Facts Frank Carswell is a senior executive in the insurance industry. You are a lawyer who advises
Question:
Facts Frank Carswell is a senior executive in the insurance industry. You are a lawyer who advises Mr. Carswell on various personal legal matters, and he asks you for legal advice on the following situation: Mr. Carswell owns a house in a semi-rural area in Putnam County, New York. The yard around the house has many trees, which produce a large quantity of fallen leaves every autumn. In 2018, Mr. Carswell received a bid from a local yard-care company, M.L. Landscape Service, to do the “Fall Clean-up” to collect the leaves and haul them away, for a price of $1300. Mr. Carswell contracted with M.L. Landscape to do the 2018 Fall Clean-up, which the company completed in November. The following year, in October 2019, M.L. Landscape sent Mr. Carswell a bid to do the Fall Clean-up again, for the same price of $1300. Mr. Carswell again contracted with M.L. Landscape to do the work and the company completed the 2019 Fall Clean-up in November. In October 2020, Mr. Carswell did not receive a bid from M.L. Landscape for the Fall Cleanup. By the first week of November, Mr. Carswell had still not received a bid and had not made a contract with M.L. Landscape for the Fall Clean-up. He began to worry that the Covid pandemic might be preventing M.L. Landscape from doing the work. Then, on Saturday, November 7, a crew of workers from M.L. Landscape equipped with rakes and leaf blowers arrived at Mr. Carswell’s house and started cleaning up the leaves. Mr. Carswell was not home when they started but arrived home while the work was in progress and let the workers finish the job. Mr. Carswell asks you whether he has an implied contract with M.L. Landscaping for the 2020 Fall Clean-up. Instructions Please prepare a memorandum to Mr. Carswell discussing the case of Watts v. Columbia Artists Management (Case 10-1 in the Law 1101 Textbook) on the issue of implied contract. (Note that Mr. Carswell’s question is specifically whether he has an implied contract with M.L. Landscape. There is a separate legal issue of unjust enrichment in this factual scenario, but you should not discuss unjust enrichment in this assignment.) You know that in his insurance industry position, Mr. Carswell is accustomed to receiving and reading concise business memoranda. Accordingly, your memorandum to Mr. Carswell about the Watts case should be structured in the following way: -1- • The memorandum should be single-spaced except for double-spacing between paragraphs, 500 words or less in length (approximately one page), use 12-point font, and include To, From, Date and Re (Subject) headings. • The opening sentence should tell Mr. Carswell why you are writing this memo and what the main point is. • Your next paragraph should explain the facts, decision, and reasoning in the Watts case. • Next, in a separate paragraph, you should advise Mr. Carswell how the court’s decision relates to his question and what the decision means to him on a practical level. After you write the first draft of your memorandum, you should put it aside, wait at least one day, and then rewrite your memorandum at least once so that your revised draft is clearer, better, and more concise than your first draft. Then you will turn in your revised draft. Your professor will review each student’s revised draft, make comments, and return it to the student. You will then have the opportunity to rewrite the memorandum again before you turn in the final version. This assignment will count 15 percent of the Law 1101 course grade. You will be graded not only on your understanding of course material and the case decision, but also on the clarity and quality of the presentation. Academic integrity will be strictly required in this assignment. Do not copy more than three words in a row from any source without attribution, including from the Watts case. This prohibition on copying without attribution also includes the class’s PowerPoint slides, the textbook, and other online materials or slides, and any other person. You may discuss and collaborate with your classmates or others on this assignment, provided that you do not copy any other person’s words into your memorandum. Additional Information This assignment is part of Baruch’s increased emphasis on developing skills in written communication. “The objective is to teach students to produce professional, clear, concise, evidence-driven, persuasive communication that is audience-aware and purpose-oriented.” Sally Fay, “The Market-Responsive BBA,” BizEd (Nov. 2020). Another article describes five competencies in business communication: Professional. Business communicators represent themselves and their organizations, so they must exhibit care and attention to detail, use a courteous tone, and follow standard business conventions. Clear. Business communicators must deliver messages that are easy to decipher and act upon. They should put the bottom line up front, organize points in ways that are easy to follow, and use simple and unambiguous language. -2- Concise. Business communicators must deliver messages that are as short as possible, without being incomplete. At the big-picture level, they cut out extraneous information. At the detail level, they edit their sentences to reduce wordiness. Evidence-Driven. Business communicators must select and present compelling evidence to support their points. They explain the credibility of their sources or analyses, clearly describe the supporting data, and use data displays to convey complex information. Persuasive. Business communicators convince others to support a position or take action. They state strong overarching persuasive positions, create logical sub-points, and adhere to ethical standards in their attempts to influence.