Assignment task:
You have received the following email from your subordinate, Laura, a new manager who reports to you. You are not going to reply to Laura directly. Rather, you are going respond and forward it, along with her email, to your superiors for their pre-approval before you send it to Laura. The superiors include the company's General Counsel, your own supervising manager, and the CEO. Your proposed response, for which you seek approval - will show that you have a command of legal basics and can properly distill the situation down to the core issue and provide a principled recommendation.
Here is the original email Laura sent you, based on which you will draft your proposed response to your superiors:
To: You
From: Laura, Junior Manager
Re: Slight problem with the Kingston sale closing
Hi,
As you know, we retained Albert as our agent to sell our Kingston property. At the outset, I told Albert we would not accept any bid below $800,000. Albert negotiated a contract to sell it to Stager Industries for $980,000, which you counter-signed last week. We scheduled the closing for Friday, where we will be exchanging the deed for their certified check or wire transfer.
I have just learned that Milton Stager (the President of Stager Industries ) is Albert's girlfriend's father. Albert heard several weeks ago the market value of the Kingston property is going to be shooting up to about $1,400,000. This is because Amazon is going to announce it will be building its distribution center down the road - which was news to me. When Albert learned this, he formed a real estate partnership with Milton Stager, called Milbert Holdings, LLC.
The sale contract you signed, I now see, specifies that Milbert Holdings is the "purchaser" and will be owner on the deed, post-sale. I am sorry, we did not catch that until now. Yesterday, I emailed Albert and Milton saying a problem has just come that may prevent us from transferring the deed on Friday. Stager replied if we fail to close, he will sue us seeking a court-ordered transfer of the deed, and the $250,000 lateness/delay penalty clause in the contract. He warned me not to try to back out of the deal. He did not deny that Albert is his partner in Milbert Holdings but said that makes no difference.
Must we go through with this sale, or can we cancel it and call off the closing?
Yours truly,
Laura