Moral Philosophy

In class we discussed morality vs ethics. To illustrate morality and ethics were were given as task: It is a hot summer day. While getting gas you buy a bottle of water for around 2.00 a friend of yours who works for the distributor states that they jack up the price when its hot outside. Is this ethical? Is this moral? We were split into two groups, one group argued that it was moral and just, the other group argued that it wasn't.
I was in the group that argued that it was moral. We argued that per capitalism the store should be able to price a good any price they want if the market will bare. Our opposition argued that this was not moral because water is a basic necessity. We rebutted that while water is a basic necessity the convenient packaging was not. I felt that the corporation who makes the bottled water also had a responsibility to their shareholders and that by driving the price of their water up, shares would go up, dividends would go up and the corporations citizens would be happy.
The readings on morality and ethics raised a lot of interesting points, can something be immoral but ethical? I especially thought the example of the lawyer and his client example in the Pojman article was interesting because it American culture its sort of like how could a lawyer not tell the jury if his client was actually guilty?? But, at the same time I can see that his responsibility is to his client and his client alone and his own personal beliefs or morality should not conflict with job. I think that's the difficulty of some jobs, especially law. Many years ago my dad was a first year law student at Boston University and quit after his first year, when asked why he would always say that he went to law school because he wanted to make a difference and be a voice for the little guy. But once he got there he realized that that isn't really law at all, that your bound by all these rules and ethics even if it goes against your own personal beliefs and morals. I saw a commercial or a movie, something, once where a client asked his attorney if he believed he hadn't killed his wife, and the attorney responded, it's not my job to believe you or not, its my job to convince the jury that there is a possibility that you didn't do it. But if a lawyer did nothing while an innocent person took the blame for his clients actions and the lawyer knew this then according to Pojman his or her actions would be immoral. As stated in the reading morality has five purposes:

1.       To keep society from falling apart

2.       To ameliorate human suffering

3.       To promote human flourishing

4.       To resolve conflicts of interest in just and orderly ways

5.       To assign praise and blame, reward, and punishment and guilt

I think for a lawyer to allow the above to happen would be breaking all the purposes of morality and violating Aristotle's idea of ethics. This action would be a violation of a right action. But in terms of the store exploiting an opportunity? I think in the general sense of morality they are not violating any of the basic principles of the purpose of morality and are in fact complying with them.