CE195 – Civil Engineering Laws, Contracts, Specifications and Ethics

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CASE STUDY NO. 04

1. Ben is assigned by his employer, Cartex, to work on an improvement to an ultrasonic range-finding device.
While working on the improvement, he gets an idea for a modification of the equipment that might be
applicable to military submarines. If this is successful, it could be worth a lot of money to his company.
However, Ben is a pacifist and does not want to contribute in any way to the development of military
hardware. So Ben neither develops the idea himself nor mentions it to anybody else in the company. Ben has
signed an agreement that all inventions he produces on the job are the property of the company, but he does
not believe the agreement applies to his situation because (1) his idea is not developed and (2) his superiors
know of his antimilitary sentiments. Yet he wonders if he is ethically right in concealing his idea from his
employers.

An interesting historical precedent: Leonardo Da Vinci recorded in his journal that he had discovered how
to make a vessel that can move about underwater— a kind of submarine. However, he refused to share this
idea with others on the grounds that he feared it would be used for immoral purposes. ‘‘I do not publish or
divulge on account of the evil nature of men who would practice assassinations at the bottom of the seas, by
breaking the ships in their lowest parts and sinking them together with the crews who are in them.’’

Do you think Ben made the right decision? Why or why not?

2. Bruce Carson’s civil engineering firm has a contract with the state to specify the route of a new road
connecting two major cities. Bruce determines that the shortest workable path will save 20 minutes from
what would otherwise be a 2-hour trip, but it would require the state to destroy a farm house that has been
in the Jones family for 150 years. Bruce visits the Jones family to get some idea of what it would cost the state
to purchase their home and the land immediately surrounding it.

Not surprisingly, the prospect of losing the home their family has maintained for the past 150 years isvery
upsetting to the family. ‘‘What’s 20 minutes compared to 150 years of family tradition?’’ objects Robert Jones,
who has lived in the farmhouse the entire 63 years of his life. The family insists that no amount of money
would tempt them to sell their home to the state, or to anyone else for that matter. Bruce knows that one
option would be for the state to exercise ‘‘eminent domain’’ and condemn the farmhouse. Should he
recommend this to the state? Why or why not?