Case Project 1 Bu2 Week 2 Business Law

Week Three Assignment Project 1
Onteria Kelley
ITT Tech Online
BU222 – Business Law and Regulation
Dr. Carrie A. O'Hare
November 10, 2011

Week Three Assignment Project 1
If Mary damages a client’s hair she would be held liable. According to our textbook, Mary would cause injury to the plaintiff. Mary was to provide a duty of care to the customer. She breached this duty of care “failure to exercise care or to act as reasonable person would act (Cheeseman, 2010, p. 81).” The reason I state, that is because the customer trusted Mary with their hair and she damaged the client’s hair. As long as Celia and Mary register their boutique name with the United States PTO in Washington, DC, and the PTO approved it, there should not be any legal problems. If Celia and Mary decide to offer
their waiting clients free music downloads, they are asking for trouble. In the case of BMG Music v. Gonzalez, Gonzalez thought that as long as she was “sampling” the music she could leave it on her computer without paying for it.
That is not so. According to the courts, Gonzales had engaged in copyright infringement and Gonzalez had to pay $22,500 in damages to BMG (Cheeseman, 2010, p. 117). I would advise them making this huge mistake unless; they decide to pay for each download that they are providing to their waiting clients they could be breaking the law. There could be civil liability to Celia and Mary if one of their employees sexually harassed a customer. This falls under the negligence of an agent which states “in negligence of an agent, the principal is responsible because of the employment contract with the agent. In other words, if an agent acts negligently while being employed by the principal and is acting within the scope of the employment, the principal is also liable for the negligence of the agent, even though the principal did nothing negligent personally (Cheeseman, 2010, p. 474).” If Celia and Mary only hire men they could be charged with sex discrimination. Sex discrimination is “discrimination against a person solely because of his or her gender (Cheeseman, 2010, p. 515).” It would not matter how they hired whether they were Independent contractors or employees. If
Celia and Mary require the men when they are not selling, to do inventory and clean up the boutique and they set their working hours they cannot be classified as independent contractors. “The degree of control that the principal has over the agent is the crucial factor that determines whether someone is an independent contractor or an employee (Cheeseman, 2010, p. 481).” Since Celia and Mary seem to have substantial control over their workers we would classify their relationship as an employer-employee relationship. In this case, they would not be able to pay them only on commission for sales; they would have to add in an hourly rate as well. Again if Celia and Mary hire a person based on their age, race, color, or national origin they are setting themselves up for a discrimination lawsuit. If they decide to only hire men who are qualified under the age of 40, they are committing age discrimination. Age discrimination is the “federal statute that prohibits age discrimination practices against employees who are 40 and older (Cheeseman, 2010, p. 521).”

Reference
Cheeseman, H. R. (2010). Business law (7th edition). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.