Business Law

Business Law – OL – June 2010

WA 2

Case study 1

Members of Students for Fair Tuition (SFT) decide to protest rising tuition costs at Gigantic State University (GSU) by taking over Dunfee Hall, the location of GSU president Dalton Chandler’s office. As they storm into the reception area of Chandler’s office suite, shouting “Down with fascist tuition increases,” Chandler’s faithful secretary, Prudence Pimply, picks up a phone to call the campus police. Steve Steel, radical leader of the SFT, slaps the phone knocking it from Prudence’s hand without ever touching her. He then pulls out an amazing lifelike squirt gun and threatens to blow Prudence’s head off if she so much as moves an inch toward the phone or the door. Prudence collapses in a sobbing heap on her desk. Unfortunately for their purposes, the students find the only door to Chandler’s third floor office locked from the inside. After a few feeble attempts to break it down, they contend with barricading his door with filing cabinets and singing “We Will Overcome” until the police arrive shortly thereafter. The total time elapsed from the moment the students entered the building until the police arrive is ten minutes. President Chandler was taking a nap and slept through the entire incident. Prudence was so upset that she couldn’t return to work for a week, and then only managed to do so under heavy doses of tranquilizers prescribed by her doctor, Morton Mallard.

Answer

In the case of the students for Fair Tuition (SFT) protest, I believe a crime was committed. Both assault and false imprisonment are of the factors. Assault is the threat of immediate harm or offensive contact or any action that arouses reasonable apprehension of imminent harm, pg. 75 Business Law. Actual physical contact is not necessary and as you can see from the case the secretary was not physically harmed but emotional since she had what she thought was a real gun pointed at her and was threatened and held against her...