AUSTRALIAN COMMERCIAL LAW ASSIGNMENT

PART A -

You must choose ONE of the following questions:

Question 1(a) Provide a summary of the constitution that your tribe developed in Workshop 1, Tasks 1 and 2, explaining how it addresses the requirements for Hart's 3-part legal system. Then compare it to how the Australian legal system addresses the same requirements.

OR

Question 1(b) Research a legal system of a foreign country and explain how it addresses the requirements of Hart's 3-part legal system. Then compare it to how the Australian legal system addresses the same requirements.

NOTE: In either of these questions, you can assume that the marker knows what Hart's 3-part legal system is, so you do not have to explain it - you just need to apply it correctly. (600-800 words).

PART B -

Barry was sick of his day job, and wanted to buy a business so he could become his own boss. He saw that a fruit and vegetable store was up for sale at his local shopping village. The owner had posted an advertisement on the notice board at the shopping village as follows:

Highly profitable venture in bustling suburban shopping centre with turnover of $20,000 per month. No competitors. $250,000 plus stock-in-trade. Ring Angelo on 0434 123 456.

Barry telephoned Angelo and asked about the store. He asked what the expenses of the business were, and Angelo told him that they were $8,000 per month. Barry liked what he had heard, so he decided to check out how busy the shopping centre was. On the weekend, when he wasn't working, he went to the shopping centre a few times and noticed that it was open all day Saturday and Sunday and was busy most of that time. He negotiated with Angelo and eventually agreed to buy the business for $200,000. To save money, he did not hire a lawyer, and signed a contract which included the following term:

The sale includes the following plant and equipment:

Item - Value

Delivery van - $15,000

Loader - $2,000

Barry paid for the business and took over running it on 1 January 2018. When he took over the store, he discovered the following problems:

(a) Although the shopping village was busy on the weekends, it was very quiet during the week. In the first two months the turnover was only $13,000 per month.

(b) There was a grocery store in the shopping village that sold a wide range of fruit and vegetables.

(c) After six weeks, a man from a finance company arrived at the shop and repossessed the delivery van. It turned out that the van was only leased by the previous owner, and since Barry had not made the lease payments, the lease was in default. Barry's expenses at the shop had been below $8,000 per month, but if he had paid the van lease, the expenses would have been on average about $8,500 per month.

(d) The loader, which was a small motorised machine for putting pallets on and off the back of the van, was broken down and could not be fixed for less than the cost of replacing it.

You are providing a written report to your supervising partner. To impress him, you want to show that you worked hard at university by demonstrating your knowledge of law and your ability to use it. You need to provide a written report providing the following advices.

Question 2 - Advise how Barry might challenge the validity of the contract on the basis of the statements made by Angelo before the contract was entered into. You should consider both common law and statute law. (About 800 words).

Question 3 - Assuming Barry does not get out of the contract, advise on the possibility of an action for breach of contract. (About 800 words)

NOTE: These are questions where the focus is on your reasoning processes, so you should use the IRAC method. You do not need to repeat the facts unnecessarily, so only refer to the facts of the case to support your argument. Also, only refer to cases to illustrate or support the legal points you are making or the argument you are putting. If you do refer to cases, you need to demonstrate how they are relevant to the facts or argment. Your supervising partner will not be impressed by you simply reciting law without purpose.

PART C -

(YouTube video no more than about 6 minutes in length)

In this part, your task is to take the advices you gave to your supervising partner in Questions 2 and 3 and present them to your client, Barry, in a way that he can understand. You DO need to explain to him what the law is and how it leads to your recommendations, but it must be presented in a way that a client without legal training can understand. The report must be done as a YouTube video and the link for the video must be included in your assignment. The video must be set so that the marker can view it. If the link does not work for the marker, you get no marks for this part.

Your face must appear in the video. You should not be reading from a script, but you can use notes to prompt your talking.