Whistleblowing and Sarbanes-Oxley

Tina-Marie Cole
Law, Ethics, and Corporate Governance LEG 500 - Lecture Course
Prof. Lisa M. Morris
January 20, 2015
Whistleblowing and Sarbanes-Oxley

Trinity Industries, or TRN (NYSE), manufactures roadway guardrails, which are a highway public safety feature. In 2005, TRN changed its rail head design saving the company two dollars per rail head but failed to notify the Federal Highway Administration which is required by a federal ruling. The newly designed rail heads that TRN has installed on U.S. roads nationally do not propel the guardrails away from crashing vehicles in head on collisions. The lower cost railheads can send the guard rail slicing through a car potentially injuring passengers unlike there predecessors design that pushed the rail away from the wreck and oncoming traffic. The new railheads known as the ET-Plus model failed five crash tests which were also undisclosed to authorities. Joshua Harman, a competitor to TRN discovered the changed design had gone unreported and sued TRN on behalf of the federal government (Davis & Polcyn, 2014). Joshua Harman stands to make one third of a potentially billion dollars in his law suit (Ivory & Kessler, 2014). As a whistleblower, Joshua Harman is saving potential lives and injuries, fighting back at corporate greed and earning a fortune in the process. A whistleblower exposes all forms of alleged misconduct on behalf of an organization which can be illegal and or immoral. Whistleblowers frequently expose fraud, corruption, safety, health, and environmental violations as well as violations to the law, regulations and public interests. Whistleblowers can make their allegations known to individuals within the organization or through external means such as law enforcement agencies, media or regulatory agencies. Whistleblowers can gain financially but often have negative repercussions happen after leaking allegations. They can be reprimanded over broken confidentiality clauses, fired, black listed by other organizations or suffer legal troubles themselves. The key characteristics of a whistleblower are a dissent, a breach of loyalty, and an accusation. If the individual does not side with the way the company is operating they have a dissenting opinion. This can cause them to be at moral conflict with operations or violations which can cause someone to go public with accusations. Whistleblowers can feel a struggle between loyalty to colleagues and loyalty to the public and which one has the greatest overall pull will move the individual. Whistleblowers largely face an ethical dilemma. They may see wrong doings or illegal activity but not feel comfortable reporting them. They often report incidents to their superiors within the company but when resolutions don’t occur quickly enough the whistleblower struggles with escalating reporting. Whistleblowers have to fear a loss of their employment, personal status, reputation, friends and colleagues, and their ability to earn future income. Most whistleblowers struggle in making the decision to accuse their companies of wrong doings and can suffer depression and psychological strain during the process (Halbert & Ingulli 2012). The ET-Plus railheads TRN installed nationally saved the company two dollars in production cost by having four inches of metal cap instead of the original five inches. That missing one inch of metal has been the cause of guardrail break away failure causing vehicles to flip or sending the guard rail straight through the vehicle causing extensive injuries and deaths. Joshua Harman drove from Virginia to Wisconsin inspecting the rails installed on the highways. Due to Harman’s lawsuit TRN is facing losing a billion dollars (Davis & Polcyn, 2014). The Federal Highway Administration did not go along with the lawsuit Harman initiated so under Dodd Frank he can