International Marketing

Assignment 1

Cordas v. Peerless Transportation

Luis Antonio P. Villadolid

Submitted to Dr. Lawrence Price, J.D.

November 4, 2015

BU312: Business Law 1

According to the problem, a taxicab driver of Peerless Transport is being sued by Mrs. Cordas, the Plaintiff, for damages caused by his actions. According to Mrs. Cordas, she claims that the taxi driver was negligent in his action of jumping out of the taxicab of which he was driving, which left it uncontrolled, resulting in injury to both her and her two children.

The issue presented is whether there was negligence on the part of the defendant for actions taken under the circumstances presented. According to Mann & Roberts (2012), negligence is defined as “a person does not exercise reasonable care under all circumstances”. Furthermore, an action of negligence consists of five elements: (1) Duty of care: that a legal duty requires the defendant to conform to the standard of conduct established for the protection of others; (2) Breach of duty: that the defendant failed to exercise reasonable care; (3) Factual cause: that the defendant’s failure to exercise reasonable care is in fact caused the harm the plaintiff sustained; (4) Harm: that the harm sustained is of a type protected against negligent conduct; (5) Scope of liability: that the harm sustained is within the “scope of liability,” which is historically referred to as “proximate cause”.

As with the Cordas v. Peerless Transport case, one could establish that the taxi driver had a reasonable duty to ensure the safety of not only his business invitees, to which he owes the highest duty, but would also extend to third parties such as pedestrians and other motorists as well. However, part of the circumstances presented is that there was a gun pointed at the head of the taxi driver. This could further be explained through the emergency doctrine, which according to Mann and Roberts (2012), states that the reasonable person standard...