Legal Issues in Applying Contract, Employment and Tort Laws: A Case Study of Desklib

This report discusses the applicability of contract, employment, and tort laws in a case study of Desklib. It covers legal issues such as breach of contract, termination of employment, and nervous shock under tort law.

Law Project
Contents
INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................ 3
MAIN BODY................................................................................................................................ 3
CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................ 7
REFERNCES............................................................................................................................... 8

INTRODUCTION
The laws are defined as the set of rules and regulations which are rendered by the
government of the country for the purpose of ensuring the effective management in the society
with regard to both individuals as well as corporate institutions. By the way of formulation of the
required laws the delivery of fair justice can be assured in the society as the laws binds the
conduct of individuals where they can also be made subjected to certain obligations as a result of
non-compliance of the same (Rühl, 2021). The business is a civil body which further consists of
the various laws under it one or other way aids in regulating the activities of the business. Some
of them major are the company law, contract law and the employment law. All sort of
agreements which results from the commercial transaction are said to be governed under the
contract laws of the country whereas the company law stands responsible for governing the
activities as well as conducting of the companies along with their process of incorporation and
dissolution. Further, by the way of said report an attempt has been made to ascertain the various
legal issues while applying the concerned laws to the given case scenario.
MAIN BODY
In the given case study, the law of contract, tort as well as the employment are the ones
which stands applicable to the issues of the case. As seen in the case, the owner of the Organic
food shop is Ross who wants to enlarge their network of organic food shop by the way of
including the variety of organic beef in their lists. Ross for the same purpose approached the
owner of Red gate farm for the supply of organic beef but at later stage there was not any legal
agreement among them because lack of acceptance. After some time, Ross entered into the legal
agreement for the supply of organic beef for the tenure of two years with the owner of High hill
farm. Ross came to know the facts that the beef supplied was not of the organic quality rather it
was process from the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. On this ground, the Ross
approached the owner named Chandler to terminate the contract.
After not hearing him from a long time, the Ross being in aggravated state, directly went
to the farm of chandler in order to have a word with him regarding the termination. For the same

he calls one his staff member, Monica to drive him to the chandler's farm as he himself stands
unable to drive the car because of consumption of alcohol. While entering the chandlers farm the
car met with an accident resulting in injuries to both the Ross as well as to the Monica. Also after
witnessing the accident the wife of Chandler, phoebe also got subjected to the act of nervous
shock.
From the given case scenario there can be conferred the various number of legal issues which
asks the applicability of various laws to them. Some of the major legal issues are -
 Whether there occurred the breach of contract on the part of Chandler?
 Whether the Monica can be terminated on the ground of gross misconduct?
 Whether Monica stand liable to Phoebe for the act of nervous shock?
With respect to the very first legal issues it falls under the ambit of contract laws. All sort of
legal agreements or transactions which are entered into by the parties in order to fulfil their part
of promises (Matulionyte, 2019). The contracts result from the voluntary obligation of the parties
for not to break any right of the person and also to obviate the unjust enrichment of the same.
Further for the validation of a legal contract there are required the fulfilment of certain essential
elements of it. The offer, acceptance, consideration and the legal intention are the major elements
of the contract law.
An offer is addressed as the proposal which is made by one party to the other party along
with certain terms and conditions attached to it. In simple terms at this stage the interested party
expresses their willingness or intention to the other individual to get into the legal agreement.
(QC and Saintier, 2021) Here the next comes the acceptance which is said to be made when the
terms get accepted by the other individual in the same manner as asked by the offeree. As per the
general rule of acceptance it stands not to be made until and unless the same gets communicated
to the offerer. The communication can be made in any of the ways be it implied, expressed,
written or oral. The other essential element is the consideration. It is addressed as something
which bears some value in the eyes of court. Usually the consideration attached to the contract
either lies in the form of monetary value or in the form of some required performance. It is also
considered as one component which can be mounted by the offered, the one who is making the
offer and further the negotiations can be made. The other important element is the legal

intention (Hoekstra, 2021). It specifies that the fact that the parties entering into the contract are
having the legal intention in order to have the binding effect of the contract. It also contends that
the individuals must be the part of legal agreements while having their free will and therefore,
must not mention any manipulated facts. The contract law of the country also entails the number
of legal remedies and damages which lies at the option of the party to whom the loss has been
occurred as a result of breach.
Moreover, for the given facts, it can be ascertained that there occurs the
misrepresentation of facts on the part of Chandler for the purpose of delivery of organic beef as
in actual it was processed using chemical fertilizers. On the ground of misrepresentation there
can be established that there results the breach of contract between the parties. Furthermore, a
contract fabrication is considered to be made when one party provides incorrect or false facts to
the other. By doing so, the basic aspect of the is not met, which specifies that the agreements that
have been established must be free of any inconsistencies or obscurity in order to avoid the
possibility of fabrication (Scott-Patel, 2019). As a result, contracts can be canceled if later
evidence of misrepresentation or manipulation of information is discovered. Simply put, it is a
method of providing incomplete or inaccurate facts to the other party. In this case, the offended
party has the right to view the redress or to terminate the current contract.
In the case of Bisset v. Wilkinson from 1972, the court of justice concluded that there was an
element of distortion of facts in the case because the accused's assertion about the actual number
of sheep on the bought property was not the true data. Likewise, in the 1889 case of Derry v.
Peek, the court noted that the accused's liability or responsibility must be demonstrated for
deception issues (Defossez, 2021). As a result, in all cases where a person's true aim is to
participate in dishonest acts or to carry out deceptive schemes, the aspect of misrepresentation is
applied.
Secondly, in the mentioned scenarios, Ross, the business owner, has been subjected to a
misrepresentation by Chandler, the High Hill Farm manager, regarding the true purity of the
organic beef. As a result, Ross is entitled to terminate the contract and pursue legal recourses
based on this argument. Ross also stated that only organic meat would be given at the time of

defining the legally signed contract, which was impeded due to the incorrect delivery of beef. As
a result of this the goodwill of the Shop also got hampered as by the disclosure of such fact
regarding the quality of beef, the people formulated the wrong perception regarding the bad
quality as well as services of the Shop.
Aside from that, the case also involves the implementation of labor laws. The Employment
Rights Act of 1996 is one of the most important pieces of employment legislation in the United
Kingdom (Monkhouse and Spiro, 2020). It lays forth the rules for regulating the relationship, as
well as the responsibilities and obligations of both the employer and the employee. The act of
Ross in terminating Monica's job on the basis of gross misconduct must be regulated by
employment laws in this circumstance. It is mostly major insubordination that can have an
adverse effect on the relationship between employers and employees. In essence, the concept
"gross misconduct" refers to a variety of actions, such as neglect or entire damage to property. If
any of these acts happens, the staff may be dismissed from the organization in accordance with
formal fair procedures.
The investigation procedure might also be carried out here in order to determine the true cause of
the wrongdoing (Andoh, Parsons and Jones 2018). Typically, all activities that result in gross
misconduct are associated with substantial issues that can lead to an employee's departure from
their employment, even if there is no prior notification of such discharge. Another reason for
firing employees is if the company's reputation has been harmed. Furthermore, the court in the
case of Dietman v. London Borough of Brent in 1988 ruled that the social worker's actions did
not constitute to gross misconduct because there were no elements of purpose or deception
involved. Likewise, in Mooree v. C&A Modes, a 1981 case, the court of appeal argued that
there was evidence of serious negligence on the side of an employee who was convicted of theft.
In this case, the employee is liable for the crime because he was involved in and committed the
illegal activity (Foster and Herring, 2021).
Specifically, in view of the information at hand, when Ross and Monica are behaving as workers
and employers, correspondingly. Monica's actions, which resulted in the accident, do not
constitute gross misconduct, and hence Ross cannot dismiss her on this basis. Furthermore,
Monica's prior admission of the facts regarding her freshly gained driving abilities and recent

arrival of a driver's licence suggests that Monica had no deceitful purpose and that the collision
was caused by Ross's induced statement. Other than that, gross misconduct cannot be invoked in
this case because Monica did not do any willful injury or damage and was merely obeying her
boss's commands. As a result, Monica's firing cannot be legally enforced based on this argument.
Other relevant laws, tort laws, are civil errors which are made against individuals or groups of
people. The principle of neurological shock is under the heading of tort law, where remedies may
be sought by the party who made such a mistake. The concept of neural shock is usually the
result of the behavior of others. In Case of Byrnev. Southern and Western Railway Co. was
the place where the concept was first detailed. In this case, the court argued that the claim should
be assigned on the basis of psychological harm. Apart from that, the concepts mentioned are
usually applicable to the cases of mental illness that may result from individuals or groups of
people when observing the incident. The logic behind such a law is that human behavior is
trained by the nervous system and therefore destroyed by the cause of chronic drowsiness in the
mind. However, it must be taken into account that screening for the reasons behind the shock is
not enough to make a claim (Kadri, 2021). Therefore, in order to claim compensation, it is
necessary to demonstrate that all the elements of the negligence breach that make up the duty of
care are the links between the shock and the breach, and that the shock is not too far away.
Similarly, in this case where Chandler's wife named Phoebe was psychologically shocked as a
result of Monica’s actions, was entitled to claim damages directly because the shock caused was
not remote. We also provide something like that. The connection between the dissolution and the
shock given to Chandler's wife. Also, from Monica's point of view, the duty of care when driving
a car lies with the injured others, resulting in damage to the farm and Chandler's wife.
CONCLUSION
From the following report it can be concluded that the various laws of the country works face to
face in order to resolve the matters in disputes. In the given case study, it fetches the applicability
of the three different legislations of the country at the same time which are the contract,
employment and tort. The first issue with the application of contract law concluded that there lies
the legal contract between both the parties and hence the breach of contract. The second issue
with the applicability of employment law summarizes that the termination of Monica on the
ground of gross misconduct stands invalidated as she was working on her employer orders. The

last concern is governed by principle of nervous shock under the law of torts while concluding
that the Phoebe is entitled to have the legal claims for her damages.

REFERNCES
Andoh, B., Parsons, S. and Jones, P., 2018. Defence of Property in Criminal Law and Tort.
Mountbatten Journal of Legal Studies, 21(1), pp.65-78.
Defossez, D., 2021. The employment status of food delivery riders in Europe and the UK: Self-
employed or worker?. Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law,
p.1023263X211051833.
Foster, C. and Herring, J., 2021. Tort. In The Law as a Moral Agent (pp. 23-36). Springer, Cham.
Hoekstra, J., 2021. Introduction to Contract Law–REVISION GUIDE.
Kadri, T., 2021. Tort Law: Cases & Critique. Available at SSRN 3967754.
Matulionyte, R., 2019. Empowering authors via fairer copyright contract law. University of New
South Wales Law Journal, The, 42(2), pp.681-718.
Monkhouse, A. and Spiro, P.S., 2020. Employment Class Actions and the Gig Economy in the
US and UK, and Implications for Canada. Available at SSRN 3548317.
QC, R.M. and Saintier, S., 2021. Poole's Casebook on Contract Law. Oxford University Press.
Rühl, G., 2021. Smart (legal) contracts, or: Which (contract) law for smart contracts?. In
Blockchain, law and governance (pp. 159-180). Springer, Cham.
Scott-Patel, K., 2019. UK Employment Law-A Good Plan for Workers?. Int'l. In-House Counsel
J., 12, p.1.