IRAC

Assignment

You are a lawyer working in a fictional country called Nambia. It is governed by a constitution that has a bill of rights which is similar to the European Convention of Human Rights. You are consulted by a client who was incarcerated in a prison on a charge of fraud for three years.

The prison in which he is confined is call the BFP Big freedom prison

As part of his sentence he was required to work on a private farm which was owned by the Big Slaughter Corporation. It made use of the services of a prisoners in terms of a contract which it had with the prison services. The prison provided laborers to the farm and the farm paid money into the private account of prisoners which could be accessed by their families for their living expenses.

This farm was a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) and as part of its normal operating procedures it used a continual treatment of all livestock with antibiotics (See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwHapgrF99A; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZW8-LQftnY). Your client believes that he acquired Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) (a”super-bug”) while working on that farm. This caused him severe distress and ill health from the time that he contracted it until today.

Furthermore he has suffered psychological injury from watching the inhumane manner in which animals are treated and slaughtered on this farm. See youtube clips on cruelty on dairy farms, pig farms and chicken farms.

In addition to this, for most of his incarceration your client was housed in E-section of the maximum security prison, a cell designed for occupation by one person but which he shared with two other inmates.

At one stage, inmates at E-Section, including the applicant, were moved to the Medium B prison where they were detained in a communal cell with about 25 inmates for a period of time, on being moved back to E-Section he was held in a communal cell until he was placed in a single cell again

Your client was not infected with TB or MRSA when he arrived at the prison; the responsible authorities were “pertinently aware of the risk” of inmates contracting Tuberculosis (TB); TB is an airborne communicable disease which spreads easily especially in confined, poorly ventilated and overcrowded environments; The prison your client was detained in is notoriously congested and inmates are confined to close contact for as much as 23 hours every day – this provides ideal conditions for transmission; on occasion, the lock-up total was as much as 3052 inmates and single cells regularly housed three inmates; communal cells were filled with double and sometimes triple bunks; the responsible authorities relied on a system of inmates self-reporting their symptoms during incarceration; and the control of TB at the prison depends upon effective screening of incoming inmates, the isolation of infectious patients and the proper administration of the necessary medication over the prescribed period of time.

During his incarceration the applicant regularly underwent sputum tests, the results of which were negative until June 2003. He was diagnosed with TB after three years of his incarceration.

As a matter of course, all prisoners are screened for TB when they arrive at the prison. If someone is found to have TB they are normally sent to the medical wing of the prison where they are kept in isolation for a period of one week and only then released into the general prison population.

Your Client wishes to know whether he has an action against anyone and if so then against whom.

This question is to be answered in IRAC form.

These will be as follows:

I	(LEGAL) ISSUE'4'	You are to identify 4 legal problem(s) that are being raised in the question. Here, you name the legal issue or action raised by the facts of the problem question, and mention the ‘elements’ of each action to determine whether the facts and conduct of the parties involved satisfy the requisite legal requirements of the action. Identify each elements of the tort of negligence	1 -1 ½ Pages
R	Rule(s)	This is a re-statement of the law as you learned from your textbook and other sources. This will involve a detailed study of the law Here you will also be required to look at similar cases and explain what the court decided in those cases. He a short summary may be necessary to explain the case and/or even excerpts from the judgment. Give a case citation for each element. Example: The elements of the tort of negligence are: Duty of Care The elements of the duty of care are….. (here you identify the elements using Donoghue v Stevenson and Caparo v Dickman and all other relevant cases. You must state the elements in full and if necessary include a short summary of the cases that you are relying upon. You are to cite the cases properly. Breach of the Duty Set out the law plus the relevant cases as stated above Causes Set out the law plus the relevant cases as stated above Damages Set out the law plus the relevant cases as stated above Other issues that you may identify should also be canvassed You will be required to look at cases from United Kingdom (see your book) and South Africa. You may also look to case law or articles from other jurisdictions such as European Court of European Rights or USA. South African sources can be found at SAFLII http://www.saflii.org/ European Court of Human Rights cases can be found at http://www.echr.coe.int/Pages/home.aspx?p=home	2 ½ - 3 pages
A	Application	The application should be the simplest part of your writing. If you know the facts, can see the issues, and know the rules pertaining to those issues, the application will write itself. Simply state the issue, state the facts & rules that give rise to the issue, and tell explain how those facts do or do not meet the requirements laid down by the rules. Identify each elements of the tort of negligence	2 pages
C	Conclusion	The conclusion is a statement that explains what the result of your argument is, or what it should be. But, as with all good writing, the conclusion should be redundant. All of your application sections should have already clearly stated the conclusion for each individual issue. Thus, you are here “wrapping up using the conclusions that you arrived at in the application section.	½ page

There is to be no copying or plagiarism.