Question

Question 1

Anna has a relative, Bosco, who is the headmaster of a small primary school. This school is situated in a very remote outlying island in Hong Kong. Seeing that Anna was out of job, Bosco employed her as a teacher in his primary school. However, Anna was neither a registered teacher nor a permitted teacher, and the employment violated existing education laws in Hong Kong.

After teaching for a few months, Bosco discovered that Anna was very irresponsible and skipped lessons with a lot of excuses. Bosco warned Anna that if she did not improve, he would deduct her salary. However, Anna disregarded the warning and disappeared for a few school days. Bosco could do nothing but withhold her salary for two months. Anna was very angry and wished to initiate legal proceedings to claim back her pay.

Required

Advise Anna whether she has the right to claim the two months' salary that was unpaid. Focus your discussion on the basis of the vitiating factors of a contract. There is no need to make comments from the perspectives of Hong Kong education laws.

Answer 1

Anna legally does not have right to sue Bosco for salary. Contract to be enforcable must be for legal activities. This is the first and foremost important factor for contract to be legal. Here in this case law we can clearly see that anna was not registered teacher in first place. So, she should have refused to take such assignment in first place. This has also another implication that school could also legally not enforce anything legally against Anna, as knowingly it recruited unregistered teacher. Even if not taking hong kong education law, there is no mention of the fact in question that there was any contract in writing between anna and bosco. So, from this view point also anna could not sue bosco.

Finally, we can conclude that anna could not claim salary as there is no legal contract in place.