Law for Non-Lawyers - Case Study Example

LAW FOR NON-LAWYERS ID: Sta y law is also known as statute law. Unlike the customary law and the oral law written down by the legislature or the regulatory law promulgated by the general law or the executive of the judiciary, statutory law is a written law. However, statutory laws are lower than the land’s higher constitutional laws. There statutory law has 14 subcategories. These categories require to be maintained frequently so that they do not become large. Statutory laws contain few articles and contain subcategories mainly. These subcategories include statutory law by country, statutory law by topic, list of legislation, proposed laws, treaties, legal codes, and statutory laws by the legislature and statute stubs. Other subcategories also include works of legislative history, uniform acts and repealed laws. According to the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010 Section 1 (1), it is illegal to gather more than one hundred people on a land for a social purpose in which alcohol may be consumed. It is also a criminal offence to organize such an event without the permission of a local magistrate, not unless the organizer is an exempt person. An exempt person could be the occupier of the land, the occupier’s family, his employee or his agent. Sally, who is the manager of an electrical superstore, went to holiday in Spain. She asked a sales assistant, Tom, who works at the same workplace as her to watch over her 5-acre smallholding. Tom e-mailed a few friends to attend his 21st birthday which was held in a disused barn on Sally’s farmland. Accidentally, the e-mail was sent to all the people on his contact list due to a technical error and more than six hundred people arrived at the party. A neighboring farmer called the police complaining about the noise, and as a result, Tom was arrested for going against the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties act 2010 (Andrzej, 2013, p. 6). According to section 1 (1) of the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010, Tom was guilty. Originally, Tom had gathered only a few of his friends for his birthday party. However, despite more than six hundred people attending the party, Tom did not call off the party. The party went ahead as planned only with more people than Tom had expected. Tom had invited a few people to the social function, and obviously, alcohol would be consumed. Originally, according to section 1 (1) of the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010, Tom’s actions were within the law before the technical error occurred. The technical error happened and sent the email to all the people on Tom’s email address book. As a result, more than six hundred people ended up attending the event. The problem does not occur when the six hundred people attend the event, but when Tom gives the go ahead for the birthday party to continue. This implied that Tom adjusted his original plans so that he could accommodate all the six hundred people in his birthday party. Therefore, he knew that by giving the go-ahead, he would have gone against section 1 of the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010, but he still went ahead and did so. Despite tom finding out about the technical error, he did not cancel the invitations. Therefore, this situation does not count as an accident. Tom had enough time to cancel the invitations between the time he sent the e-mail and the actual date of the event. However, he did not do so. This counts as negligence on Tom’s part because he knew that more people would end up attending his party as a result of the technical error, than the intended number. He also had the capacity to take the right measures. This would help correct the error, but he chose to ignore and assume that only the people whom he intended to invite would attend his birthday party. According to the law, this would neither appear as a technical error nor an accident but as an action with intent. Initially, what was an accident became a planned-for event. Tom’s e-mail about the birthday invitation was accidentally sent to over six hundred friends on his e-mail address book. Assuming that Tom did not know about the technical error after the six hundred people received the email; it was not too late to correct the mistake during the day of the event. However, Tom decided to adjust the initial settings of the party so that he would be able to accommodate all the six hundred invitees. He would have chosen to cancel the invitations the moment he found out about the technical glitch, but he went ahead with the party. Tom cannot use time factor as an excuse for his actions. This is because he had the capability to cancel the invitations or the whole party any time he felt like doing so. This also puts more emphasis that Tom’s actions were not a mistake caused by a technical error or time factor but an action with intent. Tom was celebrating his 21st birthday. This shows according to the law. He is considered as an adult, and he cannot be exempted or pardoned by the court on the basis that he is a minor. In many countries, anyone below the age of 18 is considered a minor. Offenders who are below the age of 18 can be pardoned by pleading minority. However, this is not the same case in the law of tort (civil wrong). In this case, Tom is an adult because he was celebrating his 21st birthday. This means that he is capable of distinguishing the wrong from the right. Therefore, Tom can be subjected to statutory law, which would find him guilty of going against the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010 section 1 (1) (Stone, 2009, p. 225). Tom is a person of sane mind. This is evident because he is a sales assistant of an electrical superstore. Tom was in the right state of mind before he sent out the invitations via email to over six hundred people attended his birthday party. This means that he was not drunk, insane or experiencing episodes of mania. He had the capacity to know that giving the go-ahead was wrong, he was also capable of coming up with another different way of handling the situation. According to the law insane people, people who experience episodes of mania or people who make decisions when they are intoxicated may be exempted or pardoned. However, in this case, Tom has satisfied all the requirements. Therefore, Tom should be accountable for his actions because he had the ability to handle the situation in a better way while staying within the law, but he did not do that. This also emphasizes that Tom’s actions were as a result of negligence (Buckley, 2003, p. 19). There are four ways in which Tom would have avoided going against the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010. He could have canceled the party after finding out about the technical error. He would have sent e-mails to all the people on his contact list apologizing about the technical error and cancelled the invitation. Alternatively, he would have cancelled the party after finding out that over six hundred people attended the party. Also, the act states clearly that it is illegal to gather more than one hundred people for a social reason in which there will be consumption of alcohol. Therefore, he would have carried on with the party with all the six hundred people present but refrained from providing them with alcoholic drinks. Judging by the points listed above, it is evident that Tom committed an offence by going against section 1 (1) of the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010. It is also clear that all the offences under section 1 (1) that were made by Tom were intentional, and he had the ability to make rational judgments before committing the offence. It is also clear that there were four alternative ways in which Tom would have avoided committing the offence, under the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010. However, he chose to ignore them. Section 1 (2) is subject to section 1 (3) of the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010. It states that organizing a gathering with more than a hundred people where alcohol may be consumed is a criminal offence. It also states that, in order for a person to do so, he/she needs to have a permit, from a local magistrate, not unless the person is an exempt person. The word exempt person means that the person should either be the occupier of the premise, a family member of the occupier, the occupier’s employee or his agent. In this case, Sally is the occupier of the premise and is also the manageress of the electrical superstore in which Tom acts as a sales assistant. Therefore, according to the law, Tom is an exempt person. This means that he can organize a gathering in Sally’s premise without having to seek permission from a local magistrate. By doing this, he will not have broken the law. However, according to section 1 of the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010, he should not gather more than one hundred people on land for a social reason in which it is likely that alcohol may be consumed. Tom fulfilled the requirements of section 1 (2) but according to the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010 section 1 (1), he had committed a criminal offence. Despite Tom being an exempt person and fulfilling all the requirements of section 1 (2), he still organized a gathering with more than one hundred people with a social purpose and alcohol was consumed in the gathering. Section 1 (2) of the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010 found Tom innocent of the offences. However, section 1 (2) of the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010 is not an independent clause. It depends on Section 1 (1) and Section 1 (3) to derive its validity. Section 1 (2) of the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010 states that it is a criminal offence to organize a gathering without the permission of a local magistrate, unless the organizer is an exempt person. Section 1 (2) of the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010 refers to section 1 (1) of the act. It dictates that it is a criminal offence to organize an event of more than one hundred people, on land for social purposes, in which alcohol is likely to be consumed. It also refers to section 1 (3) of the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010 in that it states that one needs to have a permit from a local magistrate, not unless the organizer is an exempt person. Section 1 (3) defines the name “exempt person” as an occupier of a premise, any family member of the occupier, the occupier’s employee or his/her agent. This shows that section 1 (2) does not work independently. Therefore, taken independently, Tom did not commit a criminal offence. However, when Section 1 (2) is taken in relation to the other two sections of the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010, Tom was found guilty. This is because despite Tom being an exempt person, he still went against Section 1 (1) when he still gathered more than one hundred individuals on land for a social reason in which alcohol was consumed. According to the points stated above, it is clear that Tom is guilty of a criminal offence according to all section 1 (1) of the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010. Also, despite Tom, being an exempt person, is also guilty of breaking section 1 (2) of the Prohibition of Unsolicited Parties Act 2010 because he failed to follow the terms of section 1 (1) of the act.. References Andrzej, G., 2013. Juristic concept of the validity of statutory law a critique of contemporary legal nonpositivism. Berlin: Springer. Buckley, W. R., 2003. Torts and Personal Injury Law. Albany. N. Y: Lawyers of Cooperative Pub. Stone, R., 2009. The Modern Law of Contract: 8th edition. s.l.:Routledge. Read More