DESCRIPTION

America, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Lawsuit.

I want to give you an idea of how and why our legal system is the way it is, what contracts and torts are, how our legal responsibilities are created, and what rights businessmen and women have in America. To do this, I will introduce you to legal rules and ideas that are common to all types of law, not just Business Law, so that by the end of the course you will have a broad understanding of the workings of the U.S. legal system as well as a specialized knowledge of contracts and business forms.

It's a law course for non-lawyers -- I assume you are working on Business or Business & Management degrees rather than specific law degrees, so there is plenty of explanation of how business people are affected by legal issues.

Business Law I is an in-depth conceptual and functional analysis and application of legal principles relevant to the conduct and understanding of commercial business transactions. Topics include the legal, ethical, and social environment of business: agencies, partnerships, and other forms of business organizations: and contracts and sales agreements. Salient legal aspects of international business are also discussed.

Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:

• Define relevant legal concepts and explain their applications to both commercial and international business transactions.
• Discuss the legal process and analyze the regulatory, ethical, tortious and criminal aspects of traditional business and e-commerce.
• Describe the various forms of business organizations and analyze the elements of valid contracts.
• Apply critical thinking, analytic, and communication skills through group assignments, case analysis, problem solving, research, presentations and discussions.
• Develop applicable skills and knowledge in the relevant cross curricular initiatives including effective writing, information literacy, globalization, computerization, historical perspective, and civic responsibility.

In the first part of the course, we look at the Legal Environment  in relation to businesses, and examine the expanding responsibility businesses have in Tort law

We then turn to contract formation and liability.  Initially we look at two-party contracts:  who owes what to the other party?  We look at traditional contract law, and see how it has been modified by modern consumer laws and principles.  We'll examine the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) provisions that now affect older common-law principles.

This course examines how you can expand a business by hiring employees or agents, by forming partnerships, and by incorporation. The legal relationships between the various people involved in each form of business will be the focus of the course.

As a business expands, the sole proprietor eventually reaches the physical limits of what she or he can do alone; hiring an employee or an agent is the logical next step, but it leads to a big problem: how can you control what the agent does in your name?

Partnerships solve this problem (to a degree) by allowing each partner to act independently within the business structure. But you do not have limited liability, and more importantly, the business itself starts, like Frankenstein's monster, to come to life, and a way of controlling it as well as your partners has to be found.  Franchising is one successful method of expanding while also controlling the business.

The most complex set of relationships between people and business is found in the corporation. Most businesses in America are small - often family operated or run by an intimate group - and bitter disputes can arise through divorce or separation that then spill over into the company as Dad, the Chief Executive Officer, tries to throw Mom, the Company Secretary and minority shareholder, off the board of directors. The problem then is protecting the business from the ravages of such disputes, or possibly managing the break-up of the company as disputing parties lay claim to the assets while denying liability for the company debts.

Thus in the course, we examine the legal issues and problems that arise as a business grows. Who owes what responsibility to whom, and why, are the major questions, and by the end of the course you should be able to answer them.

You see that I skip around, but I promise there is some method in my madness.   When you click on Course Content, the first file / link at the bottom of the list is to "Course Modules."  There are four modules:

• Legal Environment of Business
• Business Forms
• Contracts
• Sales and Leases

ASSESSMENT:

20% mid term test
40% final exam
20% essay assignments (2 x 10%)
20% classwork

All assignments and exams are essay-type questions.  They will allow you the opportunity to show that you have read and understood the material and that you can apply the rules and concepts to everyday problems. No-one walks into a law office and says, "I have a terrific intentional tort case, based on doctrine X." They come in and tell you a story, and it’s up to the lawyer to spot the issues and explain what the law is. Similarly, businesses nowadays are expected to spot the potential for liability and avoid getting into situations that expose them. So when a boss suggests doing Y, the legal officer is supposed to offer advice on whether or not Y is a good idea. Thus my questions are not True/False or multiple choice; they ask "what should the client do…?", "who owes what duty to whom and why?", or "how can the client get out of the mess he’s in?".

GRADES

• A - 90% - 100% - Outstanding Scholarship
• B - 80% - 89% - Excellent Work
• C - 70% - 79% - Good Achievement
• D - 60% - 69% - Marginal or unsatisfactory Performance
• F(a) - Below 60% - Academic Failure
• F(n) Failure for Non-Attendance (students are required to withdraw if they are absent for more than 25% of the course.  If students do not withdraw, but remain absent, they receive a grade of F(n).
• W - Withdrawal

Students should understand that the quality of their writing will affect their grade point average.... Acceptable college-level writing expresses thoughts in a logical, well-organized form, using proper grammar and complete sentences, and correct punctuation and spelling.

AN IMPORTANT NOTE:

Academic dishonesty and plagiarism are not acceptable and will mean a grade of F (Failure).  Academic dishonesty means (but is not limited to) getting someone else to prepare work for you, or helping another person with their assigned and examinable work. Plagiarism means passing off someone else's work as your own, and frequently involves copying reports or pages directly from other people's Internet sites - and I know there are other, on-line, Business Law course sites you can go to. You can avoid plagiarism by giving credit where credit is due - record the sources of your work, learn how to quote properly, and cite the books, articles or web pages you have used for your information. It may sound like simple manners, but failure to live by the rules has serious academic consequences.

Please read and heed UMUC Policy 150.25, Academic Dishonesty and Plagiarism.

You are responsible for attendance and classwork, for keeping up with the syllabus reading, for answering the problems or discussion questions in the various conferences or other issues that arise during the class discussions, and for attempting to understand the issues explained in the course. It will be your responsibility in the assignments and exam to demonstrate that you have read and understood the textbook, lectures and course materials and discussion, and can apply that understanding and knowledge to practical problems.

Remember that there is a 20% component of the course grade based on classwork. This may seem unfair, but some minimum of student participation is necessary to make this distance education class into a course that is more like a real college course than just a correspondence course. At a minimum, you should pick up and respond to messages every other day (minimum three times per week). Your contributions needn't be lengthy essays: try to emulate how you would contribute to a conversation going on in a live classroom.  I also look for / expect a minimum of two (2) posts per conference:  your own post AND a substantive reply to someone else's work.  I'd really like to see you working with your colleagues in the class rather than carrying out a dialogue with me.

If you are going TDY or into the field and will be absent for a "substantial" length of time, you may be required to withdraw: in a 10-week class, absence for more than two weeks may require withdrawal. I will consider absences cumulatively - a series of week-long absences is as detrimental as one continuous absence. You need to get my permission in advance to be absent from class discussions. No exceptions, please.

Also, be forewarned: keeping up with classwork is more work than you might think, and especially as the semester wears on and your other in- and out-of-course responsibilities add up, the work involved in participating may seem overwhelming. However, keep the participation grade in mind. (Simply listening to the conversations does not count as participation. You must write to get credit.) If you pass all the problems but never contribute to discussion, you should expect nothing better than a C- for the participation component of your final grade. If you don't make discussion and fail problems (and I do give failing grades), you can expect less.

And finally, sorry - but "late" responses to class topics may not count as class participation. I shall move discussions on, in line with the class schedule, and will cut off discussions on earlier topics. You need to be on-line regularly in order to participate in a timely manner.

For more on classwork, click here.

Thank you.