I am still determined to give away my Demon Pack one way or another, so here's your second chance to claim it.
In this one, I will tell you everything you need to know so you can be an informed judge and jury and be able to better solve these cases bellow. These cases are a lot easier this time and I don't expect anyone to struggle with them. First one to answer all 5 correctly gets the Pack. Good luck!
Elements of an Agency Relationship ►Agency is the fiduciary relationship which results from:
1. An agreement between a Principal and Agent
2. That the Agent is acting on behalf of the Principal
3. And be subject to his or her control
Doctrine of Respondeat Superior ►
This doctrine basically means, let the employer answer for the torts of the employee. And in order to have respondeat superior, there are two requirements:
1. The Agent must be an employee and not just an independent contractor
In order to distinguish between an "employee" and "independent contractor" let's imagine that you have two gardeners to work in your garden. The first gardener comes by every couple of weeks, mows and goes. That's more likely to be an independent contractor. They're bringing all their own equipment, and they're not really following careful control or really being supervised b you. The second gardener lives in a shed in the back of the property, all the equipment are owned by you. That's more like an employee relationship.
2. The torts must be committed within the scope of employment
An example for this to help you understand it is you've got a gardener that's working in your home as an employee, and there's some people that are trespassing on your flower bed, and the gardener picks up a stick and throws the stick at the trespassers. You might be responsible for that. Under the doctrine of respondeat superior, the tort was committed within the scope of employment because they were trying to protect your garden and get rid of the interlopers.
Excuses in the Criminal Law ►
There are lots of different excuses or justifications for conduct that otherwise violates a criminal statute. For whatever reason, we decide that the person has actually not violated the criminal law. So for example:
1. Self Defense: I hit him. Normally that would be a battery, but he hit me first.
2. Duress: Yes, I smuggled drugs, but I was acting under duress. A drug dealer told me that they would hurt my family if I didn't do it
3. Insanity: She did it, but she did not know the moral difference between right and wrong at the time of offense.
4. Necessity: The necessity defense which in its current incarnation today tells that a person can have a defense to crime if they reasonable believed that there was an actual and specific danger, that there was no other alternative to completing the act, that the harm of the criminal act was less than the harm that was avoided, and the defendant did not himself contribute or cause the danger.
Context:
I will say some hypotheticals and you are required to answer them correctly. Provide an answer and an explanation as well. This is more of simple practice to prepare you for what's coming next.
Questions:
1. Let's imagine that I come up to you and say, How are you doing, here's my pen. And you take my pen. Have you become my agent?
2. Let's try once more. Here's my pen. Can you sell it for me? And you say, sure, I'll do it. Are we in an agency relationship?
3. Last one. You buy my pen for a fair value - say $5 for example - and you're looking to resell it. You're in the business of pen resale profiteering and you're going to try to buy my pen for $5 and then resell it yourself for a profit. Are you my agent?
Context:
This case involves a teacher in Texas. Her name was Miss Sara. And one day, Miss Sara was hanging around in the faculty lounge, getting a cup of coffee, when the coach for the football team walked in, and Miss Sara asked the coach, whose name was Coach David, "Do you have all the cars you need to get the players over the football game this Friday?" And the coach said, "No, actually we could use one more car. We're a little bit short on having enough transportation to get all the players down to the game." And Miss Sara said, "OK, I tell you what, I'll let you use my car to take some players to the game, but I don't want a teenager to drive it. So I'll only give you my car and let you use it if you're the one that drives the car." And the coach said, "OK, great, thank you. I will do it."
Took the car. Went to the game. We don't know if they won or lost the football game, but on the way home, the coach was driving her car and he got into an automobile accident. And one of the football players, Alexander, was injured in the accident. And let's just assume for the purposes of this case that the coach was driving negligently. The coach committed a legal wrong by not driving appropriately. Maybe he was so upset by the loss or so excited by the win that he wasn't being careful in the way that he drove, and got into the accident and Alexander was injured.
Now, put on your plaintiff's lawyer's hat on and think about, under circumstances like these, who might you try to sue if you're Alexander, or if you're Alexander's family? You've had some medical bills you don't want to pay for them yourself. Many of you would start by considering the possibility of suing the coach, coach was the one that perhaps drove negligently, let's try to go after the coach. The problem was that this was a pretty significant accident, and the coach was killed. And apparently the coach and the coach's estate didn't have funds to cover the medical bills.
So, another possible defendant might be the school. The school, after all, was involved in some level in sponsoring this game and this event. But there was a strange rule in place under the time of the case that prevented the school from being a defendant, some of an immunity statute that's rare these days. So instead, Alexander decided that he was going to try to sue Miss Sara. Alexander was going to try to go after Miss Sara to recover from her for the medical harms.
Finally, the case really turned on the outcome of whether Miss Sara was viewed as Principal, and Coach David was viewed as Agent of Miss Sara.
Questions:
1. There maybe a whole other set of rules and issues related to insurance and what does your insurance cover and is there a presumption one way or another, totally true. The question I am interested in is: Does agency law suggest that Miss Sara might be liable for Coach David's negligent driving? explain.
2. How do we know that the coach was acting subject to Miss Sara's control? explain.
3. Was the coach acting on Miss Sara's behalf? explain.
Context:
It was a beautiful and we're up in Los Anglos, and the Chicago White Sox are playing the LA Dodgers. We've got a great game of baseball going. Terry Adams was a pitcher for the Dodgers and he was warming up in the bullpen, a relief pitcher. Terry was warming up in the bullpen and there's another person named Edward, who is a White Sox fan, and Edward was kind of hanging over the edge of the fence just heckling Terry like crazy, "Terry you bum! You can't pitch at all!! You're the worst baseball player!!!" And he was just going and going and going. Terry was kind of ignoring him, and finally, Terry couldn't take it anymore.
So Terry kind of stands there like he's ready to warm up and throw the pitch, but basically steps towards it and then turns and throws the ball right at Edward. He throws this bean ball right at Edward. Well, there was a hole in the fence and it went through it and it hit Edward, and Edward got hurt.
Now, put on your plaintiff's lawyer's hat. Edward comes to you, he's really mad. He says, "I want to sue someone to recover my healthcare bills." And the first thing you might say to Edward is, "Why don't you sue the White Sox, or whoever owns the stadium? They're the ones that didn't build a fence and had this hole in the fence." And Edward looks at you and says, "I don't want to sue the White Sox, they're my team! They're who I root for. I don't want to sue them." So, who else are you going to tell him to sue? We probably do want to try to sue Terry, but wouldn't it be fun to sue the Dodgers too? I mean, that's who we really don't like, we don't like the team. Let's see if we can extrapolate this even greater.
And so, Edward did exactly that. He sued Terry and he also sued the Dodgers. The Terry case is probably pretty easy. I mean, this is a case of battery, or some sort of intentional tort. You can't do that, you can't throw a baseball at someone. Maybe even if you don't think it's going to hit -- perhaps that's negligence, whatever. We don't have to worry about the Terry case. For our purposes, we're interested in the Dodgers case.
Questions:
1. Do you think that the plaintiff, Edward, is going to be able to successfully recover from the LA Dodgers? explain.
2. Is Terry an employee or an independent contractor? explain
3. Was this Terry doing something dumb as Terry, or was this Terry doing something dumb as the employee of the Dodgers to further their business? explain.
Context:
Finn is having a dance party out at his summer cabin in the woods. It's just him. He's getting a little wild with the vodka bottle. Finn drops the vodka bottle, shatters on the floor, and cut himself very badly. Like a real gash. Like he's in trouble. And he needs medical attention.
Finn hops in his car, drives to the nearest hospital, but is pulled over for drunk driving.
Questions:
1. Does Finn have a necessity defense to the criminal charge of driving under the influence? explain.
Context:
Edward, Adam, Thomas and Parker were crew members on a yacht going to England. On July 5th 1885 a storm hit forcing the crew to abandon the ship. So, the men got onto a lifeboat. For 12 days the crew ate nothing but two cans of turnips and a turtle. Occasionally, they had a little rainwater to drink. After starving and going without water for nearly a week, Edward and Adam proposed to Thomas that one of the crew members should be killed to save the others, but Thomas refused. Edward and Adam suggested killing Parker, because he was only 17 or 18 years old and had no family. Thomas still said no. No one discussed it with Parker.
On July 24th, Edward and Adam agreed that if no ship appeared by the next morning, Parker should be killed. No ship came, so Parker's fate was sealed. Parker was too weak to fight. After uttering a prayer for forgiveness Edward stabbed parker in his throat, and Parker died instantly. Edward, Adam and Thomas ate Parker and drank his blood. Four days later, the men were rescued but they were in a poor state. When the rescue ship docked, Edward and Adam were charged with murdering Parker.
Questions:
1. Can necessity defense save Edward and Adam form sentencing to a death penalty? explain.
Deadline is on 2nd of May (2 weeks)
Last edited by Bibian; Apr 19, 2022 at 05:12 PM.
