Introduction to Business Law (BUS101) TRIMESTER 1 2017

GROUP ASSIGNMENT General instructions

1 The group assignment (report) is worth 20% of each student’s final mark for the subject

2 A group must be comprised of no fewer than three, and no more than five, students. Students need not all be in the same tutorial group (ie, students from different tutorials may be in the one group)

3 Students are required to read a decision of the High Court of Australia and then report on the “ratio” for that decision in response to specific questions

4 Each group is to submit one joint report for marking. The length is to be no more than 1200 words

5 After the report is marked, each student in the group will receive the same mark out of 20

6 The report must be submitted in both of the following separate ways:

a. an electronic copy must be uploaded to Turnitin so that plagiarism can be checked; (seek advice from the librarians if you do not know how to do this).

b. one hard copy must be handed in to a tutor in lecture week 11; it is not necessary for each group member to hand in a hard copy

c. Where all group members are in the same tutorial the report should be submitted to that tutor. Where a group is made up of students from more than one tutorial class, students may decide to whom to submit the report. The tutor to whom it is submitted will be the marker. d. You must attach a cover sheet (copy annexed to the questions) stating the names, student numbers and the day and time of the tutorial each student in the group attends.

7 The purpose of the assignment is to give you the opportunity to

a. read an important judgement of a Superior Court

b. extract from the judgments the reasoning (or ratio) of the respective judges in coming to their separate conclusions; and

c. express in your own words the legal reasoning of the various judgments; therefore, cutting and pasting passages from the judgments will just give you a high similarity index in Turnitin and a low mark for the project.

The case

 The case for study is Amadio v CBA  A PDF of the High Court’s judgment has been loaded separately.  The first step is for students to read the judgment carefully.

 The questions for response will be placed on Moodle in week 9.

This short summary will help you understand the judgments:

 Mr and Mrs Amadio were immigrants to Australia of Italian birth, had a relatively poor command of English and limited business experience.

 They were induced by their son Vincenzo to be guarantors of loans by the bank to Vincenzo, whom they believed to be successful in business. [A guarantee is just a contract between a lender (usually a financial institution) and a person called the guarantor. The contract is formed by the guarantor’s making an offer to the lender that if the lender grants a loan to a third party (the borrower), and the borrower fails to repay the loan, the lender can then call on the guarantor to make the repayment. ]

 In fact, Vincenzo's business was in a severe financial difficulties.

 The bank knew this, but allowed Vincenzo to explain to his parents the nature of the guarantee and mortgage documents they were signing.

 Vincenzo failed to repay the loans and the bank called on Mr and Mrs Amadio under the guarantee.

 Mr and Mrs Amadio challenged the enforceability of the guarantee contract.  At the first hearing the bank was successful in defending the claims brought against it by Mr and Mrs Amadio.

 An appeal court reversed that decision and gave judgement for Mr and Mrs Amadio.

 The bank appealed against that decision to the High Court of Australia where the case was heard by four judges. It is the decision of that court that you read (although contained within it is a summary of what the earlier courts decided).

John Lanser May 2017