Updated+Questionnaire+09.06.2014

1) Housing John, Jane, Steve and Bill, together with their families – unable to afford housing – inhabit homes in an development project, suspended due to delayed authorizations. The project was undertaken by a private corporation under contract with a public agency, which owns the land. The four friends and their families move in to the development adding improvements to the premises. After a couple of months, the private corporation and the public agency then discovers the four families and attempt to remove them. The families refuse to leave and seek the assistance of a lawyer. The four friends sue.

2) Food The same four friends as in question 1, together with their families, start a communal garden on a vacant plot of land. Soon, the initial group is joined by other neighbors contributing to the garden by planting crops and working the land. Max, the owner of the plot of land, discover the four families and attempts not only to evict them but also to claim ownership over the food grown by the families on his land.

3) Water: Rural Bob, Steve and Jane depend on the water of Flumia, a nearby river. The three friends, together with other villagers in the area build aqueducts and an irrigation canal from the river to their respective homes and fields. After a few years, a private corporation acquired the right to manage the distribution of public water in the region, including the water of the Flumia river. Bob, Steve and Jane sue.

4) Water 2: Urban Bob, Steve and Jane are three friends that inhabit a community housing building in a city, Flumiapolis. Following a large increase in the price of water (200% over 2 years,) the three friends begin to fail to pay their water bills. After failing to pay the third bill, the water management company -- a private/public partnership – cut off their building’s access to the water supply. Bob, Steve, and Jane sue.

5) Nature Steve, Jane and their two children used to spend many weekends walking and playing in one of the few green areas at the outskirts of the city where they live. The land includes a wide wooded area and a small lake. The land belongs to a private owner who lives in a small house near the lake. The landowner decides to enclose all of the land he owns with a fence in order to keep it pristine and free from passers-by. Steve and Jane sue.

Variation 1) Assume that Steve and Jane discover a rare species of frog on the land: how does this support/undermine their claim? The claim of the landowner?

Variation 2) Assume that the landowner, rather than simply fencing the land to protect it from wanderers, would like to enclose the land for a commercial purpose: how would this alter the rights/entitlements of both parties?

6) Education/Knowledge Laura is an engineering student at a public university. During the fall semester, as part of her course of study, she has been working with 20 classmates supervised by professors to design a new type of hydraulic pump . To work on this project, the students and professors collaborate with each other through an online system owned by the university. The evolving project drawings are kept on university servers. At the end of the semester, the university announced that the tuition fee is being raised. Laura has not paid the increased tuition because she cannot afford it and is thus unenrolled from the course. Laura is thus removed from the data systems of the university. Laura, however, expresses her desire to continue working on the project, sharing ideas with the other students and to be reenrolled in the course. The university denies her requests and she sues. Furthermore, Laura - with the consent of her fellow classmates and collaborating professors - has decided to post the hydraulic pump project online as an open engineering project to which fellow engineers can contribute online. The university discovers the pump project on the open website and sues Laura. Laura files a counter suit.

7) Care: Health, Legal, Children & Elderly Laura, together with other people from her neighborhood, has organized a non-profit day care center in an abandoned building after the closing of a nearby state-funded day care center and elderly care center as result of massive state budget cuts. The new center is staffed by volunteers who take care of children and elderly people. Soon after, Steve, a doctor, in cooperation with Laura, sets up a medical clinic in the same otherwise abandoned building offering free services to irregular migrants who have no health insurance. Jane, a lawyer, hearing about the clinic also joins the group by offering free legal services for irregular migrants who would otherwise not have access to legal advice. Daniel, the owner of the building, would like to evict these buildingusers in order to sell the building that he has recently inherited from his uncle John. Many people in the area are upset by this news and Laura, Steve and Jane sue.

These facts are added to make it more realistic that it is not totally unreasonable for the parties to have taken up residence in what is a non active/abandoned site. //

// Ugo suggested that every scenario should be adversarial.

Ugo says that in the CC tradition there are no questions necessary but rather the reporters infer the questions from the fact based scenario. //

// We took this out because it limited the scenario to a commercial as opposed to personal use of water.