Exam Number: ______
Professor Danaya WrightPROPERTY EXAMINATIONMay 3, 2013
1.This is a 4.5 hour OPEN book exam. You may use your book, commercial outlines, treatises, your own outline, and any other written material except your neighbor’s answer. You may not use any electronic sources or devices other than your laptop with ExamSoft.
2.You may not begin writing/typing your exam answer until 30 minutes have passed. Use that time to read the ENTIRE exam briefly, and then begin to outline or chart your answer to question 1. You will only have 4 hours to write/type your answer. Therefore, if you begin writing too soon, you will be cut off by ExamSoft after 4 hours and will losethe extra time. I repeat:
DO NOT BEGIN WRITING/TYPING YOUR ESSAYS FOR 30 MINUTES
3.I highly recommend that you follow as closely as possible the times allocated for eachquestion. There is an unallocated twenty minutes[??1] you might want to save to use to go back and add discussion points you missed the first time around.
4.You may handwrite your exam or use ExamSoft. If you handwrite the exam, please leave adequate space on the left and right margins for comments and points and use a pen with blue or black ink[??2]. If you use ExamSoft you may use the spell checker but you will need to keep track of the word limits yourself as the program will not cut you off when you reach the maximum word limit. I will, however, stop reading after you hit the word limit.
5.By participating in the exam and turning in your answer, you certify that: 1) you have neither received nor given any aid beyond the allowed use of materials, 2) that your work is original and is in no way improperly copied from any source, and 3) that you have complied with all applicable instructions and rules, including, but not limited to, those set forth herein and in the Univ. of Florida College of Law Student HonorCode.
6. I will be in my office (311 Holland Hall) to answer questions. But if you do not wish to take the time to run up there, and you feel you need more information to answer a question correctly, then state in your answer what assumptions you are making about the facts and then answer as though those assumptions were part of the facts given[??3]. If you have any doubts, simply state the grounds and move forward.
7.When you are finished, upload your exam,RETURN THE EXAM BOOKLET, and turn in your scratch paper.[??4]
This exam consists of 9 pages, including this cover page. Please be sure your exam is complete. Please be sure that you use your exam number[??5] (not your student ID number or social security number).
PLEASE DO NOT TURN THIS PAGE UNTIL THE PROCTOR GIVES THE SIGNAL.
Question 1
Thirty minutes – maximum 600 words
Hard as it is to imagine, it is true: Bart and Lisa Simpson have grown up. Well, maybe not Bart, though they have reached the age of adulthood. Maggie too has grown up, and Marge and Homer are getting grey; Marge is rather bluish-grey. They may even be grandparents soon. But right now Bart and Lisa have a problem – they are really mad at each other. As one would expect, Lisa grew up to be incredibly successful; she is the managing partner at a major law firm in Springfield, has invested her money very well, plays saxophone in a popular jazz band that tours regularly, and lives in a mansion next to Mr. Burns (the owner of the Springfield nuclear power plant and Homer’s boss). Bart hasn’t done so well – with a loan from Lisa he bought a small skate-board and scooter repair shop next to the Kwik-E-mart. Homer and Marge still live in the same old house with their geriatric dog (Santa’s Helper). Maggie is away at college.
What started this particular feud was that Bart stumbled across a computer floppy disk when he was looking for some old skate board bearings in the attic of his parents’ house. The disk had Lisa’s name on it, but was carefully tucked into one of Bart’s boxes of childhood toys where it had lain unknown to the true owner for at least 15 years. Bart had hidden it from Lisa when he was mad at her years ago for winning the State’s geography bee. He couldn’t remember what was on it but distinctly remembered Lisa’s insistence that Bart had taken her computer disk because it wasn’t where she left it. She then put hair remover in his shampoo the next day as pay back, but he never relented and told her he had the disk. Over the years he had forgotten all about it, although he blamed her for the ever-expanding bald spot he was sporting as he hit his 30s.
When he dragged up an old computer and plugged it in, he found that the disk had a bunch of Lisa’s old term papers. Of course, Lisa received A+s on everything she ever did. Looking at the papers, Bart thought of a great way to make money. He set up a web site to sell term papers over the web to students who hadn’t allowed themselves enough time to do all of their homework themselves. The site was called “ATermPapers.com” and it very quickly was doing a thriving business. The money started rolling in. But Bart was smart enough to realize that he couldn’t sell the same papers over and over again. Teachers and professors would begin to recognize them. He needed a way to make each one he sold different from the others, so he hired his old childhood friend, Milhouse, to personalize each term paper. Sometimes this meant simply doing a global search and replace of “dolphin” to “sea mammal” or “elm tree” to “motorboat.” Sometimes, though, it meant cutting and pasting portions of different terms papers into new ones. And the buyers, too, didn’t seem to notice that a term paper on dolphins spent a lot of time talking about aloe vera plants and the planet Neptune. Milhouse was very good, however, at formatting them in nice pretty ways, with lots of headings, and nifty fonts, so they looked very different from the old papers Lisa had written.
Bart also realized that he needed to expand his market base and his stock for these term papers, so he decided to have Milhousedo his magic on some of Bart’s F papers, reformatting them and changing the headings, and he sold these at bargain basement prices. “Wanna just pass the course?” and “Don’t want to raise any red flags by suddenly turning in an A paper?” and “Here are the mediocre papers just for you average students” he advertised. But he still couldn’t keep up with demand. He needed more papers. So he started a new business: “Bart’s School Warehouse Clearance Company, Inc.” He offered, at a very low price, to go through school basements, offsite warehouses, and long forgotten locked filing cabinets and shred or otherwise “destroy” all old papers, everything from student term papers to old student applications, from accident forms that had to be filled out in triplicate to copies of report cards and transcripts. Most of this stuff he did shred, but the term papers he kept, scanning them, reformatting them, and finally posting them on his website for sale. As the business grew, he hired a team of 10 of his old Springfield buddies to go around the state emptying school files. And not surprisingly, the first thing Bart did was permanently erase the name of the original author and then shred the hard copies so no one could trace the original authorship of any of the papers.
But one day Lisa realized that her papers were floating about when a recent law graduate applying for a job used one of her old papers as a writing sample. Once she saw it, she knew Bart was behind it all. What was probably most annoying of all to her, though, was how Bart was butchering her papers. When she finally tracked the paper down to Bart’s website she was amazed to see all the papers he had for sale. He could only have gotten that many through some kind of trickery, so Lisa went to see Principal Skinner of the Springfield High School, who confirmed that Bart had emptied out the school’s basement, which housed hundreds of file cabinets and filing boxes filled with papers of all kinds. According to Groundskeeper Willie, it would be like “searchin’ for a needle in a field o’ potatos” to get just the term papers out of the mass of other papers in the school’s basement. But Willie was thrilled that all those old flammable papers were gone and he didn’t really care what had happened to them so long as they were out of his control. Lisa then talked to a couple of their childhood buddies, Ralph and Milhouse, and both told her that they were flattered their old papers were being bought and re-used. It meant that all that work they put into them wasn’t wasted; it was being recycled and that was very environmentally friendly. They didn’t even want any compensation because they knew the papers were worthless to them – they didn’t want to go to all the trouble of setting up a website and reformatting or, heaven forbid, typing them in by hand just to make a couple of dollars. But Lisa didn’t like the idea, nor did Principal Skinner, who felt that the school should be benefitting off of the papers, if anyone did, because the poor underpaid teachers had done so much of the work.
Lisa’s law student applicant, however, Lizzy Hashburn, was not at all embarrassed about having bought a term paper rather than doing one herself. As she explained to Lisa, “lawyers plagiarize all the time – you should hire me because I’m doing what all lawyers do. I bought it, it’s mine now and I’m going to publish this as my law review note.” Believing she was the true owner of her papers, Lisa filed suit in Springfield District Court, against Bart, Bart’s company ATermPapers.com and Bart’s School Warehouse Clearance Company, Inc., Milhouse, and Lizzy, demanding her paper back, or compensation and damages at the least. Principal Skinner interpleaded on the ground that the school should be deemed the owner of all of the papers, even Lisa’s and Bart’s papers, because they were produced as school work. You are a law clerk for Judge Smithers who would like an analysis of the property rights implications of all of the potential parties in this case[??6]. And he needs it right NOW – in the next half hour.
Question 2
One Hour – maximum 1200 words
Bart didn’t have time to worry too much about a lawsuit from Lisa; he had his skate board shop to run and things were heating up between him and Apu, the owner of the Kwik-E-Mart, who was his neighbor. The Kwik-E-Mart was owned by Apu, as was the surrounding parking lot and a small outbuilding next to the Kwik-E-Mart building that was originally built as storage for frozen and refrigerated goods. Once electricity came to Springfield, the outbuilding was used to store extra goods for the Kwik-E-Mart. But with the downturn in the economy in 2008, and after Homer had an accident at the nuclear power plant and was bedridden for 6 months and couldn’t come in to buy beer, Apu needed money. So he decided to sell the small outbuilding to Bart for his skate board and scooter repair shop.
The conveyance was a standard deed, but provided as follows:
- The deed provided that Bart would not sell any food or drinks in competition with the Kwik-E-Mart for the next fifty years.
- The deed provided that approval was required for the grantee to lease or sell the building and that approval would not be withheld except for reasonable reasons.
- The deed noted that the sale was for the purpose of a skate-board shop only and that any use that interfered with the Kwik-E-Mart or any neighboring properties within a 2-block radius was prohibited.
- The deed also had the following language: “Upon violation of any condition, limitation, covenant, or restriction in this deed, the land shall be forfeited upon the payment by the grantor, or any neighbor within a 2-block radius, of a sum equal to the purchase price paid by the grantee.”
- The deed was silent as to the use of the Kwik-E-Mart’s parking lot for parking for Bart’s skate board shop customers but there was no other parking nearby as there was none on the street and the neighboring lands were all residential homes.
Although things went along fine for the first few months, Apu’s customers began complaining that they were nearly run over by crazy kids on skate boards speeding up and down the parking lot. It got even worse when Bart built a half-pipe beside his shop so kids could test run their skate boards. Kids were constantly hopping the curb in front of the Kwik-E-Mart, and if they rode their bicycles to Bart’s shop, they often blocked Apu’s doors and fire exits. After asking Bart many times to control his customers, Apu finally put up chains around the parking lot with signs saying that parking was for customers of the Kwik-E-Mart only. Apu also called Chief Wiggum over nearly every day to give out tickets to the kids for trespassing on his parking lot.
After explaining numerous times to Apu that he couldn’t control his customers, and that having no parking lot and giving out tickets was bad for both businesses, Bart decided to fight dirty. He posted signs all over his building that said things like “Apu’s hot dogs are rotten,” or “Don’t buy from Apu, he discriminates against kids,” or “If you want to get cheated, shop here” with a big arrow pointing to the Kwik-E-Mart. Then, on the sidewalk right beside his skate shop, Bart offered space for a farmers market and produce stand. Local farmers set up stands on Friday afternoons and soon townspeople from all over were flocking to Apu’s parking lot. Word of the great produce spread, and soon every Friday afternoon the entire street was blocked with customers for the farmers market. When his customers got thirsty, Bart sold them gatorade, sodas, and other beverages, as well as power bars and trail mix. Bart of course charged the produce stands a small fee each week to set up a table next to his building but nothing was put into writing.
To annoy Apu even more and to attract more customers for the farmers market, Bart decided to have a jazz band play music every Friday afternoon to entertain the customers of the farmers market. He set them up inside his skate board shop with the doors open and speakers outside on the roof of his shop. This brought even more people to the area who never shopped at the Kwik-E-Mart. They brought their own bottles of wine and fancy picnics and tailgated all night listening to the music in the parking lot of the Kwik-E-Mart. And because parking was even tighter with all of this activity, many patrons of the farmers market and jazz band started parking in the driveways of the neighboring residences, especially on the enormous lawn of Mr. Burns’ mansion that was located just behind the Kwik-E-Mart and Bart’s shop. Mr. Burns owned the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant and was a grumpy old man who hated to see all those people enjoying themselves, especially the kids on skate boards.
After suffering his third straight month of losses at the Kwik-E-Mart, Apu was on his way to tell Bart that he was exercising his rights to repurchase the outbuilding and requesting that Bart convey the building back to him, when he was tripped by a skateboarder. Apu fell down, hit his head on the curb, and died instantly. Apu’s son, Apu Jr. was his only heir and he became owner of the Kwik-E-Mart and continued to run it after his father’s tragic death. Apu Jr. found Apu’s letter to Bart claiming to exercise his rights to repurchase the outbuilding in his father’s pocket and decided to serve it on Bart and pursue his rights to get Bart out of there. Bart refused to reconvey the property and Apu Jr. filed suit for a declaratory judgment to affirm his rights to reclaim the outbuilding and for damages for the harm to the business caused by Bart’s breach of the restrictions. He also sent notices to all of the farmer’s market vendors and the jazz bands, informing them that they were trespassers if they returned the next Friday to sell their produce. Mr. Burns brought a trespass suit against Bart and Apu Jr. for damages to his rhododendrons from the picnickers. Bart answered, denying all claims and made assorted arguments. You are a law clerk to Judge Smithers who is taking a break from Lisa’s lawsuit and needs a memo on the property rights involved in this suit in the next hour, before lunch is over, including the rights, if any, of the vendors.[??7]