Re: U$C News
"Knew or should have known" is a pretty standard legal concept, basically meaning that maintaining a willful ignorance about a situation is pretty much equivalent to knowing and not doing anything about it.
For example, even if you are one of the 12 people in the world who believes Richard Scrushy knew nothing about what was going on in his accounting department, can you really argue with a straight face that, as the CEO of that company, he should not have known? Surely he had a duty to keep himself reasonably informed about what was going on in his company, except in the Circuit Court of Jefferson County, Alabama.
The tailback/Ferrari example is a good one as well. A little closer to home, I would argue that Coach Stallings/Hootie Ingram had a duty to do a little investigating into the whole Langham thing instead of just taking him at his word that nothing happened. How might things be different today had either of those folks done any more investigating?