Law Assignment

Word count: up to 2000 words Footnotes and Bibliography, The Fourth Edition of the Australian Guide to Legal Citation ('AGLC4') Mr. Clever Penny was employed by a major Australian bank as a loan manager. Mr. Penny paid $10,000 to his local neighbourhood community house (a registered deductible gift recipient). All donors are permitted to book the function room in the house for free up to four times per year. The normal booking fee would be $1,000, but as a contributor to the charity, Mr. Penny received a concession of $500 for each booking. While he was working as a bank manager, he was charged with writing fraudulent loans to fictional customers and pocketing the loan proceeds once the loans were granted. The criminal charge relates to receiving money by deception in the amount of $10 million dollars over a two-year period. Mr. Penny vigorously defended the charges and was subsequently acquitted. While he was defending the charges, his employer suspended his employment pending the outcome of his criminal matter. Once he was acquitted, Mr. Penny felt unable to return to his previous employment and started driving taxis. In defending the charges, he incurred legal fees of $150,000, including GST. It was subsequently found that another employee at the bank had used Mr. Penny’s identity to commit fraud on the bank. Even though he cleared his name after the acquittal, his employer terminated his employment, and he was not paid his entitlements (annual leave and long service leave) at this time. He also incurred legal expenses by taking his employer to the Fair Work Commission to claim his entitlements. He also sued his employer for loss of future earnings. As a result of the widespread notoriety of his acquittal, which was published in the newspaper, he was informed by his ex-employer about an article that Honest Newspaper published in the newspaper regarding Mr. Penny. Once again, Mr. Penny engaged his lawyers to bring an action, this time in defamation against Honest Newspaper for publishing an untrue statement about him. Mr. Penny alleged Honest Newspaper caused him harm and emotional distress because of the publication in the newspaper. Essentially, Mr. Penny sued the media broadcaster, Honest Newspaper, over an article published in the newspaper that alleged him as a perpetrator of receiving money by deception. The newspaper did not mention that Mr. Penny was acquitted of the charges, and in fact, another employee at the bank had used Mr. Penny’s identity to commit the fraud. The legal proceedings were commenced in the Supreme Court of NSW; however, they were settled at mediation for an undisclosed amount. Mr. Penny was invoiced by his legal firm for $450,000, including GST, for defending the claim against Honest Newspaper. Subsequently, Honest Newspaper withdrew the article published in the 2 newspaper. Mr. Penny informed you that he incurred these legal expenses as part of his income-producing structure and not income-producing processes. Required: (a) Advise Mr. Penny whether he can deduct $10,000 paid to his local neighbourhood community house. (5 marks). (b) Advise Mr. Penny on whether he can deduct the legal expenses in relation to the entitlements, to bring his employer to the Fair Work Commission, that would be deductible but not in relation to future earnings. (5 marks) (c) Advise Mr. Penny as to the deductibility of legal expenses in relation to the defamation matter. (10 marks) THE END Assessment 1 Marking Criteria • Identification of issues • The answer addresses the question/s • Identification of relevant law – quality of research • Discussion of the relevant law – demonstrates nuanced understanding of the applicable case law, legislation and taxation rulings. • Application of law to facts – demonstrates nuanced understanding of how the law applies in context • Structure – contains a concise introduction and conclusion, content is organised coherently, headings and subheadings used appropriately • Presentation – quality of written expression, free of grammatical, punctuation and spelling errors • Compliance with assignment instructions including AGLC4 and Research Method. Marks will not be awarded separately for each of these criteria. Rather, the quality of the assignment will be assessed on these criteria globally. FAQs How should I go about answering the question? I strongly recommend that you use the IRAC method. 1. Issue: Identify the particular legal issue. 2. Rule: Discuss the law applicable to that issue, remembering to cite the relevant legal authority (legislation, taxation rulings and case law). 3. Application: Apply the law to the facts. 4. Conclusion: Make a conclusion about the issue. Repeat this process for each issue identified. What are the most common mistakes when answering hypothetical assignments? The most serious and quite common mistakes are: • Insufficient detail in discussion of the law: The slides are not a sufficient foundation for the assignment. Students need to demonstrate nuanced understanding of the applicable legislation and case law, and to read all the designated material in the prescribed course’ book. • Not reading the facts and the question with sufficient care. If you misread the facts, you are likely to miss issues altogether or misapply them. You also need to consider the question carefully. • Missing issues: there will be marks designated for each issue. If you don’t recognise and deal with an issue you lose a chunk of potential marks. • The scattergun approach: another common error involves summarising everything covered in the unit regarding the law relating to the issue. This is an error because it is only the relevant law that needs to be discussed and a scattergun approach conveys to the marker that student doesn’t know which bits of the law are relevant. • Failing to apply the law: Following discussion of the law, many students purport to apply it by saying something like, ‘obviously, that applies to this case.’ That is not application of law; it is a conclusion. Once the applicable law has been identified, it is applied by identifying the particular fact or combination of facts that bring a scenario within the scope of the rule and then subjecting those facts to the rule. Ouch, sounds hard! The cases contain countless illustrations of how it is done. That is why reading them is so important.