LAW202 - Whether BULL Owes Billy Braford a Duty of Care - Case Study - Law Assignment Help

Assignment Task

SCENARIO
Data mining is a process whereby extremely large datasets are examined to discover information that helps businesses become more productive and therefore profitable. In the beef cattle industry data mining is used to aggregate specific datasets that usually exist in isolation to improve the financial return to beef cattle producers.
Beef Users Livestock Literacy (BULL) is a statutory authority with the aim of using data mining techniques to provide beef producers with information to help boost beef cattle returns to farmers. More specifically, BULL aims to inform beef producers of the best time to send their cattle to the saleyards to achieve the best prices. To do this, BULL collects weather forecasting data and combines this with a number of other datasets such as residential consumption, marketing activities and feed costs that affect beef cattle prices. From this data mining BULL uses an algorithm to calculate the optimal time for beef producers to send their animals to market. While the algorithm was experimental at its inception, the system seems to work well and has seen an increasing number of beef producers sign up to use the BULL reports.
Billy Braford has been producing beef cattle for many years on his property near Conondale on the Sunshine Coast. Billy was one of the first to sign up to use the BULL algorithms and has profited well from the information he received. Billy has consistently marketed his cattle when BULL indicated he should and has on average received better returns than if he had not used the BULL information. Billy knows this because he has kept a detailed spreadsheet containing cattle sale results for times that he would normally have sold his cattle compared with those received using the BULL information. However, Billy has noticed that since he signed up for the BULL reports the premium he has received has been steadily diminishing. Having done more investigation Billy has found that over time the volume of cattle yarded on the BULL recommended selling days has increased markedly. Correspondingly, Billy noted that on the days BULL specifically said not to market beef cattle, yard numbers were lower and so prices were higher. The higher prices have been particularly noticeable in the weeks immediately preceding BULL recommendations to sell. In fact, Billy has noticed a large number of cattle producers seem to be ‘holding over’ cattle to sell in the weeks recommended by BULL.
One day at a recent cattle sale Billy struck up a conversation with his old friend and beef cattle producing colleague, Mick Murray-Grey. Mick told Billy he had experienced the same diminishing return on his cattle since using the BULL reports as had other BULL report users Mick had spoken to. Billy told Mick about his spreadsheet and what he had noticed with respect to cattle yarding numbers. After lamenting the recent unseasonal dry spell for some time Mick said, ‘I don’t suppose those fellas in that BULL crowd thought that when there are a lot of cattle in the sales together the prices go down’.
Billy goes home and calculates the difference in return had he marketed his cattle one week before the BULL recommendations. To his surprise, Billy finds he would have made $187,000 more over the past 12 months if he had not followed the BULL recommendations but had marketed his cattle one week earlier than recommended in each case.
Your firm has been asked to prepare advice to Billy Braford regarding an action in negligence against BULL by Billy. Harry Hereford is your supervisor and an experienced litigator in your firm who is investigating the causation element of a negligence action by Billy (so you do not need to worry about causation). You are asked by Harry Hereford to prepare a memo of advice to Harry on a negligence claim by Billy Braford against BULL. You are to confine your research and advice to the following TWO factors only:
Whether BULL owes Billy Braford a duty of care; and
Whether BULL has breached the duty of care it owes Billy Braford.
DO NOT consider causation, defences, or the calculation of damages.

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