TWO CASE BRIEFS

INTRODUCTION

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The briefs must be of New York State state trial court decisions which were decided after

July 1, 2020.Decisions of appellate courts may not be used.

One brief must be of a torts case.The other brief must be of a contract case.

For each decision, the entire, unedited opinion or decision must be read.Summaries of cases from the textbook used in this class or from other textbooks may not be used. Case decisions should be obtained from case reporters or from the internet.Case reporters such as New York Supplement or the official New York New York State reporters are available at certain public libraries and from law libraries.Certain websites and other internet resources from which case decisions may be obtained will be discussed and reviewed in class.

REQUIRED BRIEFING FORMAT

The following is the required briefing format that should be followed:

Set forth the title of case [which is underlined], the legal citation [if you have it], the court, and the year [which should be 2020].

IFACTS:Set forth a brief summary of the facts of the case.Begin by identifying who is bringing the action, against whom the action is brought and what relief may be sought.Summarize the underlying facts of the case concisely.Leave out facts which may have been discussed in the case and which you believe are not necessary for understanding the court's decision.Use your own language.Do not just copy portions of the court's decision.

II PROCEDURAL POSTURE:In this part of the case brief, you should set forth a brief statement of how the decision came to be issued procedurally. Explain how it was that the court came to render the decision.

Was it a decision that resulted from a motion?If so, explain which party made the motion and what the relief was that was sought by the motion.Was the decision issued by the judge during or after a trial?If so, state whether it was a jury trial or a non-jury (bench) trial.

III ISSUES[S]:State the issue or issues the court decided.Each issue should be set forth as a question. In a short decision, there may be only one issue.In a complicated, lengthy decision, there could be many issues.You should specify each issue the court decided.

IV DECISION:Set forth the decision reached by the court with respect to each of the issues presented.Essentially, you are now stating how the court decided each of the issues which you specified.In this section, only indicate what the court's decision was.Do not include the court's reasoning or explanation in this section.The court's reasoning or explanation should be set forth in the next section.

VREASONING:This is a concise summary of the reasoning used by the court in reaching the decision which it reached with respect to each of the issues.Do not include case citations which the court cited.Summarize the points the court made in arriving at its decision.It is the reasoning of the court, not your opinion of the issues or of the decision that should be included here.[If you would like to set forth your opinion of the particular issue or issues being decided or of the decision, you should do so in a postscript at the end of the case brief.]

FINDING CASE DECISIONS

The following links should be used to find case decisions.One link is to the official website of the New York State courts and the other is to the New York State Law Reporting Bureau.Both websites are free and open to the public.We will review using these websites further in a later class.

http://ww2.nycourts.gov/decisions/index.shtml

http://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

There is no minimum or maximum length.The case brief should be as long as you need to communicate what you need to communicate.Take a hint from what the title of the document is: case brief. You do not receive extra credit for a longer document which could have been more concisely presented.The aim is to write well organized, concise case briefs.Use your own words.Do not just copy sentences or paragraphs from the court decision.Read the cases.Think about what you read.Ask yourself what happened to cause the plaintiff to start the lawsuit, how did the decision come to be issued procedurally, what was the question(s) the court decided, what was the court's decision on each of the questions and what reason or reasons did the court give for its decision.Summarize the cases, in your own words, concisely.

This assignment is to be done independently by each student.This means that each student must do each aspect of this assignment, including finding and selecting the cases to be used, reading the cases, analyzing the cases and writing the case briefs, by himself or herself, and not in collaboration with any other student(s) or other individual(s).