business law 1836907 2

 

Assignment 2: Using Your Manager Skills

Due Week 10 and worth 240 points

 

Note: The companies mentioned herein are merely hypothetical organizations with characteristics developed to enable students to respond to the assignment. You may create and / or make all necessary assumptions needed for the completion of this assignment.

 

In this assignment, you, in the role of a risk manager at Simply Green Products, will draft a document that is commonly used in the business world—a memorandum to your boss.

 

Simply Green Products is a $10 million company that produces biodegradable packing materials that orchards use in the Shenandoah Valley to transport their apples, peaches, and pears nationwide. Biodegradable materials are more eco-friendly because they break down into the environment. Such packing materials are marketed under the name “SafePack,” which is heavily advertised in trade journals. Simply Green Products have had the name “SafePack” imprinted on all of their packing material since 2008; however, they never filed for either state or federal trademark protection. With the movement toward more eco-friendly agricultural production, the fact that such packing materials are biodegradable provides a primary marketing advantage over non-biodegradable competitors.

 

 

 

The company president, Shep Howard, has recently become aware of several issues that may require referral to the company’s outside counsel. Because you serve as the company’s risk manager, Howard has asked you to leverage your legal and managerial skills to draft a memorandum that addresses one the situation described below:

 

 

 

•An environmental group is asserting that SafePack materials are not biodegradable. In fact, the group claims that these materials are causing an environmental hazard that is seeping from a local landfill into a nearby stream. An environmental group, SafePack Materials Pollute, has sprung up and launched an Internet campaign geared toward compelling fruit producers to stop purchasing your packing materials. The situation at hand raises environmental issues that relate to the Clean Water Act and the Solid Waste Disposal Act.

 

For the situation set out above, write a three to four (3-4) page memorandum to President Howard. Ensure that you address each of the questions below within your memo so that President Howard may assess whether or not Simply Green Products needs to hire outside counsel to address the matter at hand.

1.Discuss the elements that must be present in order for one to prove a valid claim under the law(s) specified (i.e., the Clean Water Act, the Solid Waste Disposal Act).

 

2.Determine whether or not the activity of Simply Green Products amounts to a violation of the applicable law (i.e., the Clean Water Act, the Solid Waste Disposal Act). If you chose the environmental issue, determine whether or not seepage from your products into a stream would violate the Clean Water Act, the Solid Waste Disposal Act, or both. Explain your rationale. If you chose the intellectual property matter, determine whether or not continued use of the SafePack name by your company would violate the Lanham Act. Explain your rationale.

 

3.Decide whether or not President Howard should refer this chosen matter to the company’s outside counsel. Provide a rationale for your decision.

 

4.Use at least three (3) high-quality academic references. As the cases discussed within the assignment are hypothetical, you will not find any solutions to them on the Internet. Further, note that Wikipedia, blogs, and such Websites as Free Dictionary do not qualify as academic resources, whereas your textbook does. Use the Strayer Learning Resource Center (LRC) to locate high-quality academic references.

 

Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:

•Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, your name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date.

 

•Draft this in the form of a letter that is typed, double-spaced, and uses Times New Roman font (size 12) with one-inch margins on all sides.

 

•Include your citations in the body of your letter and include your list of references at the end. All citations must follow the APA.

•Be sure to follow all additional instructions provided by your professor.

 

Please follow the attached Rubric to ensure best grade for assignment.

 

If possible please use this text book as resource:

·         Bagley, C. E. (2013). Managers and the legal environment (7th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western

 

Cengage Learning.