Question

Luke tells Laura that his favorite baseball team, the Washington Nationals, is coming to town to play the Chicago Cubs, and he will spend $75 a ticket if Laura will go to the game with him. Laura is excited, and she tells Luke that she will attend the game with him and that he can pick her up at her place around five o’clock the evening of the game. Luke also informs Laura that he will take her to dinner before the 7:30 p.m. game.

Luke goes to pick Laura around 4:48 p.m. up on game day and finds no one at home. Too embarrassed to attend the restaurant and game by himself, he goes home. Worried that something may have happened to Laura, 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 game with him because it looked like it was going to rain and she had made plans with another "friend." Also, she did not feel it was necessary to call. Luke becomes very emotionally upset over the rejection. Two days later, he files a lawsuit against Laura for $225 in damages for the two unused tickets to the game and the cost of a reasonable dinner for two and $500 in damages for his emotional trauma.

How would the case be decided? Were there any ethical violations?

Business law

Answer 1

As per information of the question, there are two main issues;

1. Can Luke get claim amount from Laura (Amount of ticket, cost of dinner and compensation for emotional trauma.)?

2. Were there any ethical violations?

Let’s see answer of both case one by one;

1.

For making a claim for compensation there should be a valid agreement between two parties or we can say there must be a contract. And if one party violates the terms & conditions of that agreement & contract then second party can file for reasonable claim amount.

But in given case, story is just opposite because Luke and Laura are friends and they informally decided to go for a match & dinner. So in this case Luke can not get compensation for anything whether it is for ticket, dinner or for emotional trauma. Luke and Laura did not signed any agreement for the same hence compensation will not be given to Luke.

2.

Now if we think about ethical violations then definitely answer would be yes because Laura did not completed promises that were made to Luke and apart from this Luara have no proper reasons for rejecting her promises hence she violated some ethics like; honesty, sincerity, commitment, mutual trust etc.

It is clear that after making some promises with Luke, Laura went with her other friend, that shows how far she is irresponsible towards her commitments thus she crossed & violated basic ethics of human being.