry, harassment, and violence have all been exposed by social media.

So, then, this surveillance can be both bad and good—invasive in some cases and for some people (especially young people whose digitally-mediated lives are managed through this prism of future impact) but also liberating and enabling justice, accountability, and transparency in other scenarios and for other actors.

Social media can be an effective way for people to find work , for employers to find employees , to present professional profiles on sites like LinkedIn or portfolios of work on platforms like Instagram, but these can also be personal spaces even when they're not set to private.

How we get the balance right between using social media to hold people to account versus the risk of invading people's privacy depends on the context, of course, and is ultimately about power.

Provided by The Conversation

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Breaking news, burger king employee, son and his friends fired over viral facebook post.

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A Mississippi mother claims she, her teenage son, and his friends were fired from their job at a Mississippi Burger King after a social media post she made proudly showing off the boys for taking the summer gig and staying away from street violence went viral.

Manager Shakayla Dixon hired her 15-year-old son, Corderrion Valentine, and his four friends at the Clinton, Miss., fast food joint to help them earn extra money and keep them off the streets until school started in the fall, WLBT reported .

“I felt like it was a good thing because we could have really been out doing violence or shooting or killing, but we went out and worked,” Valentine told the outlet.

Dixon, thrilled over hiring the boys, publically praised the boys joining her team in a Facebook post.

The proud mother’s post showed Valentine and his friends posing in front of the store and working in the restaurant’s kitchen.

The post generated over 90,000 likes, and captured actor Nick Cannon’s attention, commending the teens’ hard work and for “staying out of trouble.”

“Now this is the wave! Staying out of trouble, and getting the bag the right way! This is how it’s done kings,” Cannon captioned the Instagram post.

However, Dixon received a phone call from the restaurant’s area manager and district leader soon after the picture went viral.

“She said we don’t want to turn something good into something bad, but we have some concerns,” the mother said.

“The concerns she had were the fact that Corderrion is my son and how much money they were getting paid.”

Dixon claimed that her former manager told her that “a minor is supposed to get paid differently” than adults, which she said was never brought to her attention before.

“My things were when it came down to policy. I feel like policy wasn’t in play in the beginning,” she told the outlet.

The mother and the four teens were then fired from their jobs at Burger King.

It is not disclosed how much the teens earned from the gig.

Valentine, who said he always strives to be a positive role model for his peers and wanted to be an example of how hard work can pay off, shared that losing the job has been difficult.

“I felt like it was a fun experience to get you ready for the real world,” he told the outlet .

Nevertheless, the 15-year-old still believes that the overall message of him and his friends taking on the summer job will show others in his generation that they don’t need to be on the streets getting into trouble.

“I hope that it portrayed a lot of people to do things good and stop the violence,” the teen shared.

Clinton is located in Hinds County, Miss., and is about 8 miles outside Jackson — a city where the violent crime rate is 2.469 per 1,000 residents during a standard year, according to crimegrade.org .

According to the statistics , a crime occurs in Clinton on average every six and a half hours.

Advertisement

Body camera video shows Sonya Massey's final moments before she was fatally shot by a deputy

Authorities released body camera footage Monday of Sonya Massey 's final moments before she was fatally shot by law enforcement at her home in Springfield, Illinois.

Massey, 36, was killed July 6 after she called the Sangamon County Sheriff's Office because she was afraid there might be a prowler outside, according to an attorney for her family and Illinois State Police.

Former Sangamon County Deputy Sean Grayson is accused of shooting Massey in the face after he and another deputy were dispatched to her home shortly before 1 a.m.

Grayson has been indicted on charges of first-degree murder , aggravated battery with a firearm and official misconduct, said Sangamon County State’s Attorney John Milhiser.

Grayson pleaded not guilty last week, according to his lawyer, Dan Fultz, who declined to comment after the body camera footage was released.

In the footage, Grayson and a second deputy can be seen knocking on Massey's door a few times until Massey opens it.

"Please don't hurt me," Massey is heard saying to Grayson. The second deputy was not identified by authorities.

"Why would I hurt you? You called us," Grayson responds.

The deputies tell Massey they checked the area around her house and didn't see anybody, and then ask if she needs help with anything else. Grayson also asks Massey if she's doing OK mentally, to which she answers, "Yes."

"I love ya'll, thank ya'll," Massey says as she's closing her door. The deputies ask her if a black SUV in her driveway with a smashed window is hers, to which she says no and that someone brought it there.

The deputies then go into Massey's house, where they ask her for her name so they "can get out of your hair."

Massey then moves to her stove, where she picks up a pot from a burner. The situation escalates when she moves the pot from the stove.

"Where you goin'?" she asks the deputies.

"Away from your hot, steaming water," Grayson responds.

"I rebuke you in the name of Jesus," she says.

Massey does not approach the deputies with the pot and stays in her kitchen.

"You better f------ not I swear to God I'll f------- shoot you in your f------- face," Grayson says before pulling out his gun.

"OK, I'm sorry!" Massey says as she ducks.

The second deputy also pulls out his gun.

"Drop the f------- pot!" Grayson screams.

Three gunshots are heard as Grayson continues to yell at Massey to drop the pot. Massey cannot be seen from behind the kitchen counter, but video from Grayson's body camera shows that Massey had let go of the pot when she ducked.

The deputies called for emergency personnel.

The second deputy says he's going to get his kit.

"Nah, headshot dude, she's done," Grayson says to him. "You can go get it but that's a headshot."

"Yeah I'm not taking f------- boiling hot water to the f------- head," Grayson continues. "Hey look, it f------- came right to our feet too."

He then goes to get his medical kit, saying, "I mean, there's not much we can do."

"We can at least try and hold the, stop the blood," the second deputy says. He then goes into the kitchen, finds a towel and holds it to Massey. Massey is blurred out in the footage, but a large pool of blood can still be seen near her head, and she can be heard gasping.

When Grayson makes his way back into the home, he asks another deputy who has since entered, "Is there anything we can do for her?" The deputy responds, "No."

"All right, I'm not even going to waste my med stuff then," Grayson says.

The deputy asks Grayson, "Where's the gun?"

"No, she had boiling water and came at me with boiling water," Grayson says.

When Grayson leaves the house, a member of law enforcement standing outside asks him if he's OK.

"Yeah I'm good. This f------- b---- is crazy," he responds and walks to his vehicle shortly afterward.

The second deputy stays with Massey, holding the towel to her head until medical help arrives. Grayson is not seen trying to aid Massey.

Massey was taken to a hospital, where she was declared dead, according to state police.

A use-of-force review conducted by state police found that while Grayson did not attempt to de-escalate the encounter, he was justified in pointing his service weapon at Massey to get her to comply. But it found the shooting was not justified because Grayson advanced toward Massey and put himself in a position where he could have been injured. 

Milhiser, the Sangamon County state's attorney, said in an earlier statement that a review of the state police investigation, including body camera footage, “does not support a finding that Deputy Sean Grayson was justified in his use of deadly force.”

Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell said in a statement last week that Grayson had been fired because it was clear he “did not act as trained or in accordance with our standards.”

In a statement posted Monday to Facebook, Campbell said Massey is dead because of an "unjustifiable and reckless decision" made by Grayson.

"Grayson had other options available that he should have used," Campbell said. "His actions were inexcusable and do not reflect the values or training of our office. He will now face judgment by the criminal justice system and will never again work in law enforcement."

The sheriff went on to say that Massey "needlessly lost her life" and that her family deserves answers.

President Joe Biden also weighed in on the killing on Monday, saying Massey should still be alive and lauding prosecutors for their "swift actions."

Biden said he is "heartbroken" for Massey's children and her family.

"When we call for help, all of us as Americans — regardless of who we are or where we live — should be able to do so without fearing for our lives," the president said. "Sonya’s death at the hands of a responding officer reminds us that all too often Black Americans face fears for their safety in ways many of the rest of us do not."

In a news conference Monday, Ben Crump, the attorney representing Massey's family, contemplated whether race played a role in the deadly shooting.

"That is the lingering question in our community because many of us looked at that video and said, 'If it was a white woman, he would not have done this,'" Crump said.

In a subsequent statement, the lawyer praised a decision to hold the former deputy without bond, describing the move as "another crucial step in the pursuit of justice for Sonya Massey’s family."

Grayson’s next court date is scheduled for Aug. 26.

"We want equal justice for Sonya Massey," Crump said at the news conference. "We said it before: whatever Grayson would be convicted of and sentenced to had it been a white woman is the same thing we want for this Black queen named Sonya Massey."

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CASE sees over 538% spike in entertainment complaints in first half of 2024

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The Consumers Association of Singapore (CASE) has seen a 538% spike in entertainment complaints in the first half of 2024. This was largely due the increase in events and concerts in Singapore.

A total of 670 complaints were received in the entertainment industry in the first six months of 2024, compared with 105 in the same period last year, said CASE in a statement. 

In total, CASE received 7,721 complaints in 1H2024, a 6% increase from 7,316 in 2023. This rise was attributed to a significant surge in complaints within the entertainment industry, despite fewer complaints in the contractors and electrical and electronics industry.

Don't miss:  SG releases new codes of practice for eCommerce and messaging platforms to curb scams

Nearly three-quarters of entertainment industry complaints were against Asian Couture and Boutique , organisers of the Singapore Sky Lantern Festival.

It had failed to secure permits for the sky lantern release , which was the event's main attraction, forcing consumers to use LED lanterns instead, it said. CASE intervened and, after extensive discussions with the event organisers, secured a full refund for affected consumers who lodged a complaint with CASE, which totalled about SG$20,450.

Other contributing factors for the sharp spike in complaints were due to the rising concerns of ticket resellers taking advantage of concertgoers by inflating ticket prices significantly.

About 4% of these complaints were from consumers who had entered concert venues only to be informed their tickets were invalid.

“CASE is deeply concerned in the rise of entertainment complaints. As Singapore establishes itself as the region’s premier event and concert hub, we anticipate a further increase in related complaints," said Melvin Yong, president of CASE. 

"We are actively studying how overseas jurisdictions are tackling disamenities related to events and concerts, such as the issue of ticket scalping. Unfair trade practices in the events and concerts sectors have the potential to impact many consumers as we saw this happen during the botched Sky Lantern event in February this year,” he said. 

There was also a 53% rise in e-commerce complaints, largely due to online purchases of event and concert tickets. Of these, approximately 21% were linked to the entertainment industry and about 10% were related to online orders from tingkat delivery companies in the food & beverages industry.

"In response to the surge in e-commerce complaints in recent years, CASE launched the CaseTrust accreditation for e-businesses in 2023. This is Singapore’s only consumer trust mark for online businesses," said Yong.

"Seven businesses have since been accredited with the eCaseTrust mark, and we aim to onboard another eight companies by the end of this year. CaseTrust-accredited companies commit to upholding standards, boosting consumer confidence and ensuring fair trading practices. I encourage consumers to look for our trust mark when shopping online, for a greater peace of mind,” he added. 

In 1H2024, prepayment-related losses surged by 312% to approximately SG$1,246,500, compared to SG$302,205 in the first half of 2023. This significant increase in prepayment losses was primarily due to the entertainment, food & beverages and bridal industries.

The entertainment industry saw the highest number of cases contributing to prepayment losses, with 448 cases amounting to an estimated SG$73,200.

The bridal industry recorded the most in prepayment losses, at about SG$267,500, primarily due to the closure of Love Nest and its affiliated bridal salons. Additionally, the food & beverages industry saw about SG$47,500 in prepayment losses, attributed to the abrupt closure of Sakura Buffet and its associated tingkat delivery companies.

"CASE is concerned by the sharp increase in prepayment losses in the first half of 2024. In recent years, we have seen sudden business closures in various industries, such as gyms and bridal studios, affecting many consumers," said Yong.

He added that CASE will therefore expand the prepayment protection feature in its CaseTrust schemes to better protect consumers. "The government should also legislate prepayment protection for high-risk businesses that collect large amounts upfront,” he said.

The motorcar industry saw an 8% increase in complaints, from 629 in 1H2023 to 682 complaints in 1H2024, with complaints mainly due to issues with car sharing, car rental and second-hand vehicles.

The beauty industry on the other hand saw a slight 1% increase in complaints, mostly related to pressure sales and unsatisfactory services.

Complaints related to the electrical and electronics industry fell by 9% from 653 complaints in 1H2023 to 593 in 1H2024. About 44% of complaints were related to goods that were defective or did not conform to contract.

CASE also explained that it saw a 25% increase in complaints for which consumers sought help to negotiate with the businesses, with a total of 1,323 complaints compared to 1,063 during the same period in 2023.

“As Singapore establishes itself as a major entertainment hub, CASE is increasingly concerned about the rise in associated disamenities, such as ticket scalping and scams," said Yong.

"eCommerce complaints have doubled compared to the same period in 2021. With online shopping now the norm, we must enhance consumer protection so that consumers feel safe when transacting online. The sharp rise in prepayment losses has highlighted the need for stronger prepayment protection, and CASE will certainly push for stronger prepayment protection measures,” he added.

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Related articles:  15 complaints filed with CASE over failed Sentosa sky lantern festival   CASE reveals eCommerce consumer complaints up by 54%   This is the top eCommerce platform in Southeast Asia this year

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Victims Again Litigation Ends on the US Public Health Service Syphilis Studies in Guatemala

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A US Public Health Service study conducted after World War II led to a research scandal involving the intentional infection of 1300 Guatemalans with syphilis and other STIs. That news initially prompted an apology by President Obama to the President of Guatemala and an investigative report from the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. Despite promises from the US Department of Health and Human Services to invest $1.8 million to “improve the treatment and prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases,” there is no record that such funding nor any money to compensate the families of people victimized in the research debacle has reached Guatemala. Litigation followed public disclosures. This article analyzes the litigation and explores the likelihood that this lawsuit may represent another episode in the re-victimization of people in Guatemala who still await redress for the wrongs done to their families more than 70 years ago.

INTRODUCTION

Nine years after its initial filing, In re Estate of Alvarez v. Rockefeller Foundation, the case to recover damages for the infamous World War II-era syphilis experiments that the US Public Health Service (PHS) conducted in Guatemala has been dismissed by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. [1] The plaintiffs sought compensation as victims and descendants of victims of studies in which approximately 1300 Guatemalans were intentionally infected with sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and more than 5000 individuals had biological samples taken without proper consent. After the court rejected claims in 2022 that Johns Hopkins University and Bristol-Meyers Squibb should be held liable for the Guatemala scandal, the Rockefeller Foundation was the only remaining defendant. The Foundation had a longstanding interest in research to find a cure for syphilis. Lawyers representing alleged victims in the Guatemala research claimed that responsibility should accrue to Rockefeller because Thomas Parran was on its board and Frederick Soper was its Associate Director and a board member. Both were intimately involved in the experiments.

In this US case, plaintiffs claimed the court should assign responsibility and allow them to recover damages. Its conclusion makes it extremely unlikely that legal action will lead to compensation for those victims now or anytime in the future. The lawsuit described in this article raises the question of whether litigation is an effective avenue for addressing discoveries of historic injustices stemming from breaches of research ethics. Litigation may revictimize the very populations who endured harms during the original experiments. In this case, more than six decades after the studies themselves, and ten years after the details of those studies were publicly revealed, many of the people who became entangled in this litigation are arguably worse off as a result because they endured additional hardships during the litigation, their avenue to justice through the US courts is now foreclosed, and their credibility was called into question throughout the case.

The PHS/Guatemala experiments occurred between 1946-1948, and related studies continued into the 1950s. However, the entire research plan did not become publicly known until the 2010 publication of an historian’s analysis of an archival collection, and a subsequent bioethics commission report in 2011. [2]

The PHS researchers who designed the Guatemala studies were attempting to hone methods of prophylaxis against STIs for members of the US military and hoped to take advantage of the then newly discovered power of penicillin as a cure for STIs. Led by John Cutler, [3] a team of PHS doctors collaborated with health professionals in Guatemala City to design a series of experiments that monitored sexual intimacy between prisoners and commercial sex workers who had been confirmed to be carrying an STI. The experiment then moved on to manually infecting prison inmates, psychiatric patients, and soldiers with syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid.

Between 1946 and 1953, PHS researchers also conducted serology studies on samples of blood and cerebrospinal fluid they had obtained via cervical and lumbar punctures on prisoners, orphans, school children, patients in a psychiatric hospital, and leprosy patients in Guatemala. [4]   

The research was conducted without consent, without appropriate disclosures, and, in many cases, using the most vulnerable institutionalized populations. While formal standards of ethics for biomedical research later emerged in documents like the Belmont Report and were adopted as part of US law, the consensus of scholars studying the Guatemala experiments is that they violated ethical standards at the time they were carried out, and the scientists and physicians who participated, well aware of their ethical toxicity, intentionally kept them hidden. [5]

A few experts in the STI field knew the details of these experiments, but the US government deliberately concealed them from public view for more than sixty years. The public exposure of John Cutler’s papers clarified the scope of the studies, sometimes likened more to torture than medical experimentation, and placed the episode in Guatemala alongside the most infamous of research scandals. [6]   News of the scandal initially prompted an apology by President Obama to the President of Guatemala. Lawsuits followed.

I.     Litigation

Public exposé of the experiment’s details led to condemnation of the studies, which in turn prompted calls for legal action. The first lawsuit related to the PHS/Guatemala research, Garcia v. Sebelius, was a class action suit filed on behalf of victims against the US Government in 2011. A federal trial court called the Guatemala STI experiments a “deeply troubling chapter in our Nation’s history” but determined that the law shielded the government against such claims under the principle of sovereign immunity. The court declared itself “powerless to provide any redress…” and dismissed the suit in 2012. [7]

In response, the US Department of Health and Human Services promised $1.8 million to “improve the treatment and prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases … in Guatemala and to further strengthen ethical training on human research protections.” [8] No commitments were made to the victims, and no compensation was delivered to them in Guatemala.

Because the Garcia case ruled out a suit against the US government, in 2015, plaintiffs filed another class action lawsuit against Johns Hopkins University, the Rockefeller Foundation, and pharmaceutical manufacturer Bristol Myers Squibb, demanding $1 billion in damages. The suit claimed that Johns Hopkins had been the faculty home for many members of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) syphilis study section that recommended that a grant of financial support be approved to fund the Guatemala project. [9] Most prominent in this group of Hopkins faculty members was Joseph Earle Moore. He chaired the study section and almost every review committee for the NIH that reviewed the study. The Rockefeller Foundation’s board eventually included Thomas Parran, Surgeon General at the time of the experiments and Rockefeller employee Frederick Soper, both of whom held roles critical to the study. [10] The three companies that previously made up Bristol Meyers Squibb manufactured the penicillin used in the experiments to test levels of efficacious dose to cure syphilis. [11]

The plaintiffs contended that the web of connections among these entities and the researchers who “helped design, support, develop, encourage, and finance, and participated in and benefitted from the Guatemala Experiments,” made all three entities liable for the damages to compensate Guatemalan research subjects and their descendants.

From the initial filing of the suit in 2015 until eighteen months later, defense lawyers attempted to have the case dismissed, arguing that delays in filing a claim violated the statute of limitations and the speculative nature of plaintiff damages rendered them legally inadequate to provide a causal link to the original experiments.

In late 2016, the plaintiffs amended their claims a third time to address these issues. At that point, the plaintiff class included more than 800 people made up of spouses, children, and other descendants of deceased individuals alleged to have been part of the intentional infection experiments. But the largest number of listed plaintiffs were school children whose blood had been drawn for serology experiments. While the Presidential Commission had found no evidence supporting this assertion, some of the plaintiffs also claimed to be direct victims of intentional infection experiments conducted at their schools.

The court found no evidence that the Rockefeller Foundation controlled or directed either Parran’s involvement in approving the Guatemala project or Soper’s more thorough engagement with the research as a staff member at the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (PASB). The Court stated, “The connection between TRF’s [Rockefeller] interest in finding a cure for syphilis and the work that Dr. Soper did while at PASB is simply far too attenuated to establish an agency relationship...there is no indication that TRF had the ability to exercise control over Soper.” [12] In 2024, with Rockefeller as the only remaining defendant, the motion to dismiss the suit was granted.

While the litigation was still active, lawyers deposed people in Guatemala who had been responsible for identifying the plaintiffs named in the lawsuit. By March 2019, it became clear that serious irregularities had occurred in recruiting those participants.  Fraudulent testimony and unethical behavior in recruiting sparked the defendants to move for sanctions against the plaintiffs’ attorneys. [13]

II.     Fraudulent Testimony

               a.     Serology Experiments in Port of San José

One kind of experiment conducted in Guatemala included serology testing on blood samples taken from school children. Norma Alicia Lorenzo Lopez was a plaintiff in the lawsuit and former director of the school at the remote Pacific coast town of Puerto San Jose, an initial location for blood draws in school studies during the late 1940s. She signed a copy of a letter certifying that historical records and the testimony of former students verified that plaintiffs were enrolled in school at the time of the experiments. But Lopez eventually admitted under questioning that relevant records for the school were destroyed years ago in several floods and earthquakes. She had no documents to confirm that the claimant’s testimony was correct, nor did she have any personal knowledge of what happened.

She then testified that she had no legal authority to issue certifications on behalf of the school and had violated the rules of the Ministry of Education in so doing. Additionally, she admitted that at least one person was dead at the time he was supposed to have given his sworn statement to her. [14] Fraudulent testimony, unfortunately, was not limited to Lopez. Under questioning, many named plaintiffs testified that they did not know why their or their family members’ names had been included among the victims.

Another witness, Dr. Orozco Aguirre, reported that he tested hundreds of people who had given blood as children in Puerto San Jose. Some of them were supposed to have also claimed to be infected with syphilis by researchers. But in a hearing before the presiding judge, lead plaintiffs’ counsel confirmed that Aguirre had given false testimony. [15]

Aguirre eventually admitted that the effective date of the certificate presented to the court to show his qualifications to run a laboratory in Guatemala had been altered to conceal that it had expired. He also conceded under questioning that his expert report had been plagiarized, then altered to include data that would correspond with his planned testimony in support of the plaintiffs. As a result, plaintiffs’ counsel withdrew Dr. Orozco as an expert witness after his first day of testimony.

               b.     STI Testing in Guatemala City

Dr. Pablo Werner Ramirez Rivas, a physician consultant and medical expert for the plaintiffs, former Guatemalan Health Minister Roberto Paiz, and his wife Clara de Paiz had arranged “information sessions” to recruit plaintiffs. Werner’s testimony was intended to provide the factual foundation upon which several of the plaintiff’s claims were based. However, the day after Dr. Aguirre was withdrawn and only a few days before Dr. Werner was scheduled to testify, plaintiffs’ counsel also withdrew him as an expert. Additional reports emerged showing that Clara de Paiz was taken into custody in Guatemala in 2018, following charges by the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala with “active bribery” in connection with a scheme to influence the selection of Guatemalan judges in an unrelated case. [16]

On March 11, 2019, the plaintiffs’ counsel disclosed that they were “going forward” with a more limited list of plaintiffs and claims. The number of Guatemalan plaintiffs was reduced dramatically; fewer than one hundred remained in the lawsuit. Thirteen of the most important eighteen plaintiffs—those who claimed direct infection in the original experiments or a family relationship to someone who was involved in those experiments — were dropped from the case.

III.     Sanctions Against Plaintiffs’ Lawyers

After extensive discovery, the defendants’ lawyers made a motion for sanctions against the plaintiffs’ lawyers. According to the defendants, depositions and other material “revealed that plaintiffs' claims are based on manufactured evidence, false sworn statements, and unsupportable allegations.” [17]

The defendants accused the plaintiffs’ lawyers of doing just what the initial alleged wrongdoers did – withholding positive test results from plaintiffs. It was a major contention of the lawsuit that those who directed the PHS/Guatemala experiments actively deceived the victims. They did not inform victims in the 1940s that they were part of an experiment, that they had been infected with syphilis, or that their condition might expose other family members to infection. Nor did they provide medical care to infected victims or counsel them to seek it. In preparing for the lawsuit, plaintiffs were sent on bus trips lasting up to five hours to reach Guatemala City for syphilis testing. Although Dr. Aguirre claimed in sworn court documents that many of the plaintiffs tested positive for syphilis, their testimony indicated they were not informed of their infection status, nor was treatment offered to those who did test positive. Defendant’s arguments for sanctions declared that by withholding infection status from plaintiffs, their lawyers “did precisely what they had accused others of doing or, more precisely, of not doing.” [18]

IV.     Unsatisfactory Outcome

The original complaint in this case alleged that defendants, Johns Hopkins University, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Bristol Meyers Squibb, had “designed, developed, approved, encouraged, directed, oversaw, and aided and abetted nonconsensual, nontherapeutic, human subject experiments in Guatemala.” [19] But the trial court found that there was “insufficient evidence to support” that conclusion against any of the three defendant organizations.

The defendants did not downplay the horrific nature of the PHS/Guatemala syphilis studies, nor the culpability of those who conducted them. They merely rejected the idea that they, as institutions, shared blame for the activities that the government planned, conducted, and subsequently hid from the public eye. In issuing its ruling, the court endorsed that conclusion, stating that any evidence of the defendant’s complicity in these actions “has been lost to the sands of time.” [20]   The court emphasized that this result “illustrates the limits of the court system to provide justice for every injustice,” concluding that other remedies were “beyond the power of this Court to grant.” [21]

The final decision in this controversy yielded similar language. In a separate opinion, 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson said that people working with the Rockefeller Foundation had a relationship that “is too attenuated” to consider them agents of Rockefeller in carrying out the Guatemala experiments. “I thus concur . . . with some sadness” he said, “that the rule of law is not advanced as an instrument of justice by affixing liability where it does not belong.” [22]

We are left with an unsatisfactory ending to a scandal that festered over more than seventy-five years and legal drama unfolding over more than a decade. An appellate court decision now echoes what scholars and a presidential commission concluded as legal challenges began: “It was our own government . . . that was the driving force behind these monstrous wrongs.” [23] Fashioning remedies for the horrors of this and other scandals that may yet be uncovered in the archives of scientific and biomedical research remains a job that our own government should still be required to undertake.  

When hidden scandals perpetrated by deceased individuals in government service are finally revealed, how should accountability be satisfied?  We know that suits against the government are exceedingly unlikely to be allowed. As this case has demonstrated, assessing damages against other institutions whose culpability cannot be proven is also likely to fail.  First steps taken by government commissions of inquiry that are free to investigate past wrongs and expose them to public scrutiny are a beginning, but never the end of the accounting. They allow some measure of recognition for victims, but those who are long dead can never be made whole.  As the 4th Circuit Court concluded, the judiciary is limited in its powers “to provide justice for every injustice.” What is needed beyond all else is a motive for a majority in Congress squarely to face scandals like those that occurred in Guatemala and craft a remedy that more fully addresses their causes and their consequences.  At this point, we have few, if any, models of what such remedies would look like, and almost no reason to believe that there is the political will to take on that task. 

[1] In re Estate of Alvarez v. Rockefeller Foundation , No. 22-1678, (4 th Cir. 2024) March 20, 2024. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-4th-circuit/115960805.html

[2] Reverby, S. “‘Normal exposure” and inoculation syphilis: a PHS ‘Tuskegee’ doctor in Guatemala, 1946–1948.” J Policy Hist 23, no. 1 (2011):6-28 [DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898030610000291]; Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (PCSBI), “Ethically Impossible”: STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office; 2011). https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/pcsbi/sites/default/files/Ethically%20Impossible%20(with%20linked%20historical%20documents)%202.7.13.pdf  The author was a senior advisor to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues that issued Ethically Impossible , and he contributed to the research and drafting of the Report as a staff member. He testified by deposition under subpoena and without compensation in the lawsuit described in this article.

[3] Cutler [1915-2003] also conducted the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, which included Black American research subjects who were intentionally not informed about the nature of the experiment or the availability of treatment.

[4] Spector-Bagdady K, Lombardo P.A. “ US Public Health Service STD Experiments in Guatemala (1946-1948) and Their Aftermath,” Ethics Hum Res. 2019;41(2):29-34. [DOI: 10.1002/eahr.500010]

[5] See “The Guatemala Experiments—Looking Back, Looking Ahead, and Apportioning Blame,” Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, “Ethically Impossible:” STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948, 2011, GPO (Washington DC)107-108.

[6] Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, “Ethically Impossible:” STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948, 2011, GPO (Washington DC)., https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/pcsbi/sites/default/files/Ethically%20Impossible%20(with%20linked%20historical%20documents)%202.7.13.pdf H. Brevy Cannon, “Arras, Bioethics Commission Condemn 1940s Guatemalan Syphilis Research as Unethical,” UVA Today , August 31, 2011, https://news.virginia.edu/content/arras-bioethics-commission-condemn-1940s-guatemalan-syphilis-research-unethical.

[7] Garcia v. Sebelius , 867 F. Supp. 2d 125 (D.D.C. 2012). https://casetext.com/case/garcia-v-sebelius-2

[8] “HHS Commits Nearly $1.8 million to Health Initiatives in Guatemala and to Improving Global Human Research Protections,” Business Wire , January 10, 2012,

[9] Alvarez v. Hopkins , complaint, Case 1:15-cv-00950-JKB Circuit Court Baltimore City (April 1, 2015). Spector-Bagdady K, Lombardo P.A. “’Something of an adventure’: postwar NIH research ethos and the Guatemala STD experiments,” J Law Med Ethics . 2013;41(3):697-710. [DOI: 10.1111/jlme.12080]

[10] Thomas Parran [1892-1968] was Surgeon General of the US Public Health Service and approved the funding proposal that resulted in the experiments. He was also a member of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Board of Trustees and the Board of Scientific Directors of the foundation’s International Heath Division.  At times his government service and his work at Rockefeller overlapped the work that occurred in Guatemala. Frederick Soper [1893-1977] was an Associate Director at Rockefeller and in 1947 was assigned to work on the Guatemala experiments at the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (PASB).

[11] Alvarez v. Hopkins , complaint, Case 1:15-cv-00950-JKB Circuit Court Baltimore City (April 1, 2015). The original complaint filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, was moved to the United States District Court for the District of Maryland.

[12]   In re Estate of Alvarez v. Rockefeller Foundation , No. 22-1678, (4th Cir. 2024) March 20, 2024. p. 15.

[13] Defendant’s Opening Brief in Support of Request for Discovery and Motion for Sanctions, Case No. 1:15-cv-950 TDC, Document 262-1 Filed 04/09/19.

[14]   Transcript of Norma Alicia Lorenzo Conducted on February 7, 2019, Case 1:15-cv-00950-TDC Document 263-5.

[15] Preliminary Transcript of Hearing, Case 1:15-cv-00950-TDC Document 231-1 March 6, 2019., p. 3.

[16] Defendant’s Opening Brief in Support of Request for Discovery and Motion for Sanctions, Case No. 1:15-cv-950 TDC, Document 262-1 Filed 04/09/19. Exhibit 8, at J.R.0778 (December 4, 2018, Exhibit 8 at J.R.0775 (record from Guatemala Central Registry of Detainees indicating when Clara de Paiz was taken into custody). She  was later acquitted of the bribery charges.

[17] Estate of Arturo Giron Alvarez, et al., v. The Johns Hopkins University, et al., Defendant’s.Motion for Discovery and Sanctions, April 9, 2019; Memorandum Opinion https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/maryland/mddce/1:2015cv00950/312057/350/

[18] Defendant’s Opening Brief in Support of Request for Discovery and Motion for Sanctions, Case No. 1:15-cv-950 TDC, Document 262-1 Filed 04/09/19. Case 1:15-cv-00950-TDC   Document 262-1. April 9, 2019, page 24 of 42. The motion for sanctions was not renewed after the case was dismissed.

[19] Memorandum Opinion on Motion for Summary Judgment, Case 1:15-cv-00950-TDC Document 480, page 13 of 77.

[20] Id., page 75 of 77

[21] Id., Page 76 of 77

[22] In re Estate of Alvarez v. Rockefeller Foundation , No. 22-1678, (4th Cir. 2024) March 20, 2024, Wilkinson, J., concurring at 20.

Paul A. Lombardo

PhD University of Virginia, JD University of Virginia, Professor of Law Georgia State University

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