§Your exam is an OPEN BOOK, ONLINE e-EXAM – printed materials and electronic resources are permitted – including the eBook § §50 marks in total - worth 50% of your final mark § §Question 1 – part (a) and part (b) - Consumer Protection – 17 marks §Question 2 – the law of Torts – Negligence – 17 marks §Question 3 – Business Organisations – 10 marks §Question 4 – Business Organisations – 6 marks § §Questions are not weighted equally – manage your time accordingly § §2 hours and 10 minutes – no separate reading and noting time - about 2 minutes per mark § §Strongly suggest spend time reading and briefly planning before writing answers § §Please see the exam information and resources posted to Moodle for more detail – academic integrity is paramount.§No multiple choice questions – all legal problem style questions §
Microsoft Word - Week 12 past exam revision questions.docx BTF1010 BUSINESS LAW – WEEK 12 REVISION QUESTIONS PAST EXAM QUESTIONS ADDRESSING CONSUMER PROTECTION AND THE LAW OF TORTS The questions in this document are past exam questions. These questions will be covered in our Week 12 lectures. To get the most benefit from this revision exercise, please attempt these questions ahead of class, without looking at the answer outlines in the lecture slides. This way you can test your knowledge, which is an important exam preparation exercise. We also recommend you attempt these questions under exam conditions: typing responses on your computer, using the open book resources you will actually use during the exam, and sticking to a time limit. This will also allow you to test your preparedness for applying relevant exam technique. Brief answer guidelines are provided in the Week 12 lecture slides. Our Week 12 lectures will be recorded lectures, as usual, so you will be able to review the lectures multiple times for revision purposes if you wish. Tips for studying and preparing for a law exam, as well as tips for exam technique, will also be covered in the Week 12 lecture. Additional practice questions and exam preparation resources have been provided to Moodle and we encourage you to use these questions in conjunction with those other resources. We wish you all the very best of luck for your exam preparation! Ben Hayward, on behalf of the teaching team Chief Examiner – BTF1010 Business Law Consumer Protection Guiseppe visits the showroom of WFO Pty Ltd to buy a new wood-fired pizza oven for his restaurant. Guiseppe tells the manager that he must have an oven that can be heated to 600 degrees centigrade (a very high heat for pizza ovens) and retains its heat. “My pizza dough is made from special sourdough decan flour that only ‘bubbles’ when the oven hits at 600 degrees” he said. The manager assures Guiseppe that the new “Florentino” commercial wood-fired oven will satisfy his particular requirements. As a result of the manager's statements and recommendations, he purchases the oven for $35,000. Soon after the oven is installed in the restaurant, Guiseppe discovers that the Florentino oven is unable to reach the temperature required and his pizza dough refuses to ‘bubble’. It is perfectly adequate for all normal pizza dough but is not able to do what Guiseppe specified. He contacts the manager of WFO to inform him that he wants to rescind the contract and return the oven. What rights if any does Guiseppe have under the consumer guarantees in the Australian Consumer Law? Do not discuss other parts of the Australian Consumer Law such as misleading or deceptive conduct. Please ensure that you use relevant authority in support of your answer (ie. cases and/or legislation). Note – this question represented approximately 20 minutes of writing time on a past exam. The Law of Torts Elton, a partner with an auditing firm, completed the audit for Greenfields Ltd and announced that the financial statements were an accurate reflection of Greenfields’ financial position. At that time, Elton knew that Ceylonica Ltd was about to purchase Greenfields because Cynthia, the managing director of Ceylonica and a personal friend of his, told him about it. However, the board of directors of Ceylonica had not made any public announcements about this purchase. Ceylonica Ltd did indeed purchase Greenfields after reading the audit report prepared by Elton but within a few months they discovered that Greenfields’ financial statements were wrong. Elton had failed to take into account a large unsecured loan that had to be written off. The result was that the balance sheet overstated assets by $10 million. As a result, Greenfields was in fact in a poor financial position and Ceylonica lost most of its investment. Advise Ceylonica whether Elton owes it a duty of care. Cite relevant cases and / or statutes. Note – this question represented approximately 12 minutes of writing time on a past exam. Microsoft Word - Question 7 - Model Answer and Commentary.docx 1 MODEL ANSWER AND COMMENTARY QUESTION 7 (THE LAW OF TORTS) – ADDITIONAL EXAM REVISION QUESTIONS, BATCH 2 Introduction Though we will not be providing issues or answer guides for your two additional batches of exam revision questions, a number of students have indicated that they would find it helpful for their exam preparations to see a model answer. To this end, this document contains a model answer and a commentary on that model answer addressing Question 7 (Topic 4: The Law of Torts) from the second batch of additional exam revision questions. When reviewing these materials, please note the following very important disclaimers: While model answers can be useful revision tools, they are just that – tools. They are not templates which can be copied and pasted into your exam. This model answer has been prepared in response to a specific question. The question on your exam will be different. Please make sure you use this model answer to help you prepare to independently answer the specific question asked on your exam. Copying and pasting this model answer will not answer the specific question you have been asked and a result will attract little, if any, marks. Copying and pasting this model answer would also constitute plagiarism, and in that case action may be taken for academic misconduct. This model answer has been prepared outside of exam conditions – specifically, without the pressure of a time limit. The length of this model answer does not necessarily reflect the length of the answer required on your exam, where you will be subject to a time constraint. Remember, the most important thing is to answer the question – regardless of how much you write. Following on from the point above, we have erred on the side of providing more detail rather than less in this model answer, in order to illustrate what a practically-complete answer would look like. However, an answer does not have to be 100% perfect to be awarded a high distinction grade. What this model answer may assist you with is: Seeing how the IRAC structure can be employed in sentence and paragraph form. Seeing how an answer might be fully explained, with reference to (and applying) relevant legal authorities. Seeing the style in which an answer might cite relevant legal authorities (cases and legislation). Seeing how an exam question might involve several steps, that must all be worked through in order to come to an ultimate conclusion. As always, we wish you all the very best of luck with your studies! Ben Hayward, on behalf of the teaching team Chief Examiner – BTF1010 Business Law 2 Model answer The issue raised by this question is whether Ted would be successful in a claim for negligence against Crystal Cruises. To determine whether this is so, it is necessary to identify whether a duty of care exists, identify whether the duty of care was breached, address Ted’s damages (causation and remoteness), and identify whether any defences might apply. Starting with the duty of care, this is an ordinary negligence case involving liability for personal injury. As a result, the neighbour and proximity tests from Donoghue v Stevenson apply. We need to ask whether Ted is within the class of people who might be reasonably foreseen as affected by the actions of Crystal Cruises. Ted is a customer of Crystal Cruises, in relation to its sailing cruise services around Phillip Island. As a result, he is a neighbour to Crystal Cruises according to the law of negligence, and is in a relationship of proximity to Crystal Cruises. A duty of care does exist in this case. The second step is to identify whether this duty of care has been breached. This is governed by the rules in the Wrongs Act s 48(1) and s 48(2) (as well as the principles in the Wyong case). Under the Wrongs Act s 48(1)(a) and (b), there is no duty for Crystal Cruises to take precautions against risks to Ted unless the risks were foreseeable, and not insignificant. Both requirements are met here: while Crystal Cruises has never had a passenger get stung before, there are 10,000 cases of bluebottle jellyfish stings each year on the east coast of Australia, and 500 near Phillip Island. The risk to Ted is foreseeable to Crystal Cruises, even though Crystal Cruises has not had direct experience with this risk before, and it is not insignificant. Under s 48(1)(c), we have to ask what a reasonable person would have done in the circumstances. To answer this question, we look at the factors set out in the Wrongs Act s 48(2) (and also in the Wyong case). These factors need to be balanced against each other. Negligence law does not require Crystal Cruises to eliminate all risks to Ted (Argo). The first factor is the probability of the risk of injury. Like in the Bolton case and in RTA v Dederer, there is a low probability of risk here – Crystal Cruises has never had a passenger get stung before, even though there are 500 stings around Phillip Island every year. The gravity of the harm is potentially very high – much more severe injuries could have been sustained than those which occurred to Ted, and even those injuries were serious. The burden of eliminating the risk is also high. Crystal Cruises already supplied wetsuits to passengers and recommends that passengers wear those wetsuits. Wetsuits providing greater protection and covering the neck, face, hands, and feet are available, but are five times the price of a normal wetsuit. It may not be reasonable to expect Crystal Cruises to supply these more expensive wetsuits (Woods). Social utility is