Dispute Settle Case Brief

CASE NAME (and number using the numbers assigned by Professor August in
his text. For example, “Case 1-1, Denmark v. Norway�).

TRIBUNAL: Who is deciding the case? A trial court? An appeals court?
An arbitrator? An arbitration panel? A decisionmaking body of an
international organization?

PARTIES: tell us who the plaintiff is and who the defendant is. Not
just their names—tell us what their role is in the case, what their
relationship is to the dispute that brought the case to the tribunal.

ISSUE: What is the question, or set of questions, that the tribunal
must answer in order to resolve the parties’ dispute?

The issue statement defines the relevant facts and legal elements at the
heart of the dispute.

EXAMPLE: Let’s take a simple car accident case, where one driver sues
another driver for negligence, asserting that the other driver’s
carelessness caused the accident. We’ll call the case, Ms. Gulch,
plaintiff v. Dorothy, defendant. An issue statement for a simple car
accident case like that one would read:

Did defendant Dorothy, who looked away from the road at her dog Toto
in the back seat who began crying just before the moment of impact,
breach her duty to operate her car with reasonable care when, as a
result of her looking away from the road, her minivan crossed the
double-solid center line of a two-lane road and collided head-on with a
pickup truck driven by the plaintiff, Ms. Gulch, who was seriously
injured?



You might think that I’ve put the whole case in the issue statement.
But I haven’t. All I’ve done is to make the reader (and me) smarter
by pointing out ahead of time what the reader needs to be looking for
when they read my explanation of the facts, the law, and the reasoning
of the court.

Note how I used important facts and elements of the rule of law to state
the issue:

NOTE! “embedded facts� or “embedded elements of law� IS NOT
something to actually STATE in your brief!! That defeats the whole
purpose of writing for a business person. “Embedded facts� and
“embedded elements of law� are laid out here ONLY BY WAY OF
ILLUSTRATING TO YOU THE MENTAL PROCESS THAT WENT INTO FRAMING THE ISSUE
STATEMENT -- to show you what YOU must be thinking in order to do the
HEAVY MENTAL LIFTING for your boss that is the whole point of doing case
briefs! ALWAYS THINK OF YOUR AUDIENCE—YOUR NON-LAWYER, BUSINESS
PERSON BOSS—WHEN YOU’RE WRITING ANYTHING FOR THIS COURSE!

IMPORTANT FACTS EMBEDDED IN THE ISSUE STATEMENT

Dorthy was driving

She took her attention away from the road

Toto is what distracted her by crying

Her minivan crossed into the opposite traffic lane

The road was a 2-way highway

She was in a no passing zone, so oncoming drivers wouldn’t be
expecting to a car in their lane

Her minivan struck Ms.. Gulch’s vehicle

Ms. Gulch was
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Δ that defendant owed plaintiff a duty to exercise reasonable care in
her conduct

Δ that defendant’s specific actions in the circumstances breached
that duty

Δ that defendant’s actions, that were a breach of duty, caused
plaintiff’s injuries

Δ that plaintiff did not act negligently herself and that plaintiff did
not voluntarily assume the risk of plaintiff’s negligence

FACTS:

In this section, you tell a story—the story of the parties and how
they got into the legal dispute

Don’t write out long pargraphs—that’s very reader UN-friendly.
Make it reader friendly! Break it up into BULLET-POINTS! But ARRANGE
the bullet-points so they tell the reader a coherent summary story of
what happened. For example, in the case of Ms. Gulch, plaintiff, v.
Dorothy, defendant, the fact statement might look like this:

Δ Dorothy was driving Toto and her in her minivan from Kansas to Oz;
she was going to visit her old friends, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman,
and the Cowardly Lion.

Δ On a sunny afternoon, she was headed West on U.S. Route 66

Δ Not far away, Ms. Gulch was driving her pickup truck East on the same
road.

Δ Route 66 is a two-lane road. Dorothy was driving in a no-passing
zone, marked by a double-solid yellow line

Δ Toto was riding in his car carrier on the back seat, behind the
driver’s seat

Δ Toto began crying because he needed to stop for the bathroom

Δ Dorothy wondered what was wrong with Toto, so she turned away from
the road and stretched her body around the side of the driver’s seat
to peek back at Toto.

Δ While Dorothy was not watching the road, she let her minivan cross
over the double-solid yellow line and into the oncoming eastbound lane
of traffic

Δ Ms. Gulch was just head; she knew this was a no-passing zone, so she
did not expect to see a car in her lane

Δ Suddenly, Ms. Gulch saw Dorothy’s minivan straight in front of her,
and she slammed on her brakes. But Dorothy’s van was too close and
going to fast, so it collided with Ms. Gulch’s pickup truck.

Δ The minivan’s airbags deployed, so Dorothy and Toto were not hurt.
However, Ms. Gulch was driving an old model pickup not equipped with
airbags, so she was seriously injured. Both vehicles were totaled.

RULE: Here you state the rule of law that the court applies to answer
the question posed by the issue. A rule of law may come from a treaty,
a statute, common-law court decisions (“judicial precedent�), or
even regulations issued by an administrative body. (NOTE: In cases
involving business CONTRACTS, the TERMS of the contract are part of the
facts of that case—and they are important facts, too. The terms of
the parties’ contract is not law—they are key facts to which the
court applies the law of contracts, which is all about interpreting and
enforcing the deal the parties made.)Often, the court doesn’t state
the rule of law in one place. You may have to piece it together. And
RESIST the temptation to just quote what the court says on the rule of
law; courts don’t always write so well! Try to summarize the rule to
emphasize the parts of it that the court used to decide the issue.

For example in Ms. Gulch v. Dorothy, the court might state the rule:

“Every driver owes every other driver a duty of reasonable care, which
means that a driver must operate his or her vehicle with the same
attention and care to what s/he is doing as a reasonably prudent person
would. This includes maintaining one’s attention on the road at all
times, except in the case of a life-threatening emergency that happens
in the vehicle.�

HOLDING: Here, you state the tribunal’s answer to the legal question
posed by the issue. DON’T just state “Yes� or “No�! The
statement of the holding should be a complete sentence that stands on
its own, incorporates the important law and facts, and largely mirrors
the issue statement (if you’ve stated the issue correctly, that is!).
For example, the holding in Ms. Gulch v. Dorothy might be stated:

The court ruled that Dorothy acted negligently and caused Ms. Gulch’s
injuries when she turned away from the road to look at Toto in the back
seat, thus allowing her minivan to cross the center line and collide
with Ms. Gulch, who had no reason to take any additional precautions
while driving because they were in a no-passing zone.

REASONING: This is the most important single-part of the brief, and the
part that students lose the most points on by not really EXPLAINING the
court’s reasoning.

Again, the reader hasn’t read the case, so the reader isn’t yet
persuaded that the Holding is correct.

This is where you break down the court’s logic into each step that
the court took to answer the question. In other words, here, you
explain step-by-step how the court applied the elements of the law to
the relevant facts to reach its logical conclusion.

As part of this, you’ll might discuss the parties’ ARGUMENTS and
what the court said about them—don’t discuss the parties’
arguments in the facts or in the issue statement!

You don’t usually need to discuss case law (court decisions) that
the court might compare this case to (such as, Scarecrow v. King, Flying
Monkey Band, in which the Scarecrow won a judgment against the King for
negligently dropping him into a grove of trees, knocking out his
stuffing).

What you DO need to do is be reader friendly again: USE CONCISE
BULLET-POINTS to
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Δ Because all drivers owe a duty to other drivers to operate their
vehicles with reasonable care, Dorothy owed Ms. Gulch a duty of
reasonable care as she drove on U.S. Route 66.

Δ The duty of reasonable care requires a driver to remain attentive and
alert at all time. Specifically, courts in various cases have ruled
that a driver acts carelessly when s/he removes her eyes from the road,
even for a moment.

Δ The duty of reasonable care is breached when a driver looks away
from the road and allows his or her vehicle to cross the dividing line
into the lane of oncoming traffic. Courts have reached this conclusion
because motor vehicles are dangerous instrumentalities that carry the
potential to inflict severe personal injury on others due to even
momentary negligence on the part of the driver.

Δ In this case, Dorothy owed Ms. Gulch a duty not to take her eyes off
the road, and she breached that duty when she turned around to look at
Toto and allowed the minivan to cross over into the lane of oncoming
traffic where Ms. Gulch was driving.

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Δ Here, the “emergency� exception doesn’t apply because it was
merely the commonplace whining of a dog to use the bathroom that
distracted Dorothy. Toto’s whining and need to use the bathroom are
not the kind of situations that can reasonably called an
“emergency,� excusing the driver from looking away from the road.
In this case, Dorothy should have pulled her vehicle safely off the road
if she wanted to check on Toto.

Δ A defense often raised by a negligent driver is that the victim
contributed to the accident by her own careless conduct. Here, nothing
suggests that Ms. Gulch was negligent. She was driving in her own lane.
She did not have sufficient time to react to Dorothy’s crossing over
the line. In addition, Ms. Gulch had no reason to expect that an
oncoming car would cross the line, because she was driving in a
no-passing zone marked with a double-solid line.

Δ Dorothy is liable for negligence only if her negligence caused Ms.
Gulch’s injuries. Here, that element is met because but for Dorothy
looking away to check on Toto, her minivan would not have crossed the
line and struck Ms. Gulch’s pickup truck.

Δ To recover for negligence, the victim must suffer actual injury
caused by the negligence. Here, Ms. Gulch suffered both severe personal
injuries as well as property damage (totaled car).

JUDGMENT: This describes what action the tribunal took as a result of
the holding it reached on the issue put to it. For example, if the case
you were briefing was the trial court’s decision of
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OBSERVATION: In this final section, you should reflect on what a case
teaches you relevant to what business people need to know about the law,
how it works, and how it affects business strategy. It should not be a
mere regurgitation of the rule or holding of the case, and it should be
more than just your “personal opinion.�

EXAMPLE: For example, an observation about Ms. Gulch v. Dorothy
relevant to MGT 625 should look like the following --

This case shows that even every day little actions of ordinary
carelessness can be the basis for a successful lawsuit and a judgment
costing you money. For example, in any business employing drivers –
U.P.S., couriers, even pizza delivery – the company needs to make sure
that it minimizes the number of careless accidents caused by its
drivers. I would advise a company to have insurance, require its
drivers to agree to indemnify it for careless driving while on company
business, thoroughly check the driving and insurance records before
hiring a driver, and implement an annual driving safety review that
reminds its drivers of the kinds of ordinary mistakes that can cause
serious accidents.