Legal Writing and Litigation- Research Step by Step: In Class Hypos

Your supervising attorney would like you to look at the following problem:Joan and Janice Bitley applied to be the foster parents of a family of 4 whose parents were killed in a car accident. The grandmother was not able to take the grandchildren because she lived in a 55+ community.

Joan and Janice applied to a home makeover program called Extreme Home Makeover (EHM) to build a home for the 4 new children. Their application leaned heavily on needing space for the children and keeping them all together. They were given a new home that had an approximate value of $800,000 and could easily house all six of them. It was stated that the Bitleys were specifically chosen for the program because of their generous spirit in not wanting to split up the children and giving the children a new start in a brand new home.

Shortly after the show finished, Joan and Janice decided they could no longer care for the 4 children, so they sent the children back to Oregon Child Protective Services stating that they could no longer be foster parents. The children were then split apart and sent to 4 different foster care homes. Joan and Janice continued to live in the new home built for them by Extreme Home Makeover.

So far you have not been able to find standing for the children to sue Joan and Janice for the unjust enrichment, but EHM does have standing since Joan and Janice have not fulfilled their contractual obligations. You have talked to EHM, but they are not interested in suing for breach of contract.

Your supervising attorney would like to know if subrogation of the claim by EHM and assignment of the claim to the children might be a way for the children to get standing in this case.

Facts

Familiarity

What resource are you going to use to start your research?

What is an alternative source you could use?

Research question?

Preliminary search terms:

Your client owns Paintball Palace, a 10 state franchise of paintball arenas throughout the United States. The client wants you to review the standard of care for paintball operations in reviewing the basic waivers paintball enthusiasts sign before playing. Your supervisor suggests looking into contact sports exceptions to negligence since he has experience with football and that a participant may be held liable only if the person intentionally, willfully and wantonly, or recklessly injures a coparticipant while engaging in conduct that is not an inherent part of the game. You’re not sure if paintball is a contact sport or if there is a general consensus from all states on this matter.

What resource is a good fit for this hypo?

Why?

What index terms do you think will work?

Your client lives in an apartment in NE Portland. Your client left on Friday morning for the weekend and when she returned on Sunday evening it was obvious that someone had been in her apartment. The cupboard under the sink was open and several of her cleaning supplies had been removed from under the sink and were on the floor.

Just before calling the police about the break in, she checked with the apartment’s front desk to see if anyone else had reported a break in.  The receptionist was surprised to hear this, but then said “oh, that must be from when they went around to the different apartments Saturday morning making sure the heat was on and the sink pipes were exposed because they were worried that the pipes might freeze overnight. I think they are going to send out an email about it on Monday”. It ended up that the temperature did not dip below freezing that weekend.

Your client wants to know if she has an action against her landlord for entering her apartment without notice.

What resource would you use?

Why did you pick that resource?

How will you use your resource to find an answer/direction for your research? (search? if so what search terms? Table of Contents? is so, what book and what will you look for?)

Your In Class Research Assignment

A new client, a private investigation company in Broward County, Florida, has contacted us regarding the actions of a former employee who recently opened his own private investigation business. The employee signed a noncompetition agreement with the company when he was hired, and the company wants to know if the agreement can be enforced to prevent the former employee from operating his own investigation business.

Laws about noncompetition agreements vary widely by jurisdiction. I’m not familiar with the law in Florida. Please do some quick research for me to figure out whether Florida has a statute governing noncompetition agreements, and if so, what requirements the statute imposes. 

In my experience, state noncompetition statutes almost always contain some requirements about the agreement’s scope and duration. I’m not too worried about those here, as it sounds like this particular agreement was pretty limited, though it would be helpful to know what the requirements are nonetheless. However, some states also have more specific provisions about what kind of employees noncompetition agreements can cover or what kind of interests they can protect, and I need to know whether Florida’s statute includes anything like that. 

I’m meeting with the company’s CEO later today, so I will be able to get more detailed facts about the case then. In the meantime, the CEO did mention that the company is particularly concerned about the former employee’s new business because of the employee’s great rapport with several important clients and because the company provided the employee with a lot of expensive training.

Where did you start your research during your in class research?

What resources did you decide to use?

How much do you know about the matter/jurisdiction? Does that change where you would start?

If you started with a statute: 1. How did you find the statute and 2. How do you find secondary sources from there?

Would you change how you researched based on the cat research assignment when you used different secondary sources? If so, what would you change?

Slides for 9/7 Class on Case Finding Tools: