Harvey Spectre is a solicitor in Pearson & Hardman, a UK firm. Their core business involves corporate and civil clients and giving legal consultancy to their businesses and closing deals. A few years ago, Harvey was on a case which was won despite the lack of evidence with his client escaping criminal offence.

Case synopsis: Mr. Davis was the owner and CEO of Davis Motors, a car company, which manufactured luxury car. Ms. Clara Brown worked there as a technical supervisor. During routine inspections, she found that the accelerator occasionally got stuck, producing unintended acceleration. She advised Mr. Davis to take appropriate action to correct the problem. To save herself from any harm, Clara wrote a report about the problem and sent it to Mr. Davis. It was delivered to Mr. Davis’ office and his secretary Ms. Campbell signed the receipt. Ms. Campbell decided to delay giving the report to Mr. Davis as he was quite busy and later forgot about it completely. Two months after the incident, Ms. Brown migrated to a distant country when she was offered a more highly paid job there.

The car was put on the market without the problem having been fixed. And three months later, one of the customers who had bought the car, met with a fatal accident while driving it. The victim’s family sued Davis Motors for $50 million. Davis Motors then hired Pearson & Hardman as its legal team. Pearson & Hardman assigned Harvey Spectre to lead the defence. Harvey defended successfully, based on an apparent lack of evidence. The plaintiff’s legal team was not aware of Ms. Brown’s report or her discovery of the accelerator problem.

A year later, the case was reopened when the victim’s family complained that vital information was withheld by Davis Motors. As it turned out, Ms. Brown had learned about the accident on the internet and contacted the family herself. A government investigation followed and it discovered that Ms. Campbell had put Ms. Brown’s report in the store room instead of giving it to Mr. Davis.

You are a consultant for small businesses and are in the process of helping your client. You want to use the above case to illustrate and explain to your client some of the legal issues that can arise in business.

Create and orally present a PowerPoint presentation titled “Should Davis Motors be ordered to pay $50 million?”

To complete this task successfully, you must:

1. Contrast liability in tort with contractual liability. (3.1) (12.5 Marks)

You should:

1. Explain three differences between liability in tort and contractual liability.
2. Identify the different torts possible in the scenario.

2. Explain the nature of liability in negligence. (3.2) (12.5 Marks)

You should:

1. Explain the nature of liability in negligence using the given scenario and carefully considering the following:

3. Apply the elements of the tort of negligence and defenses in different business situations. (4.1) (12.5 Marks)

You should:

1. Explain the elements of the tort of negligence.
2. Identify and apply the elements to the given scenario.