Law According To A King

The other day I was scrolling through Instagram when I saw a meme about how Roald Dahl's character, Willy Wonka, was never held accountable for how 80% of the children who visited his factory ended up injured. It got me thinking... could the children, or their parents, sue Willy Wonka under the tort law of negligence and, more specifically, occupiers' liability? Of course, all rights are reserved to Roald Dahl and the respective parties for the film adaptations. Here, we will be referencing the Tim Burton adaptation solely, as this was all I had to hand when researching this blog post. Firstly, the law of occupiers' liability comes under two statutes: the Occupiers' Liability Acts of 1957 and 1984 - the former governs visitors, and the latter governs trespassers. For the purposes of this area of law, an 'occupier' refers to someone who has "a sufficient degree of control over the premises," according to Lord Denning in Wheat v Lacon. It is undeniab...

Hill v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire [1988] 1 AC 53 was a landmark case in establishing limits on third party liability for tortious negligence. The estate of Hill, the final victim of Peter Sutcliffe (better known as the Yorkshire Ripper), sued the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire police, claiming that their failure to apprehend the killer sooner negligently caused her death. Anyone with some knowledge of the Yorkshire Ripper case is aware of the disastrous investigation led by the police, which failed time-and-time-again to catch Sutcliffe, who they had interviewed nine times in connection with the murders. The 1982 Byford report heavily criticised the police for what was, at the time, the largest manhunt in British history – they had focussed too heavily on hoax confessional tapes and letters (against the advice of experts and victims alike) and their poor filing system meant that officers were left underprepared and key connections were not made linking evidence to Sutcl...

First of all, I have never studied intellectual property law, particularly US intellectual property law, and so I have dealt with this from a broad perspective as if it was set in the UK. Anyway, here goes... If you haven't heard of the Taylor Swift drama with Scooter Braun - get up to date on pop culture. Swift signed a contract with Big Machine Records in 2004 at the age of 15 for, presumably, 6 records before the contract could be renewed. She left BMR after her sixth album, reputation, and signed with a new record company to release her seventh album, Lover. BMR retain ownership of her masters, and the company has since been sold to Scooter Braun, who isn't exactly Swift's friend, and Swift has publicly denounced Braun and his business ethics and behaviour, and tried to get her masters back. This issue has a few legal implications in contract and intellectual property, and these will be dealt with in turn. What are Taylor Swift's options? Contract Swift sign...