University of Portland Business Law Discussion

Writing Assignment Torts #2Name:
Alice operates a daycare center in her home from
Monday through Friday for children from ages 6
months to three years old. One Friday, she
discovered some mice in her house and called
Bob, an exterminator. She told Bob that she
runs the daycare center in her home for very
young children and needs to get rid of the mice
by the following Monday, when the children will
return.
On Saturday, Bob placed small plastic packages of poison pellets in the corners of every room in the
house. He explained that the mice would gnaw through the plastic packaging to eat the pellets, and then
die shortly thereafter. On each, package was printed the following warning:
“DANGER: THIS PACKAGE CONTAINS POISION, WHICH
MAY BE HARMFUL TO HUMAN HEALTH IF SWALLOWED!”
Before leaving Alice’s house, Bob told her that the mice should ingest the pellets by Monday morning and
that she could if she wanted to remove what is left of the packages before the children arrived.
On Sunday, Carol came for the first time to clean Alice’s house. Carol did not know that Alice operated a
daycare center in her home. Carol noticed several packages of poison in the corners of the rooms, but
cleaned around them.
a
Shortly before the children arrived on Monday morning, Alice removed as many of the packages of poison
as she could find. Later that day, nine-month-old Victor, one of the children in Alice’s daycare center, was
crawling along the floor of the living room when he found a package that Alice had missed. It had
already been gnawed into by a mouse, and Victor reached in and ate some of the pellets. He became
seriously ill. Medical tests determined that Victor’s illness was caused by his ingestion of the mouse
poison. As a result, Victors parents had $200,000 of unaid medical bills.
a
Required: 1. Under what theory or theories of torts might Victor’s parents bring a legal action for
damages against
a. Alice, the business owner
b. Bob, the exterminator and
c. Carol, the housecleaner?
Discuss each defendant separately giving reasons for your conclusions.
2. What defenses, if any, might Alice, Bob and Carol each assert, and what is the likely result? |
Discuss, giving reasons for your conclusions.