LAW EDUCATION BUSINESS STUDENTS

Law Education Business Students

Law Education Business Students

Introduction

With the ever-changing nature of law and business, a student, who is interested to enroll in a business course; now should also acquire knowledge regarding the laws applicable to business. Some of the topics most often studied by the business students that display the interplay between business law, commercial need, and ethics include contracts and sales, business torts and products liability, environmental protection, workers' remedies (safety, antidiscrimination,), and trade law (intellectual property, and anticorruption laws).

Common Law of Contracts: Offer, Acceptance, and Consideration

Traditionally, in common law—the law derived from centuries of cases decided by English courts and used in 49 of the United States—an enforceable contract requires proof of just three things in addition to the intent to be bound: offer, acceptance, and consideration (Swanson, 2007, 21). An offer must be sufficiently precise and complete such that the other party's merely saying “yes” to that contract means that a contract will be formed. However, if some of the necessary information or terms are missing, then the statement is not an offer.

As with most advertisements, the purported seller is simply trying to interest potential buyers; he is not making a formal offer for sale. An acceptance, in concept, is similarly simple. It signifies the other party's intent to be bound by the terms of the contract. The third concept required by common law is consideration, which refers to the thing that each party receives in exchange for his or her agreement to perform the obligation or obligations indicated in the contract (Pierson, 2006, 38). This requirement of mutual consideration means that there is some indicia that each party bargained for what he or she is receiving under the contract.

Bargained-for consideration is merely another way of verifying that the parties intend to be bound by the terms of their agreement. Civil law, the law used in 90% of the world (including Louisiana), does not recognise the concept of consideration but uses instead a related principle, termed cause: cause is the reason why one obligates oneself to a contract. Both consideration and cause serve to verify that the parties intend to be bound (Collins, 2007, 89).

Vicarious Liability for Unintentional Torts

In addition to being held vicariously liable for intentional torts, businesses may be held vicariously liable for the unintentional torts of their employees. For example, if a pizza deliverer causes an accident while delivering pizza, the injured person can sue both the pizza deliverer and his or her employer. Similarly, if a business fails to properly maintain its premises, it can be held liable for negligence when a customer is injured as a result—these are the well-known “slip and fall” cases, where a grocery store is liable for a customer's slipping in a puddle of water on the floor (Thackary, 2008, 75).

Liability for Third--Party Crimes

Thus, businesses are often held liable for the misdeeds and negligence of their employees, but until recently, they had not been held liable for the misdeeds of third parties while ...