Law School

Breach of contract is a legal cause of action and a type of civil wrong, in which a binding agreement or bargained-for exchange is not honored by one or more of the parties to the contract by non-performance or interference with the other party's performance. Breach occurs when a party to a contract fails to fulfill its(s), whether partially or wholly, as described in the contract, or communicates an intent to fail the obligation or otherwise appears not to be able to perform its obligation under the contract. Where there is breach of contract, the resulting damages will have to be paid by the party breaching the contract to the aggrieved party. If a contract is rescinded, parties are legally allowed to undo the work unless doing so would directly charge the other party at that exact time. It is important to bear in mind that contract law is not the same from country to country. Each country has its own independent, free standing law of contract. Therefore, it makes sense to examine the laws of the country to which the contract is governed before deciding how the law of contract (of that country) applies to any particular contractual relationship. What constitutes a breach of contract. To determine whether or not a contract has been breached, a judge needs to examine the contract. To do so, they must examine: the existence of a contract, the requirements of the contract, and if any modifications were made to the contract. Only then can the judge make a ruling on the existence and classifications of a breach. Additionally, for the contract to be breached and the judge to deem it worthy of a breach, the plaintiff must prove that there was a breach in the first place and that the plaintiff held up its side of the contract by completing everything required. Additionally, the plaintiff must notify the defendant of the breach prior to filing the lawsuit.

Expectation of privacy is a legal test which is crucial in defining the scope of the applicability of the privacy protections of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is related to, but is not the same as, a right to privacy, a much broader concept which is found in many legal systems. Overall, expectations of privacy can be subjective or objective. Overview. There are two types of expectations of privacy: Subjective expectation of privacy: a certain individual's opinion that a certain location or situation is private; varies greatly from person to person. Objective, legitimate, reasonable expectation of privacy: an expectation of privacy generally recognized by society and perhaps protected by law. Places where individuals expect privacy include residences, hotel rooms, or public places that have been provided by businesses or the public sector to ensure privacy, including public restrooms, private portions of jailhouses, or phone booths. This expectation extends against both physical and digital intrusions, and even cell tower geolocation data is protected. In general, one cannot have a reasonable expectation of privacy for things put into a public space. There are no privacy rights in garbage left for collection in a public place. Other examples include: pen registers that record the numbers dialed from particular telephones; conversations with others, though there could be a Sixth Amendment violation if the police send an individual to question a defendant who has already been formally charged; a person's physical characteristics, such as voice and handwriting; what is observed pursuant to aerial surveillance that is conducted in public navigable airspace not using equipment that unreasonably enhances the surveying government official's vision; anything in open fields (for example, a barn); smells that can be detected by the use of a drug-sniffing dog during a routine traffic stop, even if the government official did not have probable cause or reasonable suspicion to suspect that drugs were present in the defendant's vehicle; and paint scrapings on the outside of a vehicle. While a person may have a subjective expectation of privacy in his/her car, it is not always an objective one, unlike a person's home. Expectation of home privacy extends to thermal imaging. The expectation of privacy concept also applies civilly whereas the unreasonable violation of which may result in mental distress rather than incarceration. Civil privacy expects against: (1) intrusion upon seclusion or solitude, or into private affairs; (2) public disclosure of embarrassing private facts; (3) publicity which places a person in a false light in the public eye; and (4) appropriation of name or likeness.

History of the IRS name. As early as the year 1918, the Bureau of Internal Revenue began using the name "Internal Revenue Service" on at least one tax form. In 1953, the name change to the "Internal Revenue Service" was formalized in Treasury Decision 6038. Current organization. The 1980s saw a reorganization of the IRS. A bipartisan commission was created with several mandates, among them to increase customer service and improve collections. Congress later enacted the Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998. Because of that Act, the IRS now functions under four major operating divisions: Large Business and International (LB&I), Small Business/Self-Employed (SB/SE), Wage and Investment (W&I), and Tax Exempt & Government Entities (TE/GE). Effective October 1, 2010, the name of the Large and Mid-Size Business division was changed to the Large Business & International (LB&I) division. While there is some evidence that customer service has improved, lost tax revenues in 2001 were over $323 billion. The IRS is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and does most of its computer programming in Maryland. It currently operates five submission processing centers which process returns sent by mail and returns filed electronically via E-file. Different types of returns are processed at the various centers with some centers processing individual returns and others processing business returns. Originally, there were ten submission processing centers across the country. In the early 2000s, the IRS closed five centers: Andover, MA; Holtsville, NY; Philadelphia, PA; Atlanta, GA; and Memphis, TN. This currently leaves five centers processing returns: Austin, TX; Covington, KY; Fresno, CA; Kansas City, MO; and Ogden, UT. In October 2016 the IRS announced that three more centers will close over a six-year period: Covington, KY in 2019; Fresno, CA in 2021; and Austin, TX in 2024. This will leave Kansas City, MO and Ogden, UT as the final two submission processing centers after 2024. The IRS also operates three computer centers around the country (in Detroit, Michigan; Martinsburg, West Virginia; and Memphis, Tennessee). Deputy Commissioners. The Commissioner of Internal Revenue is assisted by two deputy commissioners. The Deputy Commissioner for Operations Support reports directly to the Commissioner and oversees the IRS's integrated support functions, facilitating economy of scale efficiencies and better business practices. The Deputy Commissioner for Operations Support provides executive leadership for customer service, processing, tax law enforcement and financial management operations and is responsible for overseeing IRS operations and providing executive leadership on policies, programs and activities. The Deputy assists and acts on behalf of the IRS Commissioner in directing, coordinating and controlling the policies, programs and activities of the IRS; in establishing tax administration policy, and developing strategic issues and objectives for IRS strategic management. The Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement reports directly to the Commissioner and oversees the four primary operating divisions responsible for the major customer segments and other taxpayer-facing functions. The Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement serves as the IRS Commissioner's essential assistant acting on behalf of the commissioner in establishing and enforcing tax administration policy and upholding IRS's mission to provide America's taxpayers top-quality service by helping them understand and meet their tax responsibilities.

In property law, a concurrent estate or co-tenancy is any of various ways in which property is owned by more than one person at a time. If more than one person owns the same property, they are commonly referred to as co-owners. Legal terminology for co-owners of real estate is either co-tenants or joint tenants, with the latter phrase signifying a right of survivorship. Most common law jurisdictions recognize tenancies in common and joint tenancies. Many jurisdictions also recognize tenancies by the entirety, which is effectively a joint tenancy between married persons. Many jurisdictions refer to a joint tenancy as a joint tenancy with right of survivorship, but they are the same, as every joint tenancy includes a right of survivorship. In contrast, a tenancy in common does not include a right of survivorship. The type of co-ownership does not affect the right of co-owners to sell their fractional interest in the property to others during their lifetimes, but it does affect their power to will the property upon death to their devisees in the case of joint tenants. However, any joint tenant can change this by severing the joint tenancy. This occurs whenever a joint tenant transfers his or her fractional interest in the property. Laws can vary from place to place, and the following general discussion will not be applicable in its entirety to all jurisdictions. Rights and duties of co-owners (general). Under the common law, Co-owners share a number of rights by default: 1.    Each owner has an unrestricted right of access to the property. When one co-owner wrongfully excludes another from using the shared property, the excluded co-owner can bring a cause of action for ouster. As a remedy, the court may grant the wronged co-owner the fair rental value of the property for the time that they were ousted. 2.    Each owner has a right to an accounting of profits made from the property. If the property generates any income (for example rent, farming, etc. . . .) each owner is entitled to a pro-rata share of that income. 3.    Each owner has a right of contribution for the costs of owning the property. Co-owners can be forced to contribute to the payment of expenses such as property taxes, necessary maintenance and repairs, or mortgages for the entire property.

Battery is a criminal offense involving unlawful physical contact, distinct from assault which is the act of creating apprehension of such contact. Battery is a specific common law offense, although the term is used more generally to refer to any unlawful offensive physical contact with another person. Battery is defined at American common law as "any unlawful and or unwanted touching of the person or another by the aggressor, or by a substance put in motion by him". In more severe cases, and for all types in some jurisdictions, it is chiefly defined by statutory wording. Assessment of the severity of a battery is determined by local law. Generally. Specific rules regarding battery vary among different jurisdictions, but some elements remain constant across jurisdictions. Battery generally requires that: 1. an offensive touch or contact is made upon the victim, instigated by the actor; and 2. the actor intends or knows that their action will cause the offensive touching. Under the US Model Penal Code and in some jurisdictions, there is battery when the actor acts recklessly without specific intent of causing an offensive contact. Battery is typically classified as either simple or aggravated. Although battery typically occurs in the context of physical altercations, it may also occur under other circumstances, such as in medical cases where a doctor performs a non-consented medical procedure. Specific countries. United States. In the United States, criminal battery, or simple battery, is the use of force against another, resulting in harmful or offensive contact, including sexual contact. At common law, simple battery is a misdemeanor. The prosecutor must prove all three elements beyond a reasonable doubt: 1. an unlawful application of force. 2. to the person of another. 3. resulting in either bodily injury or an offensive touching. The common-law elements serve as a basic template, but individual jurisdictions may alter them, and they may vary slightly from state to state. Under modern statutory schemes, battery is often divided into grades that determine the severity of punishment. For example: Simple battery may include any form of non-consensual harmful or insulting contact, regardless of the injury caused. Criminal battery requires intent to inflict an injury on another. Sexual battery may be defined as non-consensual touching of the intimate parts of another. At least in Florida, "Sexual battery means oral, anal, or vaginal penetration by, or union with, the sexual organ of another or the anal or vaginal penetration of another by any other object": See section 794.011. Family-violence battery may be limited in its scope between persons within a certain degree of relationship: statutes for this offense have been enacted in response to increasing awareness of the problem of domestic violence. Aggravated battery generally is seen as a serious offense of felony grade. Aggravated battery charges may occur when a battery causes serious bodily injury or permanent disfigurement. As successor to the common law crime of mayhem, this is sometimes subsumed in the definition of aggravated assault. In Florida, Aggravated Battery is the intentional infliction of great bodily harm and is a second degree felony, whereas battery that unintentionally causes great bodily harm is considered a third degree felony.

A third-party beneficiary, in the law of contracts, is a person who may have the right to sue on a contract, despite not having originally been an active party to the contract. This right, known as a ius quaesitum tertio, arises when the third party (tertius or alteri) is the intended beneficiary of the contract, as opposed to a mere incidental beneficiary (penitus extraneus). It vests when the third party relies on or assents to the relationship, and gives the third party the right to sue either the promisor (promittens, or performing party) or the promisee (stipulans, or anchor party) of the contract, depending on the circumstances under which the relationship was created. A contract made in favor of a third party is known as a "third-party beneficiary contract." Under traditional common law, the ius quaesitum tertio principle was not recognized, instead relying on the doctrine of privity of contract, which restricts rights, obligations, and liabilities arising from a contract to the contracting parties (said to be privy to the contract). However, the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 introduced a number of allowances and exceptions for ius quaesitum tertio in English law. Other common-law countries are also making reforms in this area, though the United States is unique in abandoning privity early in the mid-19th century.

In US law, false light is a tort concerning privacy that is similar to the tort of defamation. The privacy laws in the United States include a non-public person's right to protection from publicity which puts the person in a false light to the public. That right is balanced against the First Amendment right of free speech. False light differs from defamation primarily in being intended "to protect the plaintiff's mental or emotional well-being", rather than to protect a plaintiff's reputation as is the case with the tort of defamation and in being about the impression created rather than being about veracity. If a publication of information is false, then a tort of defamation might have occurred. If that communication is not technically false but is still misleading, then a tort of false light might have occurred. False light privacy claims often arise under the same facts as defamation cases, and therefore not all states recognize false light actions. There is a subtle difference in the way court's view the legal theories—false light cases are about damage to a person's personal feelings or dignity, whereas defamation is about damage to a person's reputation. The specific elements of the tort of false light vary considerably, even among those jurisdictions which do recognize this tort. Generally, these elements consist of the following: 1. A publication by the defendant about the plaintiff; 2. made with actual malice (very similar to that type required by New York Times v Sullivan in "Defamation" cases); 3. which places the Plaintiff in a false light; 4. and that would be highly offensive (for example, embarrassing to reasonable persons). Some U.S. state courts have ruled that false light lawsuits brought under their states' laws must be rewritten as defamation lawsuits; these courts generally base their opinion on the premises that a) any publication or statement giving rise to a false-light claim will also give rise to a defamation claim, such that the set of statements creating false light is necessarily, although not by definition, entirely within the set of statements constituting defamation; and b) the standard of what would be "highly offensive" or "embarrassing" to a reasonable person is much more difficult to apply than is the state's standard for defamation, such that the potential penalties for violating the former standard would have an unconstitutional or otherwise unacceptable chilling effect on the media. However, "most states do allow false light claims to be brought, even where a defamation claim would suffice." Some of the states do not recognize the false light claim due to the similarity between false light and defamation, as well as the possible impact on free speech. The states that do recognize it will not allow a plaintiff to maintain suit for both false light and defamation.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory tax law. It is part of the Department of the Treasury and led by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, who is appointed to a five-year term by the President of the United States. The duties of the IRS include providing tax assistance to taxpayers; pursuing and resolving instances of erroneous or fraudulent tax filings; and overseeing various benefits programs, including the Affordable Care Act. The IRS originates from the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, a federal office created in 1862 to assess the nation's first income tax to fund the American Civil War. The temporary measure provided over a fifth of the Union's war expenses before being allowed to expire a decade later. In 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified authorizing Congress to impose a tax on income, and the Bureau of Internal Revenue was established. In 1953, the agency was renamed the Internal Revenue Service, and in subsequent decades underwent numerous reforms and reorganizations, most significantly in the 1990s. Since its establishment, the IRS has been responsible for collecting most of the revenue needed to fund the federal government, albeit while facing periodic controversy and opposition over its methods, constitutionality, and the principle of taxation generally. In recent years the agency has struggled with budget cuts and reduced morale. As of 2018, it saw a 15 percent reduction in its workforce, including a decline of more than 25 percent of its enforcement staff. Nevertheless, during the 2017 fiscal year, the agency processed more than 245 million tax returns. History. American Civil War (1861–65). In July 1862, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln and Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1862, creating the office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue and enacting a temporary income tax to pay war expenses. The Revenue Act of 1862 was passed as an emergency and temporary war-time tax. It copied a relatively new British system of income taxation, instead of trade and property taxation. The first income tax was passed in 1862: The initial rate was 3% on income over $800, which exempted most wage-earners. In 1862 the rate was 3% on income between $600 and $10,000, and 5% on income over $10,000. By the end of the war, 10% of Union households had paid some form of income tax, and the Union raised 21% of its war revenue through income taxes.

In property law and real estate, a future interest is a legal right to property ownership that does not include the right to present possession or enjoyment of the property. Future interests are created on the formation of a defeasible estate; that is, an estate with a condition or event triggering transfer of possessory ownership. A common example is the landlord-tenant relationship. The landlord may own a house, but has no general right to enter it while it is being rented. The conditions triggering the transfer of possession, first to the tenant then back to the landlord, are usually detailed in a lease. As a slightly more complicated example, suppose O is the owner of Blackacre. Consider what happens when O transfers the property, "to A for life, then to B". Person A acquires possession of Blackacre. Person B does not receive any right to possess Blackacre immediately; however, once person A dies, possession will fall to person B (or his estate, if he died before person A). Person B has a future interest in the property. In this example, the event triggering the transfer is person A's death. Because they convey ownership rights, future interests can usually be sold, gifted, willed, or otherwise disposed of by the beneficiary (but see Vesting below). Because the rights vest in the future, any such disposition will occur before the beneficiary actually takes possession of the property. There are five kinds of future interests recognized at common law: three in the transferor and two in the transferee. Vesting. Vesting means granting a person an immediate right to present or future enjoyment of property. In plain English, one has a right to a vested asset that cannot be taken away by any third party, even though one may not yet possess the asset. When the right, interest or title to the present or future possession of a legal estate can be transferred by its holder to any other party, it is termed a vested interest with respect to that holder. A vested interest may be one of three types: A future interest is absolutely (or indefeasibly) vested if its beneficiary must (legally) eventually take possessory ownership. A future interest is vested subject to divestment if something could occur that would divest the remainder of an interest. For example, "From O to A for life, then to B, but if A stops growing corn, then to C": B would have a vested remainder subject to divestment because he could be divested of his interest by an act of A before the interest becomes possessory. A future interest is vested subject to open if it belongs to a class of beneficiaries, where that class can expand. A common example is a grant from O "to A's children", where A is a man: the class of A's children can't be closed until approximately thirty eight weeks after A dies, so any children alive at the time of the grant are vested subject to open. This interest is also sometimes referred to as being vested subject to partial divestment. A person may divest themselves of, or alienate, only those interests that are guaranteed to vest. This rule aligns with the policy that a person should not be allowed to sell a thing that he or she does not own outright. Interests that are not guaranteed to vest are subject to the rule against perpetuities.

An assault is the act of inflicting physical harm or unwanted physical contact upon a person or, in some specific legal definitions, a threat or attempt to commit such an action. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may result in criminal prosecution, civil liability, or both. Generally, the common law definition is the same in criminal and tort law. Traditionally, common law legal systems had separate definitions for assault and battery. When this distinction is observed, battery refers to the actual bodily contact, whereas assault refers to a credible threat or attempt to cause battery. Some jurisdictions combined the two offenses into assault and battery, which then became widely referred to as "assault". The result is that in many of these jurisdictions, assault has taken on a definition that is more in line with the traditional definition of battery. The legal systems of civil law and Scots law have never distinguished assault from battery. Legal systems generally acknowledge that assaults can vary greatly in severity. In the United States, an assault can be charged as either a misdemeanor or a felony. In England and Wales and Australia, it can be charged as either common assault, assault occasioning actual bodily harm (ABH) or grievous bodily harm (GBH). Canada also has a three-tier system: assault, assault causing bodily harm and aggravated assault. Separate charges typically exist for sexual assaults, affray and assaulting a police officer. Assault may overlap with an attempted crime; for example an assault may be charged as an attempted murder if it was done with intent to kill.