Pat tells Chris that an exciting concert is coming to town, and he will spend $40 a ticket if Chris will go to the concert with him. Chris is excited, and she tells Pat that she will attend the concert with him and that he can pick her up at her place at eight o’clock the evening of the concert. Pat goes to pick Chris up and finds no one at home. Too embarrassed to attend the concert by himself, he goes home. Worried that something may have happened to Chris, he tries to reach her by telephone. The following day, he contacts her and she informs him that she changed her mind; she did not want to go to the concert with him and did not feel it was necessary to call. Pat becomes very emotionally upset over the rejection. Two days later, he files a lawsuit against Chris for $80 in damages for the two unused tickets to the concert and $500 for his emotional trauma. How would the case be decided?
Discussion 4-2
John works for an insurance company. The company pays him a salary, commissions on all sales of life and auto insurance policies and also provides a work laptop which is intended to be used solely for work and must be returned at the termination of employment. One day John went to turn on his laptop and the screen was blank. He tried to reboot the computer and still it was blank. After calling his employer, the company tech department instructed him to overnight the hard drive so they could repair it. John followed their instructions. Two days later John was informed by the company that he was fired for using the company computer for his own purposes which is a violation of the corporate employee handbook. Later that Day John was contacted by a law enforcement official who stated he need to interview him relative to online gambling activity. When John asked why law enforcement was contacting him, the officer said your former employer sent us a copy of the hard drive!
John swears he did not have any personal filed on the laptop. He further asserts he never engaged in any online gambling with that computer, he may have done so from his home desktop but never his work computer.
Can John be fired? Can the employer report its former employees to law enforcement? Are there any constitutional defenses available to John? Can John sue his former employer for anything?
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