Property law deals with the sale and transfer of tangible and intangible goods. These transactions can be a range of legal entities like individuals, businesses. It can deal with owners’ rights regarding the property they own or renting and leasing a property (Legal information institute, 2020) .
Criminal Law
It is the most well-known area of law. Criminal law can range from murder to much less serious offenses, such as littering. Criminal law is not limited to violations against individuals – crimes such as burglary, theft is just as significant. Financial Crimes are also one of the many areas criminal lawyers working in. Criminal law could involve defending clients either with a private firm or with the Public Defender Service (Legal information institute, 2020).
Commercial Law
Commercial law governs the rules that businesses must follow when making transactions, sales, and purchases. Commercial law can cover other legal areas, such as health and safety, copyright, and tax law. Contract law is the central part of commercial law due to the frequent sales and purchases of goods. Commercial law areas, such as insurance, tax, and international trade, are assessed by lawyers who specialize in those areas. It is necessary because commercial law covers a large extent. Solicitors may not know everything about commercial law, so they specialize in one or two areas (Zegal, 2020).
Maritime Law
Maritime law is also known as admiralty law. It deals with questions or disputes arising from activities that occur at sea. It can include several of the other types of law. For example, accidents on ships, disputes over shipping lanes, and shipping contracts fall under maritime law (Zegal, 2020).
Human Rights
Human rights law can have implications for national and international law. With the recent “War on Terror,” this area has been getting more interest, but its impact has also increased due to the Human Rights Act. It can impact any number of other legal places where individual human rights could be seen to have been breached. It includes discrimination in employment, excessive restrictions on freedom of expression, and events that result in an unfair trial. Human rights lawyers are also involved with international matters, such as trade sanctions against countries with poor human rights records (Britishlaw,org,uk, 2017).
Family Law
Family law involves a wide range of family-related difficulties. Family law can include divorce, injunctions, civil partnerships, adoption, child abuse, and domestic abuse. Family law will also have a crossover with other legal areas, such as property law and criminal law. Wills and trusts are the most significant parts of family law. Again, there is a considerable crossover that requires family law. Furthermore, there is a substantial crossover that requires a family law lawyer to know other law areas (Euro pound, 2004) .
Contract Law
Contract law is a voluntary arrangement between two or more parties legally enforceable as a binding legal agreement. The contract is part of the civil law’s traditional jurisdiction law. Contract law deals with the rights and obligations arising from an agreement. When the parties agree to an agreement, the contract or the formation of a contract generally requires the provision, acceptance, consideration, and mutual restraint intent. The parties to the contract need to have the ability to sign the agreement. Minors and drunken may not be able to sign a contract. Certain types of arrangements may require formalities, such as written records. In common law, the elements of a deal are the intent and consideration of the provision, acceptance, and creation of legal relations. A contract is a legally binding agreement to fulfill an obligation to another party in return for consideration. A primary deal must comprise four key elements: offer, review, acceptance, and intent to create legal relations (Consumer Protection Association, 2020).
EU Law
EU law covers legal elements of the European Union. The EU creates rights that citizens of EU member states can enforce. Businesses, pressure groups, and the government are interested in solicitors and barristers knowledgeable of European law.
EU law can affect employment rules, consumer rights, commercial activity, and the protection of the environment. An example is the EU competition law, which prevents firms from abusing dominant market positions. It is challenging to think of other legal areas that have remained untouched by EU law.
Intellectual Property Law
Intellectual property is all about owning ideas, products of the mind, and other intangible assets. There are two main intellectual property areas: industrial property – such as design, patents, and trademarks – and copyrights. Copyrights involve artistic work such as painting films and books. Intellectual property law is there to protect ideas and let people own what they create.
Working in intellectual property could involve providing advice to a client who wishes to protect their ideas. It could be complicated, such as a case where some dispute over a patent arises. Intellectual property has a vital international element to it, so some international travel may be expected. You may even have to understand how other legal systems work. Regardless of the size of intellectual property, many businesses could be dealing with a local company or a large international brand.
The patent is the granting of property rights by a sovereign authority to an investor. This grant provides the investor exclusive rights to the patented process or invention for a designated period in exchange for disclosing the story.
A trademark can include any combination of a name, slogan, logo, sounds, or colors that identify a specific company or its products or services.
Copyright indicates the legal right of intellectual property. Copyright is the right to copy. It indicates that the original creators of products they give consent to are the only ones with the exclusive right to rewrite the work (Legal information institute, 2020).
The Consumer Rights Act 2015 strengthens and aligns consumer remedies for substandard goods and introduces some brand-consumer rights and remedies for substandard services or digital content. It requires that contract and notice terms be transparent as well as fair. It strengthens and aligns public enforcers’ powers for breaches of consumer law. Under the Consumer Rights Act, the consumer’s rights for goods are preserved and extended. Goods must have satisfactory quality, fit for any particular purpose the consumer has, be as described, and match any sample seen or examined before purchase (Consumer Protection Association, 2020).
Trade Descriptions Act 1968 applies a fake trade description to any goods. For this act, a trade description indicates any one of several matters listed in the act. These include the size, quantity, and gauge of goods; how they were made or processed; when they were made; their fitness for purpose; strength, performance, behavior, or accuracy; and any other physical characteristics they possess, including information relating to testing or approvals.
Supply of Goods and Services Act was an attempt to provide consumers more excellent protection when they buy goods or services to ensure that consumers received a product of reasonable quality or received a service carried out with valuable skill and attention. The right provided for by the act could not be excluded from any contractual agreement, which gave consumers a level of protection compared to previous pieces of legislation in this area. The act aimed to protect consumers from inadequate services, faulty goods, or bad artistry that the supplier may have provided. The act applied to entire business relationships where goods and services were provided. This did not include written contracts and circumstances where a service is agreed with payment to follow.
Consumer Protection Act 1987 was made to make manufacturers accountable for making unsafe goods. It allows consumers to claim compensation if the defective product has caused personal injury, damage to property, or death. Under the act, liabilities are normally brought against the product’s producer. The company or individual that has its name on the product is regarded as the producer. If the goods have been imported to the UK from outside the EU, the importer is considered the producer. The Consumer Protection Act of 1987 offers a range of quality products, including deposit protection and insurance-backed guarantees that provide peace of mind to consumers and tradespeople alike.
The General Product Safety Regulations 2005 demands that no producer supply a consumer product on the market unless the product is safe. The regulation requires that no producer shall affect the market, agree, or offer to place an effect on the market and possess a product for putting on the market.
Employment Relation Act 2004 came into effect to help workers now have legal protection against inducements by their employer not to be or be a member of a trade union or to give up maintaining their terms and conditions of employment determined by a collective agreement by their union. Workers are also protected against detriment for using the services of their trade union or refusing any of the above inducements.
The UK has a long history of retaining consumer rights. UK consumers had relied on laws that protected purchasers of goods and services and protected by unfair contract terms before the EU was involved in this area.
Consumers in the UK benefit from rights when buying goods and services from businesses in the UK and the EU. The UK has been beneficial for and has benefitted from the EU in developing these rights.
UK consumer protections that are based on EU law will be retained. It means that when purchasing from traders in the UK, UK consumers will rely on the same rights they have now after leaving the EU.
Consumers in the UK benefit from a wide range of rights when purchasing goods and services from businesses in the UK and the EU. The UK has been influential in the EU in growing these rights, and the UK’s 2015 Consumer Rights Act connects to EU consumer law principles. It sets out a framework of consumer protections across the spectrum of consumer goods, services, and digital content supply contracts. Organizations like Citizen’s Advice, Trading Standards, the Competition and Markets Authority, and the government ensure that consumers are aware of their rights and what to do when things go wrong. Before making an online purchase of goods, consumers in the UK must be given all the critical information about the transaction, can cancel the contract, and can return the goods within 14 days, whether or not they are faulty. They are protected against a wide range of prohibited, unfair, misleading, and aggressive business practices, many of which are criminal offenses and related to which a consumer may have a right to redress. Terms in goods and service contracts that are found to be unfair are invalid or non-binding (Legal Information Institute, 2020).
Constitution and Structure of a company
Company constitution is the term used for legal documentation that specifies and rules and regulations on how a firm will carry out its business activities and be controlled. It is set up as part of the incorporation company process, and new companies are expected to submit an official company constitution. The term can vary in different jurisdictions and may also be referred to as the Articles of Association. The company constitution brings about many benefits to a new corporate company. It encompasses all the essential information regarding the very incorporation process, including the company members’ rights and the relationships between them. It defines the company’s relationship with each member and the relationships between the company members, all of which is to respect the provision set out in the company constitution. The company’s constitution is a legally binding contract between the company and its members; the members can bring an action to act its provision. Similarly, the company itself can also implement the requirements of the company constitution to compel its members to comply with it.
Terminating contracts is a right to terminate an agreement that will arise when a contractual stipulation conferring the request or a breach or repudiation gives rise to the right under the common law.
The termination of the contract is deemed to be lawful if there is a legal reason to terminate the agreement before the completion of the contract.
Essential terms are described as conditions or fundamental terms. A well-accepted example of a critical period is where time is expressed to be of the essence.
A common law right to terminate will raise in a severe breach of a non-essential term or renounce the contract by the other party. The performance of the terms of the agreement is called interpretation. It may not be adequate to enforce the duration of the contract. For example, if the performer becomes incapacitated in a concert contract, it may sometimes terminate the agreement.
The company was set up in the process of setting up an enterprise in the UK. Sometimes also known as company registration, these terms are also used in the Republic of Ireland. According to British company law and most international laws, a company is considered separate from the person who owns or operates it. Today, most companies are electronically formed. A company may be created by an individual, a professional agent, a lawyer, or an accountant. Many lawyers and accountants will merge with or subcontract to specialized companies to form agents. Most agents offer a portfolio of companies below $100.
Employees have a duty of care to the company’s staff. It indicates that they take reasonable steps to ensure their safety, health, and wellbeing. Raising a concern for the mental health of their work should not just be seen as a legal duty. It can be a crucial factor in reinforcing their commitment to their employees. It can help improve staff retention, boost productivity, and pave the way for greater employee engagement.
Legally, the employer must abide by relevant health and safety employment law and the standard law duty of care. They also have an ethical responsibility not to cause or fail to prevent physical or psychological injury and negligence claims.
Several issues come forth, including anxiety, occupational stress, and other mental problems for their staff and themselves. Then productivity diminishes more. There are solutions to resolving this issue for business executives, from bringing in business consultants to employing mental health experts, taking surveys, and assessing their social strategy.
Law of Agency is a type of commercial law dealing with a set of contractual and non-contractual fiduciary relationships that involve a person called the agent authorized to act on behalf of another to set up legal relations with a third party. Agency law is concerned with any principal-agent relationship where one person has the legal authority to act for another. Such relationships arise from an explicit appointment or by implication. The relationships generally associated with agent law include guardian-ward, executor, or administrator decedent, and employer-employee.
The Competition Act 1998 is the primary current source of competition law in the UK. It provides an updated framework for identifying and dealing with restrictive business practices and dominant market position abuse. Deals with restrictive rules are engaged by the companies operating within the UK that distort, restrict, and prevent competition. These agreements could be limit output, collusively share information, fix prices, tender collectively, and share market out. A firm’s abuse of the prominent position uses predatory pricing, high costs, refusal to supply, vertical restraints, and price discrimination to maximize profit, gain competitive advantage, or otherwise restrict competition.
European competition law is in use within the European Union. It helps maintain competition within the European Single Market by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies to ensure that they do not create monopolies that would damage the interests of society. The primary authority for applying competition law within the European Union rests with the European Commission and its Directorate-General for Competition. However, state aids in some sectors, such as agriculture, are handled by other Directorates-General. Four main policy areas include:
- cartel, or control of cooperation and other anti-competitive practices;
- market dominance and preventing the abuse of firms’ dominant market positions;
- control of proposed mergers and joint ventures involving companies with a particular, defined amount of turnover in the EU; and
- stateState aid and indirect assistance were given by the Member States of the European Union to companies (Corporate Wellness, 2020).
References
Allen & Overy (2015), English Contract Law (Online) Available at http://www.a4id.org
Britishlaw.org.uk (2017). Contract law-British law (online) Available at: http://www.britishlaw.org.uk
Wardhadaway (2015) The consumer Rights At 2015 (online) Available at http://wardhadaway.com
Defra (2017) Trade Description Act (Online) Available at http://everysite.co.uk
Law teacherLee, Debra (2020) The supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 (Online) Available at http://www.lawteacher.net
Consumer Protection Association (2020) Breaking down the Consumer Protection Act 1987 (online) Available at http://thecpa.co.uk
Wikipedia (2020) General Product Safety Regulation 2005 (online) Available at http://en.wikipedia.org
Euro pound (2004) Employment Relation Act 2004 begins to come into force (online) Available at http://eurofound.europa.eu
Zegal (2020) How do I write my company constitution (online) Available at http://zegal.com
Clayton, Utz (2020) Terminating contracts (online) Available at http://claytonutz.com
Wikipedia (2020) Company formation (online) Available at http://en.wikipedia.org
Corporate Wellness (2020) A Manager’s Duty of Care (online) Available at http://corporatewellnessmagazine.com
Legal Information Institute (2020) Agency Online Available at http://law.cornell.edu
Wikipedia (2020) Companies Act (online) Available at http://en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia (2020) European Union Competition law (online) Available at http://en.wikipedia.org
