(SHORT ESSAY) Access the following workers compensation case- CITY OF TULSA v. MAYES
Brief the case and give your opinion of the ruling of the Court. Do you agree or disagree with the ruling? Give your reasons for your opinion.
(SHORT ESSAY) Access the following workers compensation case- NIX v. FIRST STAFFING GROUP USA
Brief the case and give your opinion of the ruling of the Court. Do you agree or disagree with the ruling? Give your reasons for your opinion.
(SHORT ESSAY) Consider the following "facts" related to two unemployment situations and answer the questions related to cases.
(1) Don Trump is fed up with his job and walks out from his place of employment today, saying that he's "outa here" and not coming back. He wasn't forced to quit or laid off.
Now he has applied for unemployment insurance. You are the HS&E officer working for the state agency in charge of reviewing claims for unemployment insurance benefits. You receive Trump's application and send out a noticed of a hearing to Trump and his employer.
The employer protests Trump's application and so a hearing before your agency is scheduled. Who has the burden of proof in this case and what are the key elements that will be considered during the hearing?
What witnesses might be called to testify and what types of evidence might be presented by both parties? If Trump loses his case and is denied unemployment insurance, can he appeal the ruling? If he can appeal, to what tribunal does he make his appeal and how does he make the appeal?
(2) Don Trump's employer is going broke and can't afford Trump's salary and so tells Trump that it's his time to leave and lays him off. Trump files for unemployment insurance and the application come before your agency and the employer protests the claim.
Who has the burden of proof in this case? What are the key elements that will be considered during the hearing? What witnesses might be called to testify and what types of evidence might be presented by both parties?
Contrast the differences between a case where an employee quits voluntarily and the case where the employee is laid off with respect to claims for unemployment insurance?
(SHORT ESSAY) What is the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? What are the types of discrimination that are covered by the Act and describe these types of discrimination. Does the Act cover discrimination based upon gender preferences?
Briefing Cases
What is a brief?
A brief is a written summary of the case.
To prepare one, you must distill the case's most important parts and restate them in your own words. The effort will provide a variety of important benefits.
Read the case carefully and thoroughly to describe the case accurately. Describing the case in your own words forces you to determine exactly what the courts said, which concepts and facts were essential to its decision, and the proper legal terminology and procedures.
Every brief should include the following information in steps 1 - 8.
Steps to briefing a case
1. List the title and citation
a. A brief should begin with the case name, the court that decided it, the year it was decided, and the page on which it appears in the casebook.
b. The title of the case shows who is opposing whom. The name of the person who initiated legal action in that particular court will always appear first. Since the losers often appeal to a higher court, this can get confusing.
c. The citation tells how to locate the reporter of the case in the appropriate case reporter. If you know only the title of the case, the citation to it can be found using one of the computer-assisted legal research tools (Westlaw or LEXIS-NEXIS).
2. Identify the facts of the case.
a. This section is necessary because legal principles are defined by the situations in which they arise. Include in your brief only those facts that are legally relevant.
A fact is legally relevant if it had an impact on the case's outcome. For example, in a personal injury action arising from a car accident, the color of the parties' cars seldom would be relevant to the case's outcome. Similarly, if the plaintiff and defendant presented different versions of the facts, you should describe those differences only if they are relevant to the court's consideration of the case.
b. Because you will not know which facts are legally relevant until you have read and deciphered the entire case, do not try to brief a case while reading it for the first time.
c. The fact section of a good student brief will include the following elements:
i. A one-sentence description of the nature of the case, to serve as an introduction.
ii. A statement of the relevant law, with quotation marks or underlining to draw attention to the key words or phrases that are in dispute.
iii. A summary of the complaint in a civil caseplus relevant evidence and arguments presented in court to explain whodid what to whom and why the case was thought to involve illegal conduct.
3. Outline the procedural history.
a. With the statement of facts, you have taken the case to the point at which the plaintiff filed suit. The next section of the brief, the procedural history, begins at that point and ends with the case's appearance in the court that wrote the opinion you are reading.
For a trial court opinion, identify the type of legal action the plaintiff brought. For an appellate court opinion, also describe how the trial court and, if applicable, the lower appellate court decided the case and why.
b. A summary of actions taken by the lower courts, for example: defendantconvicted; conviction upheld by appellate court; Supreme Court granted certiorari.
4. State the issues in question.
a. You are now ready to describe the opinion you are briefing. In this section of the brief, state the factual and legal questions that the court had to decide. To analyze a case properly, you must break it down to its component parts.
b. The issues or questions of law raised by the facts peculiar to the case are often stated explicitly by the court.
c. When noting issues, it may help to phrase them in terms of questions that can be answered with a precise "yes" or "no."
d. For example, the famous case of Brown v. Board of Education involved the applicability of a provision of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to a school board's practice of excluding black pupils from certain public schools solely due to their race.
The precise wording of the Amendment is "no state shall... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
The careful student would begin by identifying the key phrases from this amendment and deciding which of them were really at issue in this case. Assuming that there was no doubt that the school board was acting as the State, and that Miss Brown was a "person within its jurisdiction," then the key issue would be "Does the exclusion of students from a public school solely on the basis of race amount to a denial of ‘equal protection of the laws'?"
e. NOTE: More students misread cases because they fail to see the issues in terms of the applicable law or judicial doctrine than for any other reason. There is no substitute for taking the time to frame carefully the questions, so that they actually incorporate the key provisions of the law in terms capable of being given precise answers.
5. State the holding in your words.
In this section, separately answer each question in the issues section. For quick reference, first state the answer in a word or two, such as "yes" or "no." Then in a sentence or two, state the legal principle on which the court relied to reach that answer (the "holding").
6. Describe the court's rationale for each holding.
You now should describe the court's rationale for each holding. This section of the case brief may be the most important, because you must understand the court's reasoning to analyze it and to apply it to other fact situations, such as those on the exam. Starting with the first issue, describe each link in the court's chain of reasoning.
7. Include other opinions.
Concurring and dissenting opinions are included in a casebook when they present an interesting alternative analysis of the case. Therefore, you should describe the analysis in your case brief. It will help you see the case in a different light.
8. Explain the final disposition.
Describe the final disposition of the case. Did the court decide in favor of the plaintiff or the defendant? What remedy, if any, did the court grant? If it is an appellate court opinion, did the court affirm the lower court's decision, reverse it in whole or in part, or remand the case for additional proceedings?
References
Burkhart, A.M., & Stein, R.A. (n.d.) Excerpt from How to study law and take law exams in a nutshell.
Killoran, K. (Revision 1999). Pyle, C. (1982). How to brief a case.