Would you look to alter the process, or stick by it no matter what the results?
The short answer is "no." But the long answer constrains the short answer.
Any mature process includes one or more levels of appeal and a program evaluation subprocess. The appeals subprocess would catch errors or hanky panky in the process to assure due process aka justice for the individual. If the appeals concludes that the treatment in a given case was kosher, then it was.
The program evaluation subprocess reviews anomalies that result, analyzes them to determine if the process, itself, is faulty, and proposes changes to the process if needed.
Terri's case received due process, period. That was determined by exhausting review by a whole bunch of appeals levels. When a case stands after all appeals, it is said to have received due process by definition.
But there remains some question of whether the process/law, itself, is just or if it needs some modification. The Florida legislature is the appropriate program evaluation body, not the state or federal judiciary. This case has been around for a while and the plaintiffs and the public have raised enough questions about about the justice of the Florida process. The legislature heard those questions and had ample time to change the law before Terri fell into dire straights but it didn't. Just the other day the Florida legislature took up change to the law to require written directives before allowing patients to die but did not pass it. Therefore, just as the judicial appeals process determined that this case had due process, the legislature determined that no changes of the process is required. That's democracy and justice in our system of government.
Maybe the legislature will do further program evaluation in the future as those questions continue to be asked and make some changes, but they would not be in time for Terri.
In the case of your poor performer, the appeals process would look at whether the process was designed to allow for illness as an excuse and, if so, reverse his poor rating if the reviewer failed to take that rule into account.
If the process did not allow for illness, the program evaluators would note this anomaly and analyze whether the program should be changed to so that such employees are retained. The program would either be changed and the employee retain his job or not depending on whether management wanted to keep or fire such employees.
You don't make an exception for this one employee without changing the program so that the reason for the exception is incorporated for all other similarly situated employees. THAT would constitute injustice.
If an exception is made in Terri's case, then all other cases for people who are similarly situated incur a civil right to that same consideration. (That's why I've been nagging at people who are focused on just Terri's case to tell me how they would changed the Florida law rather than just what they would do about Terri's anomaly.) |
