Project 1: Introduction to the Legal Environment of Business

Project 1: Introduction to the Legal Environment of Business

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Competencies

Your work will be evaluated using the competencies listed below.

· 1.3: Provide sufficient, correctly cited support that substantiates the writer's ideas.

· 1.4: Tailor communications to the audience.

· 1.6: Follow conventions of Standard Written English.

· 1.7: Create neat and professional looking documents appropriate for the project or presentation.

· 1.8: Create clear oral messages.

· 2.1: Identify and clearly explain the issue, question, or problem under critical consideration.

· 2.2: Locate and access sufficient information to investigate the issue or problem.

· 2.3: Evaluate the information in a logical and organized manner to determine its value and relevance to the problem.

· 2.4: Consider and analyze information in context to the issue or problem.

· 2.5: Develop well-reasoned ideas, conclusions or decisions, checking them against relevant criteria and benchmarks.

· 5.2: Assess the implications of legal, ethical and cultural (national) standards on an organization's operations in global markets and make recommendations for appropriate actions.

· 5.3: Create, implement, and evaluate a personal leadership development plan.

· 7.3: Analyze the implications of civil or criminal wrongs and of product or service liability laws, and make recommendations to support business decisions.

· 9.3: Apply the principles of employment law for ethical practices and risk mitigation.

Step 1: Review Case One: Blue Mood Clothing, Inc.

Now that you've finished your skills gap analysis and GAP survey, you take some time to collect your thoughts and review the first case Vice President Dodger assigned to you. First, you need an introduction to the legal environment of business (see course resources). Next, you open the Blue Mood Clothing, Inc. case file (see below) to assess the details of this assignment.

Upon completing your initial review of the file, you begin thinking about the legal issues contained in the file. In the next step, you will gather the information you need to answer the questions from the VP.

Blue Mood Clothing, Inc Case File

Blue Mood Clothing, Inc., a company devoted to producing positive, mood-altering apparel and various other clothing items, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Colossal Corporation. Blue Mood Clothing's most famous and best-selling product is the Breezer—a skin-tight shirt with an air ventilation system that allows the breeze to pass through the shirt. Colossal Corporation has uncovered an incident of theft at Blue Mood Clothing: approximately one month ago, over five thousand Breezers were stolen from Blue Mood Clothing's Atlantic City, New Jersey, warehouse.

Shortly after the theft was discovered, Colossal Corporation's internal investigator, Bill, found an online advertisement for the sale of exactly five thousand Breezers, described as shirts with an "air ventilation system that allows a cooling breeze to pass through the shirt." Bill called the contact on the website and set up a meeting with the seller, Nick Johnson. When Bill, under the guise of being an interested purchaser of the Breezers, inquired about Nick's distributor, Nick did not hesitate to reveal that he purchased the Breezers from Juanita Winfrey, his long-time business associate. Bill inspected the five thousand Breezers, and confirmed they were indeed the same Breezer products that were stolen from the warehouse. He then requested a price quote from Nick and asked Nick to hold the products for him for seven days. Nick agreed.

That same afternoon, before additional investigation, Bill sent an email intended solely to be sent to the vice president of Blue Mood Clothing, Inc., but he accidentally hit "reply all" to a previous message, and sent the email to every employee at Blue Mood Clothing, Inc., over two hundred people. The email stated, among other things, that "Nick Johnson was a thief and had an extensive criminal record in New Jersey. He stole the five thousand Breezers. I will continue my investigation tomorrow." This statement was not true. Nick’s old friend from high school, who worked at Blue Mood Clothing, Inc., forwarded this message to Nick, who became worried about his business and reputation.

Bill arranged a meeting with Juanita the very next day, during which he posed as an interested clothing buyer. He asked Juanita if she had any Breezer distributors she could recommend. Juanita said that she works directly with a Blue Mood Clothing sales agent named Alex Ridgefield, and that she recently purchased five thousand Breezers from him at a fair price. Juanita also said that Alex is quite interested in expanding his business with her, and would provide Bill with a great deal.

After his meeting with Juanita, Bill checked the personnel records at Blue Mood Clothing and identified Alex Ridgefield as a low-level warehouse employee who has been with the company for over 20 years. Alex's personnel record is spotless, with no prior personnel issues and no complaints. Alex is an at-will employee who is in charge of night security at the Atlantic City warehouse and has no history in sales. As a night security guard, Alex is responsible for protecting the warehouse from theft and is not permitted to sell products. After further investigation, Bill found company emails between Juanita and Alex in which Alex posed as a sales agent. Reading the emails, it became obvious that neither Juanita nor Nick knew that the five thousand Breezers were stolen, and that both bought the Breezers for fair-market value. Bill then collected video from all of Alex’s shifts and was able to locate a film of Alex packing the Breezers into his personal minivan and driving them out of the warehouse parking lot.

Your task is to research the legal issues surrounding the stolen property. It is up to you to decipher which laws have been broken and deduce any potential remedies. Vice President Dodger wants you to prepare a narrated PowerPoint to present this information to the senior leadership team. Because of the sensitive nature of this case, the vice president has asked you to operate with total confidentiality and without involving the legal department.

Step 2: Gather and Analyze Information

As you read through the materials, try to begin answering the questions Vice President Dodger asked you. You will likely encounter many new legal concepts, so take notes about which sections apply to this case so that you can easily refer back to them when you begin to write your presentation. The VP’s precise questions about the legal issues are as follows:

· Can Colossal Corporation terminate Alex without any notice or a hearing? Why or why not? This question relates to employment-at-will.

· Did Alex, Nick, Bill, or Juanita commit any crimes and, if so, which crimes did each person commit? Fully explain your answer for each person as you explore the subject of business criminal law.

· What defenses, if any, might the relevant persons allege in response to the crimes you identified? Fully explain your answer for each person.

· Did Alex, Nick, Bill, or Juanita commit any intentional torts and, if so, which intentional torts did each person commit? Read about the law of torts in order to make your determinations.

· What defenses, if any, might the relevant persons allege in response to the intentional torts you identified? Fully explain your answer for each person.

· Can anyone collect damages for the intentional torts? Who can collect and whom would they sue? Detail the specific damages that may be available to potential plaintiffs as you read about tort damages.

In the next step, you will formalize your thoughts so that they are ready to put into your presentation.

Step 3: Focus on Your Rationale and Conclusions: Create Your Outline

You've finished your research. You've reflected on how the facts and the law come together in this situation. You've analyzed the possible arguments and determined which seem most reasonable. Now it is time to formulate these arguments, addressing all the issues raised by the narrative in the Blue Mood Clothing, Inc. case file Vice President Dodger gave you.

Outline your presentation to the leadership team, in a Word document; don't make the PowerPoint yet. Review your outline to make certain it covers all relevant points and progresses in a logical order. Identify the major bullet points that you will highlight on your slides, and allocate the appropriate supporting information to each bullet point—make sure that you have adequately covered all the relevant arguments or reasons needed to support them. In the next step, you'll use your outline to create the PowerPoint presentation for the VP.

Step 4: Communicate Your Findings and Conclusions to the Vice President of Colossal Corporation: Create Your PowerPoint

You have finished getting all of your ideas organized surrounding the Blue Mood Clothing case when you receive an email with delivery instructions from Vice President Dodger:

INBOX (1 NEW EMAIL) From: Kenneth Dodger, Vice President, Colossal Corporation To: You Just wanted to check in as you begin to communicate your findings and conclusions on the Blue Mood Clothing case. I'd like you to use your outline and research notes from your work on this case to prepare a narrated PowerPoint for the senior leadership team. As you will not deliver this in person, it will need to follow the form of an asynchronous presentation. Further, here is a list of additional requirements I need you to follow to meet standard presentation protocol: · Include a title slide, with your name on it, introducing the presentation. · On the presentation slides, include only the major bullet points for each issue. · Include no more than 20 slides. · Use your narration to provide the supporting rationale for each major bullet point. · Include a script of your narration in the notes section of the PowerPoint. · Title your files using this protocol: yourlastname_BlueMoodPowerPoint_date. · The final slide must present a clear summary of your major conclusions and any recommendations. You should be prepared to answer questions about your presentation after you have submitted it. That should be all for now. Looking forward to seeing the final product, Ken

In the next step, you'll begin analyzing the second case for Colossal: the Carz Bazaar Case.

Step 5: Review Case Two: Carz Bazaar

Feeling proud of your growing knowledge of business law and your work on the Blue Mood Clothing case, you move on to your next assignment. You open the Carz Bazaar case file below to review the facts of the situation.

Once you have fully assessed the situation in the Carz Bazaar case, proceed to the next step, where you will gather the information, you need to analyze the legal questions of the case.

Carz Bazaar Case File

Colossal Company subsidiary Carz Bazaar, a new and used car dealership, hired Charles Wilson to perform various duties, such as cleaning and gassing vehicles, moving vehicles from one lot to another, and maintaining the showroom and vehicle lots. In this position, Wilson had access to keys to the vehicles through a key-control procedure. Under this procedure, an attendant keeps the keys in a control shack. When any employee wants to move a company vehicle, the attendant inputs information into a template request form. The information includes the date, time, stock number of the vehicle, name of the employee checking out the vehicle, and the destination of the vehicle. For example, the vehicle might be taken to a body shop for repairs, to a gas station, or to a company lot at a different location. Every time an employee checks out a vehicle, the reason must be for company business use. It is not necessary to put the expected return time on the form unless a vehicle was expected to be gone for a long time. Once the attendant has completed the form, she gives the keys to the employee who has requested them. When the vehicle is returned, the attendant indicates in the log that the vehicle was returned and replaces the keys. Sometimes vehicles are gone for more than one day. Some vehicles may be removed permanently if they are sold from another lot. In these cases, the managers of the other lots call to let the attendant know that the vehicle will not be coming back. Sometimes employees drive cars back and leave the keys with other employees to return to the attendant. This practice was acceptable to the dealership.

One day when Gina Mitchell was the attendant in charge, Wilson asked her if he could use a car for 30 minutes on his lunch break to go to his mother's house. The attendant told him it was okay as long as he brought it back because, otherwise, she could get in trouble. Since Wilson only wanted the car for 30 minutes and she trusted him, she did not make any entry about this trip on the computer. Wilson took the car and left. On his way back to the dealership, Wilson rear-ended a car stopped at a stop light, causing injuries to the driver and a passenger. Wilson told a police officer at the scene of the accident that he was on a lunch break from his job and that he had permission to drive the car, but his boss was not aware he had the car.

The injured driver and passenger sued Carz Bazaar on the grounds that it was responsible for the injuries caused by Wilson.

Step 6: Gather and Analyze Information

As you read through the materials, try to begin answering the questions posed below.

You will likely encounter many new legal concepts, so take notes about which sections apply to this case so that you can easily refer back to them when you begin to write your analysis.

In all legal cases, there are disputes about the facts and the law. In this case, we can assume the facts stated in our case file are accurate, so we just need to decide what law applies and how the law can be interpreted to support the plaintiffs’ and defendant's arguments. The issue of who caused the accident has been settled. Wilson caused the accident, so the issue before us is whether Wilson's employer can be held responsible for his actions.

· What are the arguments in favor of the plaintiffs (the accident victims)?

· What are the arguments in favor of the defendant (Carz Bazaar)?

Read about legal responsibilities of agents and employees to help you answer these questions.

In the next step, you'll formalize your thoughts so that they are ready to put into your presentation.

Step 7: Create and Submit Your Legal Analysis

As you begin to finalize your findings from the Carz Bazaar case, you receive an email from Vice President Dodger:

INBOX (1 NEW EMAIL) From: Kenneth Dodger, Vice President, Colossal Corporation To: You Good to see your continued progress on these cases. As you prepare to submit your findings for the Carz Bazaar incident, I wanted to give you some clear delivery instructions. As in the previous case, I'd like you to use your outline and research notes from your work on this case to prepare your written analysis. Maintaining company procedure, I'd also like you to meet the following requirements for this deliverable: · Please divide your analysis into two parts: Part I: Arguments for the Plaintiffs and Part II: Arguments for the Defendant. · Support your conclusion with references to legal principles and laws. Cite references to course materials and cases using APA format. · The analysis should be no more than seven pages (double spaced, 12-point font; the reference list does not count towards the page limit). · Title your file using this protocol: yourlastname_CarzBazaar _date. Following this submission, I would like you to participate in a discussion with your fellow Colossal Company colleagues to see if we can reach a consensus about the winner of this case. I hope your work to this point has been rewarding. I've always found that consideration and appreciation of ethical practice in a global market is the key to successful business. Best, Ken

Step 8: Discuss Carz Bazaar Case Outcome

Discussion

After your careful analysis of the case in the previous steps, Vice President Dodger would like your opinion on the likely outcome of the case if it were to be brought to court and decided by a judge. Provide a full legal analysis and explanation for the outcome you expect. Discuss your opinion with your colleagues so the VP can evaluate any consensus in the assessment of the facts.

Decide in favor of either the plaintiffs or defendant and explain why you made this decision. These posts can be as long or as short as you need in order to effectively make your points.

Step 9: Submit Your Work

Deliverable_Final Deliverable Instructions

Step	Deliverable	File-naming protocol/Submission instructions
Step 4	Blue Mood PowerPoint	lastname_BlueMoodPowerPoint_date.ptp
Step 7	Carz Bazaar analysis	lastname_CarzBazaar _date.docx
Step 8	Cars bazaar discussion	Cars Bazaar Discussion
Skills gap analysis : lastname_SkillsGap_date.docx