One of my professors has been using pop-culture characters in his examples to teach us how the laws of agency work, like Bruce Wayne, and some Lord of the Rings hobbits, and Michael Eisner of Disney. I came up with one too.

Anyone who's taken corporations is welcome to play along and try to solve this one.

--> Janet Jackson hires out-of-work songstress (and seamstress) Sporty Spice to sew a costume for her performance at the Super Bowl. Sporty comes over to Jackson's house and takes her measurements; Janet gives Sporty the keys to her truck and tells her that she can do the sewing at Janet's private hideaway just down the road. On the way to the private hideaway, Sporty gets hungry and takes a detour to a sandwich shop. Since she's used to driving on the other side of the road, on the way to the sandwich shop, Sporty runs over James Brown. Oops. After Sporty gets the sandwich, she goes to the hideaway and sews a lovely dress for Janet. She drives back -- running over Glen Campbell on the way -- and shows Janet the dress, which has a super-special pouch that tears off, revealing one of her, uh, Golden Globes. Janet says that it looks great. She drives over to CBS headquarters -- running over Rick Springfield on the way -- and shows her costume to network president Les Moonves, who tells her she can employ anyone she wants to rip her costume off during the show, except for that rogue Justin Timberlake. He writes her a letter, on CBS stationary, that says she has permission to hire someone. Janet, who suffers from hearing loss due to a mysterious childhood accident involving her brother, a policeman's nightstick, and a turtle, thought Mr. Moonves told her not to wear Timberland boots. So she went over to Justin Timberlake's house, which was filled with soap suds due to a prank by Justin's friend Ashton Kutcher for his MTV show Punk'd, showed him the letter, and asked him to help her at the Super Bowl. The next day, they performed at the Super Bowl, he pulled off her costume, and Michael Jackson, who had never before seen that part of a woman's anatomy, was emotionally distressed and sued. So did all the people who got hit by Janet's truck. Who's liable?