Australian Law of Contract - Assignment Example

Australian Law of Contract By 27th September Business transaction entails the transfer of a commodity from one person to another. The transfer of commodities are effectively done with the use of a contract (The FBI , 2011). An agreement between two parties who agrees to transact goods is called a contract. The document can become valid when people involved signs the contract (Purdy, 2010). The document is a legal document and can be used before a court of law in case one of the party fails to fulfil the obligations laid down. Since it is a document that needs the parties to fulfil their obligations, it follows that there are terms and conditions that are required to be put into consideration. These calls attention from both parties to read carefully the terms and conditions before putting a sign into a contract. The scenario in question has two parties, Bonnie Hart, who owns a manufacturing firm that produces and distributes sunglasses. Bonnie sees a potential market in the seniors who are not their main target in the normal sunglasses. He opts to manufacture the total eclipse sunglass that would attract seniors. The main attracting feature of the product is the ability to protect the customers from some harmful UV lights. Bonnie takes a step further to advertise her products in the media. To attract more customers, she opts to carry out a promotion that would see some of her customers win a two weeks holiday in Paris. The scratch ticket was to be fixed in the sunglass so that there may be some lucky winners. She contacts her printer Ozzblock Pty Ltd, whom she had entrusted for the printing job. The mistake that Bonnie made was that she signed the document without reading its terms (The City Law School, 2014). The terms were as follows; 1. Ozzblock Pty Ltd, (the printer) guarantees that it will exercise reasonable care in proof-checking all materials for errors in printing prior to delivery. 2. Notwithstanding clause 7, the printer accepts no responsibility for any loss or damage howsoever caused by errors in printing resulting from faulty typesetting work by the printer or any of its employees. Considering these terms, the first one offers to do a considerable good work in proofreading any errors related to printing of the scratch cards before delivery. As a lawyer, I would have advised Bonnie to take Ozzblock to the court because the company did not fulfil its obligation as promised in the agreement. Proofreading was part of the agreement outlined by the contract. The damage is primarily a result of not doing proofreading of the contract from the Ozzblock printers. The case is the same as that of Administration of PNG v Leahy (1961) 105 CLR 6 (Business Law, 2014). In this case, there was a contract between the two parties that PNG would perform a tick eradication that had affected Leahy’s cattle. Leahy, the plaintiff, opted to move into the court after PNG failed to perform their duties as required by the law. Considering this case in relation to our case, Bonnie had an agreement with Ozzblock printers to that the vouchers used for the promotion of the product must be proofread. Since Ozzblock printers failed to proofread the cards before delivery was made, they are supposed to compensate Bonnie for the loss. The loss suffered is not only the demand for the air ticket and a sponsored holiday to Paris, but also, the long life of the company producing the sunglasses (Bryan & Vann, 2012). The customers may see Bonnie’s firm as an untrustworthy firm and therefore the company’s future prosperity be ruined. Bonnie could also base her case on the level of negligence. The terms were clear that there had to be some proofreading before the product is released to the consumers. The case could be argued out as in the case of Astley v Austrust Limited CLR 1 (2000) at an Australian court (Julie Clarke, 2000). Austrust sued Astley, who was their legal provider for negligence as she did not provide the firm with legal advice required in their operations that led to the loss. The judge found out that not only Astley was negligent of her duty but also the company neglected its duty that the lead to the loss. Therefore, it was not fair to say that Astley was guilty, and the case was overturned by a judge. Maybe argued in this was given that Bonnie had done some mistake by not reading the terms and conditions for the agreement carefully. She also attached her ten years old son to take part in the production of the tickets. The child is argued to cause a technical mistake that lead to a huge loss. The case studies given above could be used to trigger off some arguments in the court of law. The first advice to Bonnie was to use the agreement that suggested that Ozzblock had to proof read the tickets before they are released to the market. The release was done without them proofreading. Therefore, the firm is supposed to all the losses (Parkinson, 2001). Given that proofreading was the first obligation in the contract, the parties are supposed to deal with it first. The issue of exclusion from the damages will come in afterwards. The printing company does not give any option of interruption. When the ten years old child was brought to the company, he became part of the employee. He thus falls under the care of the Ozzblock even though he belongs to Bonnie. The agreement does not give any option of an alteration of the contract when another employee comes in during the proceedings of the production. The printing firm allowed Bonnie to bring in her son so that he could work with the firm and cover some cost associated with the printing of the card. Ozzblock firm could have protested this idea if they knew that the son was maybe not well trained for the job (Pearce & Geddes, 1996). Letting him go ahead with the job meant that they had some trust in him. Therefore, they needed to proofread the cards before releasing them. The investigations also showed that the child was no supervised when dealing with the machine. Ozzblock had a duty to supervise every person working in the firm. The fact that the child belonged to their customer made them neglect the child, and that brought the printing error (Kercher, 1995). Since the printing firm was eligible for any mistake that could lead to damage, they could have taken a lot of care so that the product they offered be excellent to their customer. If doing so was not good enough, they could have asked Bonnie to leave with her son since the son could cause some damages. Their failure to think in such a manner led to the damage of the cards. So, Mrs Bonnie would be correct to argue that Ozzblock acted in a manner that they did not take care of the contract. Arguing from the Ozzblock position, the company had set an issue in the agreement that Bonnie never noticed for she never read the terms correctly. The firm argues that none of them or their employees would be held responsible in case there was a damage of the commodities that were being processed by them. The Ozzblock was ready to rely on the clause in their match against Bonnie in the court. The term damage was key to the exclusion. The term could be used to mean the physical damage and the technical damage that arose because of the printing error. Since the company was also bound by the fact that it could perform a proofreading of the work before submitting, it could not rely on an exclusion clause. The Ozzblock printing company thought that they could use the exclusion clause to counter attack Bonnie outcry of the damage. The reason that the exclusion clause exist does not give them a window of defence. The exclusion clause cannot be misused as a reason for the lack of proof reading the work done (Ellinghaus & Duggan, 1989). That is if Ozzblock had proofread the errors in typing the vouchers; then any damages costs would not be on their side. Therefore, they needed to fulfil Bonnie’s instructions for the tickets before they use the second term of exclusion. The exclusion clause cannot be used as a party’s failure to analyse the agreement. There is a claim that Bonnie did not use her reading glasses, and the Ozzblock noted. Therefore, anything they did from that time was done knowing that their client never read the exclusion clause. That is why the company never gave any attention to Bonnie’s son who was working with them. They also used Bonnie’s ignorance to neglect one of their main obligation; that is, proof reading the scratch card. Therefore, they need to bear full responsibility for the loss suffered. Contract is a very serious obligation that must be carried with a lot of weight by parties involved. People are entering into a contract need to make the relationship interesting by making sure that they fulfil the necessary obligations as outlined in the document. Failure to cooperate with the agreement will only make life difficulties for the parties. In this case, Ozzblock ignored the needs of their customer Bonnie, and a loss is suffered that would certainly fall into the printing company. References Bryan, M. & Vann, V., 2012. Equity & Trusts in Australia. New York: Cambridge University Press. Business Law, 2014. BLO1105 – Business Law. [Online] Available at: www.scs.cuhk.edu.hk/vu/blo1105/2009/BLO1105%20Power%20Point%20Slides.ppt [Accessed 28 09 2009]. Ellinghaus, M. & Duggan, A., 1989. The Emergence of Australian Law. Sydney: Butterworths. Julie Clarke, 2000. Australian Contract Law. [Online] Available at: http://www.australiancontractlaw.com/cases/astley.html [Accessed 27 09 2014]. Kercher, B., 1995. An Unruly Child: A History of Law in Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Parkinson, P., 2001. Tradition and Change in Australian Law. Sydney: LBC Information Services. Pearce, D. C. & Geddes, R. S., 1996. Statutory Interpretation in Australia. Sydney: Butterworths. Purdy, M., 2010. Mike Purdy Public Contracting Blog. [Online] Available at: http://publiccontracting.blogspot.com/2010/06/what-date-controls-effective-date-of.html [Accessed 27 09 2010]. The City Law School, 2014. Magazine Insight Law. [Online] Available at: http://www.insitelawmagazine.com/ch3offer.htm [Accessed 27 09 2014]. The FBI, 2011. Reports and Publications. [Online] Available at: http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/financial-crimes-report-2010-2011 [Accessed 27 09 2014]. Read More