Reference no: EM133198037 , Length: word count:250
Assignment Tort: Alice operates a daycare center in her home from Monday through Friday for children from ages 6 months to three years old. One Friday, she discovered some mice in her house and called Bob, an exterminator. She told Bob that she runs the daycare center in her home for very young children and needs to get rid of the mice by the following Monday, when the children will return.
On Saturday, Bob placed small plastic packages of poison pellets in the corners of every room in the house. He explained that the mice would gnaw through the plastic packaging to eat the pellets, and then die shortly thereafter. On each, package was printed the following warning:
"DANGER: THIS PACKAGE CONTAINS POISION, WHICH MAY BE HARMFUL TO HUMAN HEALTH IF SWALLOWED!"
Before leaving Alice's house, Bob told her that the mice should ingest the pellets by Monday morning and that she could if she wanted to remove what is left of the packages before the children arrived.
On Sunday, Carol came for the first time to clean Alice's house. Carol did not know that Alice operated a daycare center in her home. Carol noticed several packages of poison in the corners of the rooms, but cleaned around them.
Shortly before the children arrived on Monday morning, Alice removed as many of the packages of poison as she could find. Later that day, nine-month-old Victor, one of the children in Alice's daycare center, was crawling along the floor of the living room when he found a package that Alice had missed. It had already been gnawed into by a mouse, and Victor reached in and ate some of the pellets. He became seriously ill. Medical tests determined that Victor's illness was caused by his ingestion of the mouse poison. As a result, Victors parents had $200,000 of unaid medical bills.
Required:
Question 1. Under what theory or theories of torts might Victor's parents bring a legal action for damages against
a. Alice, the business owner
b. Bob, the exterminator and
c. Carol, the housecleaner?
Discuss defendant separately giving reasons for your conclusions.
Question 2. What defenses, if any, might Alice, Bob and Carol each assert, and what is the likely result? \ Discuss, giving reasons for your conclusions.