devry Busn420 week 2 assignment

Assignment

Prepare answers to the following chapter-end Critical Legal Thinking Cases from this week's reading.

· Case 5.2: Negligence on page 101

· Case 6.1: Strict Liability on page 117

Your responses should be well-rounded and analytical, and should not just provide a conclusion or an opinion without explaining the reason for the choice.

For full credit, you need to use the material from the week's lectures, text, and/or discussions when responding to the questions. It is important that you incorporate the question into your response (i.e., restate the question in your introduction) and explain the legal principle(s) or concept(s) from the text that underlies your judgment.

For each question, you should provide at least one reference in APA format (in-text citations and references as described in detail in the Syllabus). Each answer should be double-spaced in 12-point font, and your response to each question should be between 300 and 1,000 words in length.

Submit this assignment as a single Word document covering both cases.

5.2 Negligence Curtis R. Wilhelm owned beehives and kept the hives on property he owned. John Black, who operated a honeybee business, contracted to purchase some beehives from Wilhelm. Black employed Santos Flores, Sr. to help him pick up the beehives from

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Wilhelm. Black provided Flores with a protective suit to wear while picking up the beehives. Neither Wilhelm nor Black informed Flores of the danger of working with bees. After picking up beehives from Wilhelm’s home, Black and Flores drove to remote property owned by Wilhelm to pick up other beehives. Flores opened the veil on his protective suit. After loading one beehive onto the truck, Flores started staggering and yelling for help. Flores sustained several bee stings, suffered anaphylactic shock reaction, and died before an ambulance could reach him. Flores’s wife and children sued Wilhelm and Black for negligence for failing to warn Flores of the dangers of working with beehives and the possibility of dying of anaphylactic shock if stung by a bee. Did Wilhelm act negligently by failing to warn Flores of the dangers of working with beehives? Wilhelm v. Flores, 133 S.W.3d 726, Web 2003 Tex. App. Lexis 9335 (Court of Appeals of Texas)

6.1 Strict Liability Senco Products, Inc. (Senco), manufactures and markets a variety of pneumatic nail guns, including the SN325 nail gun, which discharges 3.25-inch nails. The SN325 uses special nails designed and sold by Senco. The SN325 will discharge a nail only if two trigger mechanisms are activated; that is, the user must both squeeze the nail gun’s finger trigger and press the nail gun’s muzzle against a surface, activating the bottom trigger, or safety. The SN325 can fire up to nine nails per second if the trigger is continuously depressed and the gun is bounced along the work surface, constantly reactivating the muzzle safety/trigger.

The evidence disclosed that the SN325 double-fired once in every 15 firings. Senco rushed the SN325’s production in order to maintain its position in the market, modifying an existing nail gun model so that the SN325 could shoot longer nails, without engaging in additional testing to determine whether the use of longer nails in that model would increase the prevalence of double-fire.

John Lakin was using a Senco SN325 nail gun to help build a new home. When attempting to nail two-by-fours under the eaves of his garage, Lakin stood on tiptoe and raised a two-by-four over his head. As he held the board in position with his left hand and the nail gun in his right hand, he pressed the nose of the SN325 up against the board, depressed the safety, and pulled the finger trigger to fire the nail into the board. The gun fired the first nail and then double-fired, immediately discharging an unintended second nail that struck the first nail. The gun recoiled violently backward toward Lakin and, with Lakin’s finger still on the trigger, came into contact with his cheek. That contact activated the safety/trigger, causing the nail gun to fire a third nail. This third nail went through Lakin’s cheekbone and into his brain.

The nail penetrated the frontal lobe of the right hemisphere of Lakin’s brain, blocked a major artery, and caused extensive tissue damage. Lakin was unconscious for several days and ultimately underwent multiple surgeries. He suffers permanent brain damage and is unable to perceive information from the left hemisphere of the brain. He also suffers partial paralysis of the left side of his body. Lakin has undergone a radical personality change and is prone to violent outbursts. He is unable to obtain employment. Lakin’s previously warm and loving relationship with his wife and four children has been permanently altered. He can no longer live with his family and instead resides in a supervised group home for brain-injured persons. Lakin and his wife sued Senco for strict liability based on design defect. Is Senco liable to Lakin for strict liability based on a design defect in the SN325 that allowed it to double-fire? Lakin v. Senco Products, Inc., 144 Ore.App. 52, 925 P.2d 107,Web 1996 Ore. App. Lexis 1466 (Court of Appeals of Oregon)

6.2 Design Defect Lorenzo Peterson was swimming in a swimming pool with a friend at an apartment complex. Lorenzo watched his friend swim to the bottom of the pool, slide an unattached drain cover away, and then slide it back. Lorenzo thought his friend had hidden something inside the drain, so he swam to the bottom of the pool. Lorenzo slid the drain cover aside and stuck his arm inside the drain. The 300 to 400 pounds of pull of the drain pump held Lorenzo trapped underwater. At least seven people tried to free Lorenzo to no avail. When the police arrived, they broke down the door to the pool equipment room and turned off the drain pump.

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