Our class will complete two team projects for this Module 1 on Tort Law:
Each team, described below, will create a table on your computers and work together to complete the blank table shown in Law on page 208, Figure 7-3 (“Intentional Tort Chart”). Please post your completed table by noon on Monday September 20. This is a couple hours before the final class in the Torts Module 1. During class on Monday September 20 we will want to talk about what you came up with on this chart.
Case Presentations. I will randomly assign teams of two. The two members of the team will play first year associates in the same law firm and you have been asked by a senior partner to analyze a set of facts to spot legal issues, think about possible torts, and to make an oral presentation to a mock jury so that the senior lawyers (your bosses, gulp) can observe and evaluate whether to take a case and how their case arguments will be made.
Each team will prepare a set of notes about your case in outline form (to be submitted after class on Monday September 20) and will make a 6 to 12 minute presentation to the class (the jury) on Monday September 20. Team members should practice with each other and time the presentation. Think of this exercise as making an opening statement to a jury in a civil lawsuit. The rest of the class will sit as the jury; Professor Caffey and any visiting attorney will sit as courtroom judge(s) for your presentations.
If any class member cannot join us for class on September 20 we will make arrangements to make your presentation at another time.
Your presentation will identify any torts, list their elements, and describe how the facts will help/hurt your case, and make as persuasive an argument to the jury as you can. After your presentation, to the jury, please advise the judge(s) whether you think you have a strong case or a winning or losing argument, and why, and whether there are any strong defenses that should be anticipated. The judges may ask you questions about the case, so please be prepared to discuss (or defend) any aspect of your case.
The jury and the judges would like to hear from both members of your team, so plan to split the presentation. One of you can review the facts, the other can run down the elements of applicable torts, or you may divide up the presentation in any other way that makes sense to the team. You may take either side of the case you are assigned or that you select. I will randomly assign cases noted below to each team. You may present that case or choose to present any of the cases appearing in Chapter 7 of Introduction to Law or that we have discussed as a class – please let me know by our class on September 13 which case you are preparing so that we do not have any two teams preparing the same case (unless the two teams want to present different sides of the same case – that would be fun. Any volunteers?).
Here are the cases I will assign to teams. You may present this case or elect to switch to any case in Chapter 7 that describes a set of facts and a potential tort(s). If your case is an actual, decided case, in your presentation please pretend that the case has not been decided and that your firm is considering representing one of the parties. Case references in the assignment are 1 through 8.
See page 169, the facts shown about the trippy Lee Greenly. Be sure to think about possible defendants.
See page 207, #4 about a series of four factual situations, plan to present them all in summary fashion.
Your case facts: During a visit to a private “tiger refuge” (not a licensed zoo), a paying guest stepped up to the fence of a tiger ‘habitat’ and pulled a raw pork chop out of her purse. On the other side of the chicken-wire fence, a 600 lb. male Bengal Tiger named “Big Will” instantaneously lunged at the delectable meaty morsel (witnesses say he covered about 15 feet in the air), was stopped by the fence but its claws badly scratched the guest when the fence flexed out under Big Will’s weight. The guest had to have 13 stitches to repair her (pork-chop-holding) arm, and also had to have a painful series of rabies shots. Big Will never did get the chop. His handlers say he has never before done anything like the now infamous lunge, and that he has been rather ‘grumpy’ since the incident. Among handlers, Big Will’s astonishing lunge became known as taking a flight on “Pork Chop Air.”
Instructions
Complete the Fig. 7-3 Chart in a table recreated from page 208; due Monday September 20 by Noon ET.
Submit your notes for the case presentation; should be no more than one page; due Monday September 20 by 11:59 PM ET or by 11:59 PM ET after the class in which you make your team’s presentation.
We will work out of Introduction to Law(6thEdition), by J.B. Hames and Y. Ekern.
Case #4, the “Spring-loaded Shotgun” case. Please present the defendant of the case (Love it!).
Class #4: Monday September 20, 2021Strict Liability torts (Danger!)Review of Tort case defensesDamages for tortsDiscuss and Brief Burnett v. National Inquirer, page 197Discuss and Brief civil rights case Plumhoff v. Rickard, page 203Class visitor: Civil rights litigator.Tort case presentation by class members.Reading assignment for this class: Chapter 7, pages 195-206 (Tort Law –Negligence Topics).
