LAWS6054: Health Care and Professional Liability

Early feedback task (0%): This unit includes an Early Feedback Task that is designed to provide students with timely insights into their understanding and engagement with the unit content. The Early Feedback Task in this unit is a 5 multiple choice question quiz. The task will be available on Canvas from Week 1 and due 30 March 2026 at 11:59pm, Sydney Australia time. It will be tailored to reflect key concepts from the first two days of classes. Students will be provided with immediate automated feedback upon completion of the task. 

Case Presentation – In Person or Video (30%): The class presentation component will be based on a case from the materials.  It will consist of a 20-minute in-class presentation or an MP4 presentation loaded onto Canvas in lieu of presenting in class. 

Case law presentations should address the following: the facts of the case/policy background, the legal issue or issues, the ethical principles, the reasoning employed by the judges/tribunals members in reaching their decision, the decision; and some commentary about the broader implications of the decision (including whether the case was, in your view, correctly decided and what happened afterwards). Candidates will need to argue for or against a particular interpretation (of the facts or the law) to support their tentative conclusions. Presenters can choose how they wish to present the case but most students use PowerPoint or presi style presentations or handouts. 

The cases for presentation exercises can be found under each topic in the course outline, and you can also view the entire list of exercises (along with the Sign-up Sheet) on Canvas.  You will need to consult the Learning Guide to make your choice and reserve your choice of exercise (ie in-class or recorded) via the separate sign-up sheet.  

In-person presentations will occur during class at the time allocated to the case in the Learning guide. Recorded presentations must be uploaded to Canvas by 11:59pm (Sydney, Australia time) on 13 April 2026. The videos will be made available to the rest of the class.  Please submit through Canvas but if you are having difficulties, please email the video to Cameron at cameron.stewart@sydney.edu.au.

Assignment (70%): The assignment can be accessed on the Canvas site and consists of a problem question and a discussion question at or around 10:00am (Sydney, Australia time) on 1 May 2026 and must be submitted to Canvas 11:59pm (Sydney, Australia time) on 5 May 2026. The assignment will comprise 70% of the available marks for the unit and should not exceed 7000 words (including all referencing and citation). The assignment will consist of 2 questions which may be problem-based or discussion style questions. The questions will be based on issues raised by the materials and discussed in class. The assignment should be referenced using the footnotes in the Australian Guide to Legal Citation Style.

Word limit penalty: A piece of assessment which exceeds the prescribed word limit will attract a penalty of 10% of the total marks available for the piece of assessment for every 100 words, or part thereof. The total word count for essay and other written assessments will include all footnotes and any bibliography (if required), and exclude acknowledgements of assistance from editors, automated writing tools or generative AI (where use is permitted). 

Referencing: The Sydney Law School expects you to use the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (4th edition, 2018) for your footnoting style, although you should confirm this with your lecturer. A link to the library website where this is set out comprehensively is available at Referencing and Citation Styles: AGLC4. 

Special consideration: Successful grants of Special Consideration may involve alternative tasks, as appropriate.  For students unable to complete the case presentation in class, the alternative form of assessment will be a video presentation.

Assessment requirements to pass a unit of study: A student must make a genuine attempt at all assessment tasks set out in this Unit of Study in order to obtain a Pass mark and grade (or above); otherwise an Absent Fail grade will be recorded as the student’s result for this Unit of Study. As the EFT is an early diagnostic tool, this task is not included in the final grade for the unit.