Reference no: EM131191702

Assignment 1: UNIT DETAILS

-Unit 1, Topic 4: Now that you've had a chance to reflect philosophically upon the law through the eyes and personal experiences of several judges, please return to page 21 of the textbook to the Business Ethics feature box. Please respond to the ethics question, keeping in mind that British Columbia does have legislation that permits lawyers to accept cases on a contingency fee basis. As you formulate your response, consider making-as part of your answer-connections between the language of the scenario in the Business Ethics box and the explanation of Mr. Justice Taylor in Though the Heavens Fall on the independence of the Canadian judiciary. Save your response in a digital Reflection Journal file.

-Unit 1, End of Unit: The theory behind this two-part Reflection Journal is to alert you to current concerns confronting businesses in Canada and sometimes globally. However, this project also will require you to contemplate classic legal problems that have challenged businesses for decades. The current concerns questions will be presented to you in the textbook in feature boxes called either Business Ethics or Media Report. The classic legal problems are presented in the Ask a Lawyer feature boxes in the textbook. Please turn to page 10 of the textbook and answer the question on the Charter in the Media Report feature box.

-Unit 3, End of Unit: Take a moment now to reflect philosophically upon intentional and unintentional torts. Please return to page 54 of the textbook to the Business Ethics feature box. Please respond to the ethics question, and save your response in your digital Reflection Journal file.

Next, proceed to the Ask a Lawyer feature box on page 29, and formulate an analytical legal response for Clean Up Corporation, saving it in your Reflection Journal.

As your third Reflection Journal entry for this unit, turn to page 50 of the textbook, and contemplate the question posed in the Media Report feature box. Once again, respond analytically and save your answer.

-Unit 4, End of Unit: In the Ask a Lawyer feature box on page 62, you'll be challenged to imagine designing contract language for the testing and purchase of a piece of equipment, and hiring someone you can trust with trade secrets to operate the equipment. Formulate an analytical legal response for Chemical Products Co., saving it in your Reflection Journal. Be alert to the fact that there are several issues raised in this feature box.

-In the Business Ethics feature box on page 92 you'll examine the issue of an employee who finds a new job with a competitor of the former employer, and address the legal and ethical considerations that may be relevant. Once again, respond analytically and save your answer.

Assignment 2: Discovery Journal

OVERVIEW: When you first visit a new city or country, when you first meet someone new, or perhaps when a child is born, it seems natural these days to make a visual record of your experience, doesn't it? Oftentimes you may make annotations to accompany the photos either to make them easier to share with others, or to help you remember in a deeper way particular experiences which the photos capture.

Studying law can be similar to a travel experience in two ways. It can take you into completely new and foreign territories or styles of thinking-such as thinking like a lawyer, thinking like a judge, or thinking like a legislator. But it can also cause you to revisit places you've often been before, but experience them in a completely new way-seeing things you never noticed before.

For example, are you married? Did you sign a contract when you got married? Did anyone take a photo of that moment? Perhaps you are not married, but do you know anyone who is-your parents or grandparents, for example? Were promises exchanged? Were rings exchanged? As you learn the elements for the formation of a valid contract in Unit 4, you may see a marriage or other type of partnership in a slightly more law-oriented way.

The Discovery Journal assignment is only five units in duration. But it is intended to provide you with the opportunity to record your unique experience of discovering law in a way that will be unlike anyone else's. As you take, collect, and arrange your photographs, be sure to write comments to accompany them so that your instructor will understand their significance to you.

The format for the Discovery Journal may be in PowerPoint, in a traditional photo album, or perhaps in other software. As noted above, its value is 10% and it is due at the end of Unit 5.

UNIT DETAILS:

• Units 1 to 4: The theory for this project is that the deeper you proceed into this course, the more you will notice law all around you in your everyday life: speed limit signs on the highway, no smoking signs, no trespassing signs, vehicle insurance contracts, roadside checks for drinking and driving, and apartment rental contracts. Take a photo of images of the law as you notice them, and as an accompaniment to each photo, annotate your discoveries, explaining what you have seen through the eyes of the law that you may never have noticed before.
• Unit 5: Consider adding any new photographs to your Discovery Journal, along with accompanying annotations. Please submit this assignment to your instructor at the end of Unit 5.

Assignment 3: The Notice of Claim

OVERVIEW: The thought of going to court to sue someone is daunting for most of us-not an experience many people would look forward to. However, knowing how to initiate a proceeding in BC Small Claims Court, Ontario Small Claims Court, or small claims courts in other jurisdictions may be a useful, practical learning experience for you.

You will be asked to draft a Notice of Claim as your third assignment, but by the time it is due (in week 6 of this course), you'll realize that other competencies you have been developing in your learning activities will inform and support your ability to complete this assignment.

To be specific, in tandem with other activities in Units 4 and 5, you have been

• practicing searching legal databases
• learning to create a timeline of significant events in a case, and
• learning to summarize the facts of a case

Two of the cases you have located by conducting searches on the BC Court of Appeal judgment database are Rushak v. Henneken and Arens v. MSA Ford Sales Ltd. Please review these cases prior to beginning to design a fresh, imaginary set of facts for your Notice of Claim. Before drafting your facts, consider why the two cases had contrasting results for the two women who purchased used vehicles from a dealership.

Note that Chief Justice Finch's decision in the Arens case is 11 years newer than that of Mr. Justice Taylor in Rushak. It may concern you that the BC legislation upon which Mr. Justice Taylor relied-the BC Trade Practice Act RSBC 1996, c 457-has been repealed. However, it has been replaced by the BC Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act SBC 2004, c 2. If you examine section 4 entitled Deceptive Acts or Practices in the new statute by visiting https://www.bclaws.ca/ (from the left sidebar select Laws of British Columbia, and then select "B" for Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act) you will see that the definition upon which Mr. Justice Taylor relied remains, in essence, the same.

Using the BC Small Claims Court website https://www.ag.gov.bc.ca/courts/small_claims/info/forms.htm please draft an imaginary Notice of Claim in which a person buys a used vehicle from a dealership. (Please invent the address for the dealership rather than following the instructions in Step 2 of Making a Claim, which requires you to confirm the address for the registered office of a company through the BC Registrar of Companies.) As you respond to the Notice of Claim section entitled What Happened, explain that after a fairly short time the vehicle you have described developed a serious problem (again, it may be any problem you may imagine) and therefore the purchaser wants a refund from the dealership.

In your Notice of Claim, please include one fact which is similar to a fact in either the Arens case or the Rushak case-a fact which you believe will cause the Small Claims Court judge to decide your imaginary case in exactly the same way as your precedent case.

Please print your Notice of Claim, since you cannot save it from the Small Claims Court website. When you submit this assignment to your instructor, state in your covering message the name of the case after which you have modeled, in your Notice of Claim, your one key fact.

UNIT DETAILS:

-Unit 4, End of Unit: To conduct database searches for your first case, please choose the BC Court of Appeal Judgments Database from the Resources section of this unit. In the case name search box, type the names Rushak and Henneken. In the judgment date box, type 1991. Submit your search. Please read the resulting case in its entirety. In point form, summarize the facts of the case, reflecting upon the IRAC method's suggestions as to how to select the facts. Some students find it helpful to create a horizontal timeline of the facts, too-what did the plaintiff say or do, and what did the defendant say or do-as a visual aid to summarizing the facts.

Next, return for a moment to your notebook for this course and this particular unit. Revisit the words of the argument raised by the Carbolic Smoke Ball Co. that their advertising language had been "mere marketing puff"-remembering that the court had disagreed with the company.

In Rushak v. Henneken, compare Mr. Justice Taylor's analysis of the "puffery" argument raised by the defendant:

While it used to be said that what is described in general terms as "puffery" on the part of a salesman does not give rise to legal consequences, I am not satisfied that the same can necessarily be said today in light of the provisions of the Trade Practices Act. "Puffery" cannot, in my view, excuse the giving of an unqualified opinion as to the quality when the supplier has factual knowledge indicating that the opinion may in an important respect very well be wrong.

Please save this case for future reference. It will help you when you begin to draft your Notice of Claim.

-Unit 5, End of Unit: Having summarized the facts of the Rushak v. Henneken case in Unit 4, you'll use your case law database searching skill to locate a new BC Court of Appeal case, but this time you'll focus not only on summarizing the facts (and creating a timeline of the facts as well), but also on summarizing the history of the case-its so-called procedural history defined for you in Professor Wendell's introductory video on how to brief a case in Unit 4.

If you place the summary of the facts and timeline of the Rushak v. Henneken case from Unit 4 side by side with the summary of facts and timeline from the new case in this unit after you've created them, you will notice some general similarities.

Now, please control/click on the British Columbia Court of Appeal judgments database (https://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/search_judgments.aspx#SearchTitle). In the Case Name box, type Arens. Please read the resulting Arens v. MSA Ford Sales Ltd. case in its entirety. As you did with Rushak v. Henneken, please summarize the facts, create a short timeline of the facts, and this time also, in one or two sentences, create a procedural history summarizing the names of the courts that have considered this case.

Review the facts and timelines of both the Arens case and the Rushak cases. Also review the template which you printed of the Notice of Claim from the BC Small Claims Court website. You will retrieve this information to assist you with the Notice of Claim assignment in Unit 6.

-Unit 6, End of Unit: Please control/ click on the link to the British Columbia Court of Appeal Judgments database (https://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/search_judgments.aspx#SearchTitle), and locate again the Arens v. MSA Ford Sales Ltd. case. Please re-read it, this time isolating the issue(s) of the case according to the suggestions in the California State University article.

It is now time for you to draft your own set of facts, creating an imaginary case for your Notice of Claim. When you enter this information in the Notice of Claim template on the government website, please remember to print it since you cannot save your document from the government website.

Assignment 4: Case Brief

OVERVIEW: During Unit 9 of this course, you will be asked to write a case brief at the same time that you are studying a unit called the Sale of Goods and Consumer Protection Law. The case brief you'll be asked to create will be based upon a sale of goods judgment that you are already familiar with from the BC Court of Appeal website: Rushak v. Henneken.

A fair question to ask is: why it is important to learn how to brief a case? The purpose for helping you to learn this skill is a practical one. Oftentimes the required form of something shapes or drives the content. Mastering a form can be difficult, but it can help you achieve meaning and significance in your writing. A fragment of a line from the poet Dylan Thomas creates an image of this form-to-content relationship: "the force that through the green fuse drives the flower...." Learning how to brief cases allows you to see more clearly the similarities between and among cases, and to distinguish others. The whole common law system of precedent is founded on this ability to precisely compare case law.

Competencies that you have been gradually gaining through previous learning activities in earlier units will, once again, inform and support your ability to complete this assignment. Specifically, you have already:

• watched a video of Professor Wendell's very basic introduction to how to brief a case
• ead an article called "How to Brief a Case Using the IRAC Method"
• watched Suzanne Bachard explain a paralegal's perspective on legal writing using the IRAC method
• watched James C. Raymond explain what he terms the architecture of a judgment
• practiced writing the facts of a case, its issues, and, after identifying the legal rule that governs the issue, analyzing how the legal rule applies to the issue, and
• read the Toronto Marlboro Major Junior "A" Hockey Club et al. v. Tonelli et al. case as well as the sample case brief created on it.

Please write a case brief of the BC Court of Appeal's Rushak v. Henneken judgment using the IRAC method. Provide the name of the case and the case citation. Then provide the procedural history of the case. As your next heading, please use the title Facts, and include under it the answers to James C. Raymond's questions:

• WDWTW: who did what to whom? Or WAAW: who is arguing about what?

Then continue in the usual format using the IRAC headings as follows:

• Issue: identify the issue raised by the client's case
• Rule: identify the rule of law that governs the issue
• Analysis or application: explain how the rule of law applies to the issue
• Conclusion: answer the question originally asked in the issue

This assignment, as mentioned earlier, is due in week 9, and is worth 15% of your total mark for this course.

UNIT DETAILS:

-Unit 7, End of Unit: This is a practice exercise. Please control/click on the link for the British Columbia Court of Appeals database (https://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/search_judgments.aspx#SearchTitle). As you have done before, please locate the Arens v. MSA Ford Sales Ltd. case. Recall that in Unit 6 you isolated the issue(s) of the case. Now, in preparation for actually writing your case brief, please re-read the case as Professor Wendell advises, keeping in mind that you will now be requested to complete the following tasks:

• Identify the legal rule that governs the issue(s), and
• Conduct an analysis or application of how the legal rule applies to the issue(s).

-Unit 9, End of Unit: Please control/click on the link for the British Columbia Court of Appeals and Supreme Court database (https://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/search_judgments.aspx#SearchTitle). Following the search method you have used before, please locate the Rushak v. Henneken case. It is now time for you to create the case brief that you will submit to your instructor. Please follow the headings in the sample case brief as you prepare your own case brief.

Assignment 5: The Reflection Journal Part II

OVERVIEW: The Reflection Journal is an activity you will be asked to engage in as part of every unit. It will not be until the end of each unit that you are requested to make entries in your Reflection Journal-with the purpose of looking back over fresh information that you are assimilating into your legal awareness and store of legal knowledge. The activities will not be identical in each unit but instead will vary among the following feature box activities provided in the textbook:

-ASK A LAWYER: For questions presented in this style, you'll be asked to respond to a classic legal scenario often representing an actual legal problem faced by an individual interacting with a business, or between two businesses interacting together. As the title of the activity suggests, you'll be asked to put on the thinking cap of a lawyer. Doing so will mean that you engage in writing an analysis of the applicable law from that chapter in the textbook, zeroing in on what is precisely relevant to the scenario.

But to help you avoid experiencing that sinking feeling that sometimes happens to all of us the moment after we've read the instructions for an assignment but still feel unsure of what we're expected to do, the textbook authors have provided you with a list of questions for every Ask a Lawyer scenario. These questions will help you feel confident that you are aiming your thoughtful responses at the right target questions. For example, on page 29 of your textbook, you'll see the first Ask a Lawyer feature box. The questions for that scenario are on page 58. You'll always find the questions in exactly the same place-as item 1 under the heading Discussion Questions in the same chapter.

-BUSINESS ETHICS: In questions of this nature, your focus will broaden to a critical discernment of behaviour, in particular self-interested behaviour, on the part of businesses. One of the chief goals of most businesses is to pursue profit. But what if that profit is gained unethically at someone else's expense? The poet John Donne once wrote, "No man is an island, entire of itself." You may find your personal sense of right and wrong stirred up and integrated into your responses as you articulate how, without appropriate constraints, a company may directly or indirectly harm others. Perhaps it is fair to say, "No business is an island."

-MEDIA REPORT: Based on the facts of actual law-related stories reported in the media, questions in this format allow you to practise separating your emotions from your legal logic to analyze a current legal issue. Both the Ask a Lawyer questions and the Media Report questions may provide you with opportunities to apply checklists (such as the contracts checklist) that you may develop as part of your approach to writing analytically about complex legal subjects.

-Unit 5, End of Unit: Please turn to page 100 of your textbook and read the Ask a Lawyer feature box. Put your contracts checklist beside this feature box, and assume that in the contract between Manufacturing Supply and Product Supply, there are no concerns with respect to the first seven checklist elements. Now review the last four elements that you have added to the checklist, the defences against an otherwise apparently enforceable contract. Please respond analytically in Part II of your Reflection Journal to the concerns that Manufacturing Supply may have with Products Supply. Also explain whether Manufacturing Supply might alternatively be able to do business with Parts Manufacturing instead.

Then turn to page 117 and read the Media Report feature box, again responding analytically to the questions regarding misrepresentation and saving your responses.

-Unit 6, End of Unit: Please turn to page 131 of the textbook to the Ask a Lawyer feature box. Reflecting specifically on the types of breach of contract introduced to you in the second half of this unit, please isolate the issue facing Ashtown Foundry Co. and critically analyze the scenario.

Next, please turn to the Business Ethics feature box on page 148 and reflect upon the practice of the use by sellers of standard form contracts, and in exactly what ways some aspects of them may have become draconian. Respond analytically to the question in your journal. As part of your answer, please try to reflect upon the section of Jennifer Housen's lecture regarding the enforceability of liquidated damages clauses in her Remedies for Breach of Contract video.

For your third Reflection Journal entry, please turn to page 152 of the textbook and read the Media Report feature box. Again, please respond analytically.

-Unit 7, End of Unit: To resume your entries into Part II of your Reflection Journal, please turn to page 163 of the textbook to the Ask a Lawyer feature box. Reflecting specifically on the forms of business organization introduced in this unit, please assess which form or forms might be suitable for Able, using the chart of advantages and disadvantages of each form to guide you in your written critical analysis.

Turning next to the Business Ethics feature box on page 173, please review the types of duties owed by agents to their principals and the nature of those duties before you respond to this question. Consider as well how many agents may be involved in a listing of real estate and a subsequent purchase.

For your third Reflection Journal entry, please read the Media Report feature box on page 175. Once again review the respective duties and responsibilities of principals and agents as you prepare to analyze what Whitney Houston's father would be required to prove in order to succeed in a breach of contract lawsuit.

-Unit 8, End of Unit: Please turn to page 193 of your textbook now and read the Ask a Lawyer feature box. Keep close by the notes you've developed on the advantages and disadvantages of the three forms of business organization as you address your new Reflection Journal scenarios. For this first feature box, you'll of course be focusing on the pros and cons of partnership and incorporation and how each model might benefit an expanding business operating at more than one location.

On page 213 in the Business Ethics feature box, the act of insider trading is raised for your consideration from an ethical perspective. In your Reflection Journal, please explain who else-besides a corporation's directors, senior officers, and shareholders owning more than 10 percent of the corporation's voting rights-might be considered a so-called insider who could tip off or be tipped about an undisclosed but significant change to a corporation that could seriously impact upon its value in the marketplace.

On page 214, in the Media Report feature box, please critically analyze the liability of Enron itself to its creditors. Next, ask yourself what liability do the shareholders of Enron have to its creditors? Finally, please consider how the usually protective corporate veil might be lifted-and analyze the potential liability to creditors of Enron's senior directors and officers, given that some have pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraud.

-Unit 9, End of Unit: On page 251, please read the Ask a Lawyer feature box. In Part II of your Reflection Journal, carefully consider how the technology company's present contracts (for discussion purposes, assume those contracts are in writing) with corporations in their current client base would change to reflect the change in the nature of their business. Please critically analyze the facts of the scenario, ensuring you address the requirements for application of the relevant statute.

Next, please turn to page 269 and read the Media Report feature box. You'll now have the chance to compare and contrast the powers of consumer protection legislation designed not for business-to-business transactions, but for those where the goods will be personally used by the purchaser. In "Killer Candy and the Food and Drugs Act," you'll see that not every eventuality that could endanger the health and safety of consumers has been anticipated by legislation. Although the Canada Consumer Product Safety Actregulates children's toys, jewellery, sleepwear, and pacifiers, the Food and Drugs Act does not, as the Media Report points out, regulate the size or shape of food products that may cause the death of children by choking. Again, please respond analytically to the potential danger from choking apparently overlooked by the federal statute.

The Business Ethics feature box can be found on page 272. Please provide your opinion as to whether the expenses of compliance for the average, law-abiding business person outweigh the protections provided to consumers.

-Unit 10, End of Unit: On page 356, please read the Ask a Lawyer feature box. In Part II of your Reflection Journal, carefully consider the checklist of common terms in an offer to purchase provided in the textbook, as well as the explanation of a building mortgage explained near the end of Chapter 13. Please critically analyze the facts of the scenario, ensuring you address both components of the question-the purchasing process, and the need for financing the construction of a building for Metro Manufacturing's new facility.

Next, please turn to page 379 and read the Media Report feature box. Again, please respond analytically to all three questions, considering in particular factors such as how long the encroachments have been in existence. Remember that this is your last Reflection Journal entry, and that Part II should be submitted to your instructor at the end of unit 10.

You have now completed Assignment 5: Reflection Journal Part II (worth 15% of your grade). Please submit this assignment at the end of unit 10.