ID 34013 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: United States Constitutional Law, Professional Negligence In English Law, Statutory Law
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Chapter 4: Legal Responsibilities
The Legal Environment in Interior Design
• Many ethical issues become legal issues
• Legal responsibility in ID is woven into every aspect of practice
Laws that govern business
• Constitutional law (boundaries of federal law)
o The highest level of law in the US, as expressed in the US constitution
• State constitutional law
o Each state and commonwealth also has a constitution that is supreme law in that
state, although a state constitution can’t supersede US constitutional law
• Statutory law
o Created by the US congress and state legislatures
o Federal statute: applies to all states
o State statute: applies only within that state
• Ordinances
o Created by the local governments, such as those regarding zoning, building
codes, and traffic issues
o Applies only within the municipality or county
• Administrative law
o Rules and decisions of agencies of federal, state, and local government
o Ie: the department of justice enforces laws concerning accessibility
• Case law (common law)
o When a case is decided in court, that ruling enforces or adds to case law
o What directs areas of law not regulated by statute or administrative law
• Uniform law
o Laws that try to bring consistency to the numerous versions of similar laws
passed by individual states
o Ex: building codes and how state codes are based on national codes vs. ohio
building code
What kinds of cases involve Interior Designers?
• Negligence liability (professional negligence)
o Failure to exercise the standard of care that a reasonable person would exercise
in similar circumstances
o Unintentional tort that can occur because of omission or commission in the
activities and responsibilities of an interior designer
o Is unintentional because the designer didn’t think that any wrongful
consequences of an act would occur and didn’t want them to occur
o Prove negligence
▪ Duty of care: the defendant (person being sued) owed a duty of
reasonable care to the plaintiff
▪ Breach of care: under reasonable person standard, intentional or
unintentional, care was broken
▪ Proximate cause: action or omission caused the injury or harm
• “But for the wrongful act, the injury wouldn’t have occured”
▪ There were damages - injury of harm
o Principle defenses of negligence charges
▪ Assumption of risk: the plaintiff (the person suing) who knowingly and
willingly enters into a risky situation can’t recover damages if harm or
injury occurs
• Ex: client agrees to a residential-grade product used in a
commercial application
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