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For this assignment, a page case brief for the following case: STATE FARM MUTUAL AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE COMPANY v. EDGE FAMILY CHIROPRACTIC Please follow the attached

For this assignment, a page case brief for the following case:

STATE FARM MUTUAL AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE COMPANY v. EDGE FAMILY CHIROPRACTIC

Please follow the attached format ony for this brief:

How to a Case Brief

Aug 22, 2018

In this guide to writing case briefs, you'll learn:

what a case brief is, and what it's not,
how to approach casebook readings so that you're ready to create brief, and
how to write own case brief, including how to format the brief and what kinds of information you should include.

What is a Case Brief?

Put simply, a case brief is a summary of a legal opinion. The termcase briefis often confusing to lay people because the ordinary meaning of the word brief refers to a written argument submitted to a court (such as an "appellate brief"). However, a case brief is neither an argument nor submitted to a court. It is a study tool used by law students to prepare for class and final exams. A case brief might also be referred to as a "legal brief" or "case summary," which better encapsulates the meaning and avoids the ambiguity of the word "brief."

Preparing to Write Case Brief

Okay, you've decided you want to write case brief. But when should you start? After you've read the casebook excerpt, right? Wrong. You should be "pretreating" the casebook excerptas you readthe opinion. What do we mean by "pretreating"? We mean highlighting, underlining, and annotating in the margins all the information that will later go into your case brief. For example, if the court starts talking about the facts of the case, you should mark up your casebook by highlighting the facts or writing "facts" in the margin. That way, when you go to write the facts section of your case brief, you don't need to go fishing.

The Ultimate Case Brief Template

The Skeleton

Let's start with a case brief example that you can use to get started. Go ahead and copy paste these headings into your word processor of choice, and bam, you've got yourself a case brief template:

RULE OF LAW:

FACTS:

ISSUE:

HOLDING AND REASONING:

CONCURRENCE:

DISSENT:

A case brief can be formatted in many different ways. You should choose the case brief format that works best for youand your professor. For example, if a professor routinely asks students to recite the procedural history, then you might want to include a separate section for that information.

Now, you've got your case brief template, but you're going to need to put some flesh on these bones.

The Meat

Nearly every case brief should include, at a minimum, the following information:

the facts of the case,
the legal issue,
the legal principle applied in the case,
the holding and reasoning of the majority, and
a summary of any concurrences and dissents.

Let's discuss each section in more detail. We'll useQuimbee's case brief formatfor ease of discussion. But other formats exist and are perfectly acceptable.

Facts of the Case

Many legal opinions clearly outline the facts of the case, and when briefing a case, you might be tempted to copy the court's rendition of the facts verbatim into your case brief. When writing a case brief, never parrot the court's language word-for-word; instead, you should always paraphrase the court's language into plain English. Be mindful of the purpose of a case brief, which is to gain a clearer understanding of the case.

The facts section of your case brief should include the following information (if obtainable in the casebook excerpt):

the cause of action (g., a suit for replevin, breach of contract, and so forth),
an identification of the plaintiff and the defendant in the case by party name,
the operative facts of the case that led to the dispute between the parties,
the trial court/jury's holding, and
the appellate court's holding.

Always identify the plaintiff and the defendant in the case. Never simply refer to the parties as "plaintiff" and "defendant" without indicating which party is the plaintiff and which is the defendant. Sometimes a court will refer to parties as appellant/appellee or petitioner/respondent. Make sure you figure out who's the plaintiff and who's the defendant. A good rule of thumb: the plaintiff is whoever initiated the lawsuit.

Example from ourAbbott Laboratories v. Gardner case brief:

FACTS:In 1962, Congress amended the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to require prescription drug manufacturers to print the common or established name of their drugs in large letters along with the proprietary or trade name of the drug on all packaging. Abbott Laboratories (plaintiff) and thirty-seven other prescription drug manufacturers brought suit against Gardner (defendant), the federal commissioner responsible for enforcing the new act, alleging that the commissioner exceeded his authority in making such a regulation. Abbott successfully sought injunctive and declaratory relief in the district court, but the court of appeals reversed. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.

Note that the case brief example begins with an explanation of the background and operative facts that set the stage for the dispute. Then, the example introduces the parties, identifies the plaintiff and defendant by party name, and explains the cause of action. The example correctly concludes with the procedural history.

Legal Issue

In the facts section of your case brief, you described the cause of action, the factual circumstances leading up to that cause of action, and the procedural history of the case. The issue section is the next logical step.

You should identify the legal issue being emphasized in the casebook. For example, if a case in a contracts casebook appears in a chapter onpromissory estoppel, then your issue section should also relate to promissory estoppel. Moreover, your issue must not be fact specific. This means that the issue section should not contain the factual details of the case.

The issue should be a legal question, not a procedural one. Hence, the following rendering of the issue section is incorrect: "Whether the trial court erred in granting summary judgment for the plaintiff." Note that the foregoing issue does not bear on anything substantive, nor does it bear on the legal question at issue in the case.

Finally, your issue section should be phrased as a question that facilitates a "yes" or "no" answer. Never create issue that invites an ambiguous answer.

Example 1:

May a state limit the appointment of members of its police force to United States citizens?

Example 2:

Does a state law forbidding the teaching of any subject in any language other than English in private, parochial, or public schools within a state violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

Rule of Law

The rule of law is the legal principle or black letter law upon which the court rested its decision in the case. A single legal opinion may contain numerous rules of law or legal principles that impacted the court's final decision. However, for case briefing purposes, your task is to determine the rule of law germane to the discussion of the case in the casebook and to formulate that rule into one, easy-to-digest sentence.

Pro tip: Look at the chapter and section headings under which the case appears in your casebook; they'll tell you the topic to which your rule of law should relate or, if there are multiple rules of law, which one is important. For example, if a case appears in the "Promissory Estoppel" section of your contracts casebook, then the rule of law should be related to promissory estoppel (as opposed to some other topic).

The rule of law should never be fact-specific. It should answer the dispositive legal question being posed in the case. Put differently, the rule of law should be the legal issue in the case phrased as a statement. For example, let's say the issue in the case is: "May a party who repeatedly waives a provision in a contract that is for his own benefit later seek to enforce that provision?" To obtain the rule of law, simply rephrase the question as a statement: "A party that repeatedly, albeit passively, waives a provision in a contract that is for his own benefit, may not later seek to enforce that provision."

Example:

A federal law may preempt a state or local law even if the laws are not mutually exclusive if the state law is deemed to impede the achievement of a federal objective.

If the rule of law relates to a particular statute or provision, you should incorporate that into your rule. For example, if the rule relates to the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, you should include that in the rule:

"Under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress may prohibit discrimination only by state actors, not private individuals."

Holding and Reasoning

Now that you have identified the facts and salient legal issues in the case, you are ready to explain how the court decided the case. You should start your holding and reasoning section by answering the question posed by the issue section with a simple "Yes" or "No."

The holding and reasoning section should be structured in a manner consistent with the CREAC method. (Reminder: that's Conclusion, Rule, Explanation, Application, and Conclusion.) You may also have heard this referred to as the IRAC method (Issue, Rule, Application, and Conclusion) or some other variation. Quimbee prefers CREAC to IRAC for several reasons. The repetition of the conclusion in the beginning and the end of a CREAC reinforces the major takeaway of the case. Also, by having an explicit explanation section, CREAC ensures that the rule of a case is both stated and properly interpreted.

Legal frameworks, tests, and principles should be clearly articulated and applied to the facts of the case. You should always explain the rationale behind the legal principles being applied in the case. In fact, perhaps the most common mistake case briefers make in the holding and reasoning section is to omit explanation of the rule (i.e., the "E" in CREAC). The conclusion and procedural disposition of the case should be stated at the end.

To recap, the holding and reasoning section of your case brief should contain the following information (if obtainable in the casebook):

A "yes" or "no" answer to the question posed by the issue section,
The relevant legal principles and rules used to decide the case,
The application of those principles to the facts of the case,
The court's conclusion,
The procedural disposition (g., reversed and remanded, affirmed, etc.), and
The names of any seminal cases or important statutes used by the majority in its opinion.

Example fromour case brief for United States v. Karnes:

HOLDING AND REASONING: (Winter, J.) No. A district court generally has discretion to call witnesses on its own as necessary. However, a district court may not call a witness on its own where the prosecution's case would be insufficient as a matter of law without the court's witness. A court must be impartial and may not insert itself into the role of the prosecution. Doing so would violate a defendant's right to due process. In this case, the prosecution's case was insufficient without the testimony of the Cassitys. As a result, it was improper for the district court to call them as witnesses. The court may not, on its own, overcome a defendant's presumption of innocence. Furthermore, because the district court did not give an explanation to the jury about the court calling witnesses, it is likely that the jury inappropriately gave more consideration to the Cassitys testimony because they were called by the court itself. The district court's ruling is reversed, and the case is remanded for a new trial.

Concurrences and Dissents

All concurrences and dissents in the casebook should be covered in your case brief. Concurrences and dissents in casebook opinions are often short in length and so should be your summary of that material. Be sure to answer specifically the question of why a judge decided to write separately.

Examples:

CONCURRENCE: (Widener, J.) The district court should not be reversed based on due process, but rather on criminal procedure. The burden of production of evidence is not on the defendant or the court; it is on the prosecution.

DISSENT: (Russell, J.) The trial judge's calling of the Cassitys was proper. The majority's reasoning makes its holding significantly broader than its presumed intention. If a district court is not permitted to step in as the role of prosecutor, a district court would never be permitted to call its own witness. Moreover, the fact that the Cassitys' testimony was vital to the case is all the more reason that the trial judge properly called the witnesses. A court does not become impartial by simply calling a witness for one side or the other. Finally, if there was any error in failing to instruct the jury on why the court called the Cassitys, such error was harmless.

Note, too, that sometimes a judge or justice will concur in part and dissent in part. Make sure to note this in your brief, for example, by using the header "CONCURRENCE/DISSENT."

How Long Should My Case Brief Be?

A brief should be exactly that: brief. It's easy to get carried away, but you need to exercise restraint in deciding what to include in your brief. For example, you should include only the operative facts of the case. And when writing your holding and reasoning section, focus on fleshing out CREAC; you can typically exclude dicta or those portions of the opinion that don't bear on the topic being emphasized by your casebook. Our advice:Your brief should, excluding concurrences and dissents.

Final Thoughts on Writing Case Briefs

A case brief is a summary of a legal opinion. It's intended to prepare you in the event that you're called on in class. Case briefs can also be leveraged later on when you go to write outlines.

While you're reading the casebook excerpt, make sure to pretreat the excerpt by identifying the parts that you plan to use later in your case brief, such as by highlighting or annotating in the margins.

Once you've pretreated the casebook excerpt, you're ready to brief the case.

There are many acceptable formats for a case brief. Every brief should include, at a minimum, the facts of the case, the legal issue, the legal principle applied in the case, the holding and reasoning of the majority, and a summary of any concurrences and dissents. Your brief should not exceed, excluding concurrences and dissents.

Next steps: as a test run, pick a case from your casebook to brief. Then, findQuimbee's case brieffor the same case and compare your brief to ours. That way, you can see if you picked the correct rule of law and included all the proper information.

Notes on writing your case brief:STATE FARM MUTUAL AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE COMPANY, Petitioner, v. EDGE FAMILY CHIROPRACTIC, P.A. a/a/o Shirley C. Wise, Frances Mason, Edge Family Chiropractic, P.A., a/a/o Jennifer McMillan, Respondents.

No. 1D10-0565.

Decided: June 25, 2010

Hinda Klein and Carlos D. Cabrera, of Conroy, Simberg, Ganon, Krevans, Abel, Lurvey, Morrow & Schefer, P.A., Hollywood, for Petitioner. Louis K. Rosenbloum, of Louis K. Rosenbloum, P.A., and Robert N. Heath, Jr., of McDonald, Fleming, Pensacola, for Respondents.Petitioner seeks review of a circuit court order affirming three county court orders awarding a total of $161,196.25 in attorney's fees and costs to Respondents for prevailing in the underlying personal injury protection (PIP) cases. Petitioner contends that the circuit court departed from the essential requirements of law in affirming the county court orders because 1) the county court erred in applying a contingency risk multiplier to the paralegal fees included in the award, and 2) the county court abused its discretion in awarding "a high hourly fee and a multiplier" in these "fairly routine cases." We deny the petition and write only to address Petitioner's first claim, which appears to be an issue of first impression.

Respondents initiated the underlying PIP cases after Petitioner stopped paying medical bills for injuries sustained by Respondents in separate motor vehicle accidents. One of the cases went to trial, resulting in a judgment for Respondents; the other two cases settled with Petitioner agreeing to resume paying the medical bills. Respondents thereafter sought an award of attorney's fees and costs in each case pursuant to section 627.428, Florida Statutes.

Petitioner did not contest Respondents' entitlement to attorney's fees, but because the parties were unable to agree on the amount of the award, the county court held an evidentiary hearing on the issue. At the hearing, the parties stipulated to the hourly rate ($95.00/hour) and number of hours to be awarded for paralegal work. The parties presented conflicting evidence as to the reasonable hourly rate and number of hours for Respondents' attorney and as to the justification for applying a multiplier to the award.

In detailed orders, the county court resolved the conflicts in the evidence and found that the reasonable hourly rate for Respondents' attorney was $350.00/hour and that a 1.5 multiplier was justified in one of the cases and that a 2.0 multiplier was justified in the other two cases. The county court applied the multipliers to the entire fee award, including the paralegal fees. Petitioner appealed the county court's orders to the circuit court, raising the same two issues stated above. The circuit court consolidated the cases and per curiam affirmed the county court's orders. Petitioner timely petitioned this court for a writ of certiorari.

The scope of our review in this second-tier certiorari proceeding is limited to determining whether the circuit court afforded due process or departed from the essential requirements of law. Allstate Ins. Co. v. Kaklamanos, 843 So.2d 885, 889 (Fla.2003). It is undisputed that the circuit court afforded due process; the only issue is whether it departed from the essential requirements of law in affirming the county court orders. A departure from the essential requirements of law is something more than a simple legal error; there must be a violation of a clearly established principle of law that results in a miscarriage of justice. Id. (citing Ivey v. Allstate Ins. Co., 774 So.2d 679, 682 (Fla.2000)). "Clearly established law" can derive from controlling case law, rules of court, statutes and constitutional law. Id. at 890.

The parties have not cited, nor have we been able to locate, any controlling authority as to whether the multiplier is to be applied only to attorney's fees or whether it may also be applied to paralegal fees. Relying primarily on two federal district court decisions, Petitioner argues that the multiplier is to be applied only to attorney's fees and that the circuit court departed from the essential requirements of law in affirming the county court's application of the multipliers to the paralegal fees. In response, Respondents cite section 57.104, Florida Statutes, which provides:

In any action in which attorney's fees are to be determined or awarded by the court, the court shall consider, among other things, time and labor of any legal assistants who contributed nonclerical, meaningful legal support to the matter involved and who are working under the supervision of an attorney.

Respondents argue that based upon this statute, the county court properly included the paralegal fees in the attorney's fee award to which the multipliers were applied and that the circuit court did not violate any "clearly established law" in affirming the county court's orders. Respondents also argue that the failure to apply a multiplier to paralegal fees would compel attorneys to assign paralegal tasks to associate attorneys or perform the work themselves at much higher rates, which would substantially increase the attorney's fees paid by insurers and other responsible parties.

Section 57.104 was enacted in 1987 in response to this court's decision in Bill Rivers Trailers, Inc. v. Miller, 489 So.2d 1139 (Fla. 1st DCA 1986). The statute was intended to "reverse" that decision and "specifically provide that an award of attorney's fees would include an award for the services of a legal assistant employed by the attorney." See Fla. H.R. Comm. on Judiciary, HB 0535 (1987) Staff Analysis, at 1 (rev.Apr.28, 1987) (available at Fla. Dep't of State, State Archives, Tallahassee, Fla.).

Bill Rivers Trailers involved a suit over commissions on the sale of refrigerated trailers. 489 So.2d at 1140. The dispute was submitted to arbitration and was resolved in favor of the plaintiff, Miller. Id. at 1141. Miller subsequently moved for an award of attorney's fees and costs as the prevailing party. Id. The trial court granted the motion and, among other things, awarded fees for the substantive legal work performed by a legal assistant. Id . On appeal, this court affirmed the trial court's determination that Miller was the prevailing party, but reversed the fee award because only the attorney's fees (and not the legal assistant's fees) were recoverable. Id. at 1143. The court remanded for a determination of a reasonable fee "based upon all appropriate factors having no direct arithmetical relation to the number of hours expended by legal assistants who are not attorneys." Id.

Judge Joanos dissented from the reversal of the fees awarded for the work of the legal assistant. Id. at 1143 (Joanos, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). In his view, it was appropriate to separately itemize and include the legal assistant's fee as part of the attorney's fee award. Id. at 1143-44. Judge Joanos also observed that it was unrealistic to require work needing less expertise and experience to be performed by the attorney in order to be compensated and he pointed out that a legal assistant, performing delegated work under the supervision of counsel and for which counsel is responsible, was "a less expensive way of doing things rather than for the attorney to have done all of the work himself." Id. at 1144. These observations are borne out by the facts of this case, which reflect that a significant amount of the legal work was done by the paralegal at an hourly rate that was less than one-third of the attorney's hourly rate.

Judge Joanos' observations and section 57.104 are consistent with the prevailing view that an attorney's fee award may include paralegal fees because the paralegal's work is a component of the attorney's work product. In Missouri v. Jenkins, 491 U.S. 274 (1989), for example, the Court held that the term "reasonable attorney's fee" in 42 U.S.C. 1988 encompasses not only the work of the attorney, but also that of paralegals whose labor contributes to the attorney's ultimate work product. Id. at 285 ("We thus take as our starting point the self-evident proposition that the 'reasonable attorney's fee' provided for by statute should compensate the work of paralegals, as well as that of attorneys."). The Court also observed that the use of lower cost paralegals rather than attorneys encourages cost-effective delivery of legal services and reduces the cost of litigation because, if paralegal fees were not recoverable as part of the attorney's fee award "it would not be surprising to see a greater amount of such work performed by attorneys themselves, thus increasing the overall cost of litigation." Id. at 288 n. 10.

The Court recently reaffirmed Jenkins in Richlin Security Service Co. v. Chertoff, 128 S.Ct. 2007 (2008), where it held the term "attorney's fees" in another federal statute included fees for paralegal services as well as compensation for the attorney's own labor. As in Jenkins, the Court declared that it was "self-evident" that the statute embraced not only attorney's fees, but also paralegal fees. Id. at 2014-15.

Although none of these cases involved the application of a multiplier to paralegal fees, the cases (and section 57.104) clearly establish the principle that the paralegal's work is a component of the attorney's ultimate work product. This, in turn, provides support for the application of the multiplier to paralegal fees because the purpose of the multiplier is to enhance the fee calculated under the lodestar methodology to take into account the fact that an attorney working on a contingent fee contract is generally not compensated for any of the services provided to a client when the client does not prevail. See Fla. Patient's Comp. Fund v. Rowe, 472 So.2d 1145, 1151 (Fla.1985) ("Because the attorney working under a contingent fee contract receives no compensation when his client does not prevail, he must charge a client more than the attorney who is guaranteed remuneration for his services."), reaffirmed in pertinent part by, Standard Guarantee Ins. Co. v. Quanstrom, 555 So.2d 828, 834 (Fla.1990). Because the potentially uncompensated legal services provided to the client include not only the attorney's work, but also the paralegal's work, it is appropriate to apply the multiplier to the paralegal fees included in the award. Stated another way, because the paralegal's work is part of the legal services provided to the client, there is no principled reason to treat paralegal fees any different from attorney's fees in regards to the application of the multiplier. Cf. Jenkins, 489 U.S. at 287 (rejecting the argument that awarding paralegal fees at the prevailing market rate, rather than the cost to the attorney, would result in a windfall to the attorney because that same argument would apply to associate attorneys and it has never been suggested that the hourly rate applied to the work of an associate attorney in a law firm creates a windfall for the firm's partners or is otherwise improper).

The federal district court cases cited by Petitioner do not compel a contrary decision. First, the cases are not binding precedent; they are, at most, persuasive authority. See Roland v. Fla. E. Coast Ry., LLC, 873 So.2d 1271, 1275 n. 5 (Fla. 3d DCA 2004) (stating that decisions of federal courts other than U.S. Supreme Court are persuasive, but not binding). Second, one of the cases-Louis v. Nelson, 646 F.Supp. 1300 (S.D.Fla.1986)-pre-dated Jenkins and section 57.104, and the other case-Zunde v. Int'l Paper Co., 2000 WL1763843(M.D.Fla. Jul. 20, 2000)-is not even published in the official reporters. Third, neither of the cases includes any analysis supporting the decision not to apply the multiplier to paralegal fees; the cases merely make a blanket statement that the paralegal fees are not to be increased by a multiplier. See Zunde, 2000 WL1763843, at *9 ("The paralegal fees are not to be increased by the multiplier."); Louis, 646 F.Supp. at 1320 ("Although law clerk and paralegal services constitute a part of attorney's fees, there is no basis for applying any multiplier to the figures.").

In sum, because there is no "clearly established law" prohibiting the application of a multiplier to paralegal fees that are included as part of an attorney's fee award, and because section 57.104 clearly supports the inclusion of the paralegal fees as attorney's fees, we conclude that the circuit court did not depart from the essential requirements of law in affirming the county court orders at issue in this case. Accordingly, the petition for writ of certiorari is DENIED.

WETHERELL, J.

WEBSTER and MARSTILLER, JJ., concur.

The most important part of a brief is the analysis-reasoning section.

Only include the most important facts; unrelated facts and details should not be included in a brief.

A brief is called a brief for a reason; one page is more than enough.

The issue(s) is the legal question in the case. Most cases have mroe than one, but for this assignment only select one issue. The textbook authors have provided you with a shortened portion of the cases, each of which hones in on one legal issue.

CASE:

STATE FARM MUTUAL AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE COMPANY, Petitioner, v. EDGE FAMILY CHIROPRACTIC, P.A. a/a/o Shirley C. Wise, Frances Mason, Edge Family Chiropractic, P.A., a/a/o Jennifer McMillan, Respondents.

No. 1D10-0565.

Decided: June 25, 2010