Financial Accounting Discussion Questions
Financial
Accounting questions
1) Jaidyn, who just turned eighteen, is out with several friends. They decide to see a
movie, but it is sold out. Jaidyn hides in the back of the theatre and yells "Fire" as loudly as she can. The theatre empties, allowing Jaidyn and her friends (or so they think) to watch the movie. Unfortunately, a theatre employee saw Jaidyn yelling, called the police, and she is arrested. Jaidyn tells police officers that she's merely exercising her free speech rights. She adds that the employee is lying and that she personally saw him stealing popcorn. The theatre employee tells Jaidyn that he will sue her for defamation, to which her response is that she would win based on her right to free speech. Discuss whether or not Jaidyn is right on both counts and why.
2) Following the events of September 11, 2001, the government took many actions directed
at preventing acts of terrorism. One of the first and most visible was increased intensity of searches at airports. When government personnel do the screening, they are subject to the Equal Protection Clause. Should government screeners be able to search members of certain groups more rigorously than others? Is it constitutional to do so?
3) In the late 1990s, bicycle helmets became subject to federal regulation for the first time.
Prior to the adoption of federal standards, manufacturers of bicycle helmets could get their helmets safety-certified by several private organizations. Manufacturers were not required to use any of these organizations, but most used at least one as part of their marketing. Assume that someone who is injured while wearing a bike helmet believes that a defect in the helmet's design contributed to the injuries sustained. Under what circumstances can this person bring a tort claim under state law?
4) Assume that there are numerous Internet service providers in a large city. Because of
fierce competition, these businesses advertise heavily. One of the features that some of them provide and advertise is streamlined access to pornography sites as well as proprietary pornography sites that can be accessed only by those who subscribe with that particular service provider. This city passes an ordinance that prohibits any advertising about being able to access pornography over the Internet. One of the service providers challenges the constitutionality of this statute. Discuss how the case would turn out.
5) Assume that a city passes an ordinance that prohibits all smoking in restaurants and bars, except in outdoor seating areas. Evaluate an equal protection challenge to this ordinance.
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6) Prosecutor Alicia Jones was cautiously optimistic that victory was hers. She had just tried the defendant Robert Howell for the first-degree murder of his father, Donovan Howell, a wealthy construction company owner from Charleston, South Carolina. Any prosecutor would have been pleased with the evidence Jones had introduced to the jury. Although there was no eyewitness to the murder, there was an abundance of circumstantial evidence, including three witnesses who had observed the younger Howell board his father's yacht at 1:00 a.m. on Sunday, June 27 (the body was found on the yacht later that same morning), a knife next to the elder Howell's body with his son's fingerprints on it, and the son's confession to Charleston County police on Friday, July 2. In light of all of the circumstantial evidence against his client, defense attorney Edward York had taken the risk of putting his client on the witness stand. Howell responded reasonably well to both direct examination and to Jones's cross-examination.
After five days of deliberation, the jury announced that it was hopelessly deadlocked. After inquiring whether there was any possibility that further jury deliberation would resolve the impasse, and after the foreperson's response of "Most definitely not, your honor," Judge Gregory Williams officially declared a mistrial. Jones knew there was no way to predict what a jury would do, and she had tried to ready herself, but she was nevertheless shocked by the jury's inability to reach a verdict.
After Williams's declaration of mistrial, Jones immediately polled the jury. She discovered that ten jurors were in favor of the defendant's conviction, with the remaining two jurors opposed. Those two jurors, Charles Yates and Carla Yoder, explained why they voted against conviction.
Yates, a 28-year-old divorced waiter with a 3-year-old son, explained to Jones that there was no way Howell could have committed murder. Said Yates, "He just seems like such a polite and well-mannered guy.... There is just no way he killed his father." Yoder, a sixty-eight-year-old retiree, had different reasons for her belief that defendant Howell was innocent. Yoder stated "Just because he was on his father's boat doesn’t mean he killed his father. I believe the young man was framed. I believe the knife was planted on the boat, and I believe the police coerced his confession."
Jones is considering retrying Howell. Would the Fifth Amendment "double jeopardy" provision of the United States Constitution prohibit a retrial of Howell for the first-degree murder of his father?