Legal Question in Business Law in Massachusetts

Replay Baseball has expanded its operations to several Midwest states including Illinois. This expansion now accounts for thirty percent of its business. Nucky has hired Eli, a 62 year-old Native American who resides in Massachusetts, to deliver baseballs to this new region. Eli is kept very busy and works fifty hours per week. Eli delivers the baseballs in a large tractor-trailer that Nucky purchased from Empire Trucks, a small truck dealer operating exclusively in Boston, Massachusetts. Nucky has designed the trailer depicting several scantily clad women in bathing suits holding baseballs. The trailer does not include rear windshield wipers in the back of the cab.

Illinois has passed a law mandating rear wipers in cabs for all trucks travelling on its highways.

1. Does Replay Baseball have an argument opposing the new regulation?

What if the federal government passes a law mandating that all tractor-trailers must include a new spray-on product on rear windshields that it claims is superior to windshield wipers.

2. Is this law Constitutional? How do courts resolve the differences between the two laws?

One day Eli is driving the truck to Illinois from Boston when the brakes malfunction. The brakes fail at the Massachusetts border and the truck slides across the border and strikes Darmody in New York. Eli gets out of the cab and screams several racial insults at Darmody who is uninjured. Eli injures his leg when he desperately pressed the brakes in Massachusetts before he slid across the border.

Two lawsuits result:

Darmody sues Eli for violating his civil rights (federal law) in a Federal District Court in New York for $10,000.

3. What are the jurisdictional concerns?

Eli sues Empire Trucks in a New York state court for his medical bills totaling $15,000.

>> Question 3

2 Answers from Attorneys

Related Questions & Answers

More Business Law questions and answers in Massachusetts

Looking for something else?