BUSINESS LAW CASE ANALYSIS.

Morales-Cruz v. University of Puerto Rico

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit, 676 F.3d 220 (2012).

Background and Facts

In 2003, Myrta Morales-Cruz began a tenure-track teaching position at the University of Puerto Rico School of Law. During Morales-Cruz’s probationary period, one of her co-teachers in a law school clinic had an affair with one of their students, and it resulted in a pregnancy. In 2008, Morales-Cruz wanted the university’s administrative committee to approve a one-year extension for her tenure review. The law school’s dean asked Morales-Cruz about her co-teacher's affair and criticized her for failing to report it. He later recommended granting the extension but called Morales-Cruz insecure, immature, and fragile. Similarly, a law school committee recommended granting the extension, but a dissenting professor commented that Morales-Cruz had shown poor judgment, in regard to the co-teacher's affair, had personality flaws, and had trouble with complex and sensitive situations.

Morales-Cruz learned about these comments and complained in writing to the university’s chancellor. As a result, the dean then recommended denying the one-year extension, and the administrative committee ultimately did just that. When her employment was terminated, Morales-Cruz sued the university under Title VII. Among other things, she asserted that the dean had retaliated against her for complaining to the chancellor. The district court found that Morales-Cruz had not stated a proper retaliation claim under Title VII.

In the Words of the Court …

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

* * * *

The amended complaint alleges that various officials described the plaintiff as “fragile,” “immature,” “unable to handle complex and sensitive issues,” * * * and exhibiting “lack of judgment.” These descriptors are admittedly unflattering—but they are without exception gender-neutral. All of them apply equally to persons of either gender * * * .

* * * *

* * * Title VII makes it unlawful for an employer to take materially adverse action against an employee “because he has opposed any practice made an unlawful employment practice by this subchapter.” To state a cause of action under this portion of the statute, the pleading must contain plausible allegations indicating that the plaintiff opposed a practice prohibited by Title VII and suffered an adverse employment action as a result of that opposition. [Emphasis added.]

The plaintiff alleges that she was retaliated against for writing to the Chancellor to complain about the “discriminatory” comments made in the course of her request for an extension. In support of this allegation, she points out that after she sent her letter the Dean reversed his position on her extension. This construct suffers from a fatal flaw: her factual allegations do not support a reasonable inference that she was engaging in protected conduct when she opposed the remarks made.

* * * The facts alleged * * * provide no reasonable basis for inferring that the comments cited reflected gender-based discrimination. Those comments were unarguably gender-neutral and do not afford an objectively reasonable foundation for a retaliation action.

Decision and Remedy

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that Morales-Cruz could not bring a retaliation claim under Title VII. It therefore affirmed the district court’s judgment for the University of Puerto Rico.

The Ethical Dimension

Could Morales-Cruz’s dean have had legitimate reasons for changing his mind about the one-year extension? If so, what might they have been?

The Legal Environment Dimension

What steps should employers take to reduce the likelihood that supervisors will retaliate against employees who make or support discrimination claims?

Harassment by Co-Workers and Nonemployees

When the harassment of co-workers, rather than supervisors, creates a hostile working environment, an employee may still have a cause of action against the employer. Normally, though, the employer will be held liable only if the employer knew, or should have known, about the harassment and failed to take immediate remedial action.

Occasionally, a court may also hold an employer liable for harassment by nonemployees if the employer knew about the harassment and failed to take corrective action.

1. What is the legal issue of the case?

2. How did the court decide on the issues?

3. What reasoning did the court use to substantiate their findings?

4. Do you agree or disagree with how the finding by the court in this matter? and why?

Which option below best represents the main difference between cohort studies and clinical trials?

a. The investigator and other study staff are blinded in a cohort study but not in a clinical trial

b. Cohort studies are conducted with humans and clinical trials are conducted with animals

c. Study investigators control the participant’s exposure in clinical trial, but not in a cohort study

d. Study investigators follow up participants over time in clinical trials, but not in cohort studies

After reading the article "your heart is a muscle the size of your fist, answer the questions below. Also, make sure to bring a hard copy of this assignment to class with you.

Article link:  https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/books/review/your-heart-is-a-muscle-the-size-of-a-fist-by-sunil-yapa.html

1. Does the author of this article present a clear argument? What is it?

2. What information does the author provide to summarize before criticizing?

3. What common expectations does the author focus on when reviewing this book?

4. What do you think is missing from this review? What else do you want to know about the book?

5. How does the author look to the future in the conclusion of this review?

1) Determine the potential at a point 35 cm from;

a) a +15 x10-6C charge point    b) at a 12 uC charge point

2) Determine the minimum work to be done by an external force that has a charge q = 300 uC from a distance (not defined) to a point 50 cm with a load of 20 x 10-6 C.

3) We have 2 charging points, where Q1 = -25.0 uC and the other has Q2 = +50.0 uC are separated by 12 cm (see image). If the electric field at point P is zero (0).

Determine the distance at which we can find Q1 from point P. Note: u = micro

The following is a narrative description of the business process of a conference with regards to the submitting, reviewing and accepting papers.

The author completes an online form that requests the user to input author name, correspondence address, email and title of paper. The system validates this data and if correct, asks the author to submit the paper. The author then browses to find the correct paper on their system and submits it. Once received and stored, the system returns to the author a reference number for the paper. Authors may submit as many papers as they like to be considered for acceptance to the conference up until the deadline date for submissions. Papers are allocated to referees for assessment. They review each paper and submit to the system their decision. Once the programme organiser has agreed with the decisions, authors are informed by email. Accepted papers are then schedule to be delivered at a conference. This involves allocating a date, time and place for the presentation of the paper.

Analyse the above text to do the following:

1. Identify and provide the details of the Actor roles involved (such as Actor Name, Actor Type, Description, Current Job Title(s) and Priority of the Actor).
2. Identify the system requirements by drawing a complete Use Case Diagram, adding the <include> relationship where relevant.
3. Write a comprehensive Use Case to explain normal and alternative scenarios in the system.

Consider the following schema:

Publisher (name, phone, city), PK: name.

Book (ISBN, title, year, published_by, previous_edition, price), PK: ISBN, FK: published_by refs Publisher, previous_edition refs Book.

Author (SSN, first_name, last_name, address, income), PK: SSN.

Write (aSSN, bISBN), PK: (aSSN, bISBN), FK: aSSN refs Author, bISBN refs Book.

Editor (SSN, first_name, last_name, address, salary, works_for, book_count), PK: SSN, FK: works_for refs Publisher.

Edit (eSSN, bISBN), PK: (eSSN, bISBN), FK: eSSN refs Editor, bISBN refs Book.

Author_Editor (aeSSN, hours), PK: aeSSN, FK: aeSSN refs Author, aeSSN refs Editor.

Give SQL statements for the following plain English language queries based on the above schema.

Hint: You may use views to hold intermediate results.

• Provide the title, year, and publisher name of every book and the first name and last name of the editor of the book.
• Provide the title of those books whose author’s last name is neither “Smith” nor “Doe”.
• Provide the first name and last name of every author-editor who edits at least one book that is written by him or herself.
• Provide the title of the most expensive book published by the publisher named “ABC”.
• Provide the first name and the last name of those editors who have edited all the books written by John Smith.
• Give the title of those books that have more than 3 authors.
• Show the number of books published in 2008 versus the number of books published in 2009 for every publisher.
• The result should have the following four columns: publisher_name, book_count_08, book_count 09, percentage of increase from 2008 to 2009

• Provide an SQL UPDATE statement that updates the book_count field of the Editor table by computing the number of books edited by each editor using nested queries.
• For each publisher, find the title of the book that it publishes with the largest number of editors. The output should have two columns - one is the publisher’ name and the other is the title of the book found.
• Provide the name of each publisher that is located in ‘OKC’ and is one of the top three publishers in terms of the total amount of salary it pays its editors.

Why have NGOs been regarded as the solution to development problems? explain at least 800 words?

my subject is the development of sociology.

the name of the book: theories and practices of development edition 1st ( and the question is from 4th chapter)

the name of the author: Katie Willis

Encapsulation

You are tasked with building a BookStore. Your Architect has told you that the BookStore class has the following members :

long id;

String name;

Address address;

Book book;

The Address class has the following attributes :

String streetName;

String houseNumber;

String apartmentNumber;

String zipCode;

The book class has the following members

String name;

String isbn;

Author author;

The Author class within the book class has the following member :

String firstName;

String lastName;

Date dateOfBirth;

Address address; //Address class has already been created

You have to create your BookStore class. You have to use encapsulation to make sure all the variables of the bookstore class are protected.

For the classes that are within the bookstore class (Address and Book and Author within book) you have to use encapsulation as well for the member variables.

Now you need to create another class that will have a main method. Call this class App. Populate your variables with data using the setter methods and then print them out using System.out.println().