Law for General Knowledge III

Although it can be argued that a large portion of the topics which students are required to study does not necessarily appear applicable in real life, I believe that what we have learned in the textbook might sometimes be of some use in reality. You can guess why I am saying this at the very first line of the post. Yes. I have something which I would like to share with respect to this point. Read on.

A prominent notice at the entrance of a public park reads:

"The management of the park bears no liability for any death or personal injury to any person visiting the park."

Majority of people in Singapore often go out to a neighborhood park for leisure or exercise ,especially during the weekends. Public parks are therefore supposed to be in a reasonably well-maintained condition for the safety of the general public.

When such a notice is displayed at the entrance of the park, one might wonder if the Law practically allow the management of the park to bear no liability upon the occurance of certain unfortunate incident. I would not be able to know the legal position of the injured party unless I have studied some topic in this area. In the context of ACCA F4, I have come to realize that a party cannot by any contract term or notice exclude or restrict his liability for death or personal injury resulting from negligence to any person, meaning the management of the park cannot escape liability for negligence so far as personal injury and death are concerned. The management must therefore exercise due care in its running of the park - it must take reasonable steps to ensure that visitors to the park do not suffer physical harm or injury. So for example jogging tracks should be suitable for their purposes, and netting should be provided where fruits or branches are known to fall off from time to time. The essence is taking such care as is reasonable in the circumstances. If the park is negligent and the negligence causes injury or death, the park is still liable even tough there is a prominent notice which seeks to avoid such liability.

Getting to know about this rule will not possibly enable one to go out to court and win the law case by himself, but knowing this enables a person realize his rights upon encountering such a case.

Note: This was an application-based exam question from ACCA F4 (Corporate and Business Law).

Are you curious?

Ever wants to find out who is hosting a certain web site? Just type the url of the site at whoishostingthis.

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Ever curious to know detailed particulars about any web site? Please proceed to whois. The information you will see there is extensive including the domain's registrant's details, administrative details and technical details since this is the information that is required whenever anyone registers a domain name.





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Ever wants to find out what your ip address is? Just go to whatismyip.

StreetMap@Singapore

I think we are aware of the recent legal case between streetdirectory.com and Singapore Land Transport Authority. It's not my intention to delve into this legal affairs on what happened between them. But streetdirectory happened to be the one place that I relied on in finding the directions or getting the maps and so on.

Since the company is currently resolving the legal case, they are unable to bring the maps back. Luckily we have alternative. Although user experience is somewhat different from streetdirectory, this alternative is more than good enough. We can use this site to achieve the same objective of using streetdirectory. The site is the official website of the Singapore Land Authority ("SLA"). It is owned and operated by SLA. It's free of charge and you will not see any advertisements.

In fact, I wanted to post a copy of their map here but who knows what will happen in doing so? :D

16 Triggers for selling

This is an excerpt from It's When You Sell that Counts by Donald L. Cassidy. I found it at a forum and I kinda like it. I hope you like it too.

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The company-related reasons to sell are:

1. Sell if the news cannot get any better.
2. Sell if things did not go as planned.
3. Sell when the broker's advice goes from 'buy' to 'hold'.
4. Sell if company fundamentals are getting sick.
5. Sell on the rebound in the aftermath of material, unexpected or discrete bad news.
6. Sell in certain cases when expected news is delayed.

The market-action reasons to sell are:

1. Sell when the stock reaches the target.
2. Sell on an unsustainable upward price spike on big volume.
3. Sell when a portfolio shows all gains.
4. Sell if the stock is lazy money and likely to stay that way.
5. Sell using above-market limit orders, letting the market come to the investor.
6. Sell with a stop-loss order, but never remove or lower it.

Investor-related reasons to sell are:

1. Sell if you would not buy the stock again today.
2. Sell after gloating or counting the chips.
3. Sell rather than hope against hope for a 'maybe' bailout.
4. Sell and step aside on a personal losing streak.

If you regularly sell stocks in a disciplined manner, say after periodic 6-monthly reviews using the signals above, you are likely to end up with a good deal of cash even before the market moves into a bear cycle. Relatively few of your holdings will survive the 16 triggers noted in the lists above.

Those stocks that do survive will tend to be high-quality growth issues that have continued to perform fundamentally and have not run up to unreasonable price levels. Some experts refer to these as core holdings or 'businessman's-risk' foundation stocks. They are stocks that have given consistent indications they can be held through good and bad in the market.

So if you are periodically reviewing and cashing in as prescribed, and if your buying discipline rejects new positions when valuations get too pricey, you will anyway end up holding only relatively few stocks as the market gets toppy - and even before it turns down. That, of course, protects your capital.

Exam Mania

Exam Docket is out today. The exam venue is Anglo Chinese JC @ Dover. I wondered why it is not Expo this time around. I feel as if exam timer is ticking faster and faster then ever. It's 16 days away from the exam dates. Time to check some exam tips out there in the net.

The Google search generates 36700 pages for the search keyword "June 2008 ACCA Exam tips" but only one link is relevant for my search. Thousands of students are going for this exam , yet the tips are amazingly limited. Probably this is what ACCA is about. Gotta study everything.

By the way if you need a little motivation from ACCA, you can go here and hope they mean what they say. Or you may just see below.