CASE FILE 1013 · FICTIONAL CASE STUDY
The Morley
matter
Former employees v. Morley Cigarette Company
CLOSED RECORD UNSEALED
Six questions, six dismissals
Six employees raised a question about unpublished product research. Within a month all six had been restructured out of their jobs, which the company described as a coincidence of timing. The documents did not read that way.
Following the paper trail
Morley’s own lab found a health risk in its cigarettes. The report Morley gave the public called the same results “inconclusive.” Scully found nine places where the two didn’t match.
Morley said its old files had been deleted. Byers, Frohike & Langly got them back. And Mulder found that one executive had signed all six firings, so they weren’t a coincidence after all.
THE OUTCOME
The evidence entered the record
The employees won. They were offered reinstatement, and the concealed research was released by court order.
MEMORANDUM
- TO:
- Fox Mulder, J.D.
- FROM:
- Dana Scully, M.D., J.D.
- DATE:
- June 19, 1998
- RE:
Closing report
The recovered records are consistent with the employees’ testimony. Their reinstatement and the release of Morley’s research are now matters of public record.
Evidence gives us a way to distinguish what we know from what we are willing to believe. I have relied on that distinction throughout this investigation. Yet a record, however complete, can only preserve what has been brought to light. I am left wondering how much of what we call certainty is simply the part of the truth that survived.
DICTATED FOR THE RECORDcc: Case file 1013
This case, its participants, and its outcome are fictional elements of the Mulder & Scully concept website.
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