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In this lesson, you will learn to determine relevant facts and legal issues using real-life examples, and to use each area of law once you’ve determined the facts and issues you’d like to present to the court.
Determining Relevant Facts and Legal Issues
- Gather information: Parties
- Gather information: Harm or injury
- Gather information: Events in chronological order
- Gather information: Facts supporting each position
- Relevant facts
- Identify issues: Areas of law
- Identify issues: Keywords
Transcript
We\’ll use a sample set of facts as a learning tool in this lesson.
Here are the facts: Gloria was adopted by Preston when she was seven years old. Three days after her thirtieth birthday, she sued Preston for having raped her during her childhood. Yet, she said she had no memory of the rapes until her memories were recovered by psychologist, Merrill.
Eventually, Preston won the case and was cleared. Preston then sued the psychologist, alleging that had Merrill exercised reasonable care, he would have foreseen the harm to Preston from the diagnosis, and Preston would not have suffered mental and emotional distress.
To find the area of law that needs to be researched, gather all the facts. First, identify the parties involved. Here, there are Preston and Merrill. This case, in particular, requires information about Merrill\’s occupation.
It matters that he was a professional psychologist and not her brother or bartender.
What is the harm or injury? This is important because the harm or injury must be one that the law allows a remedy for. For Preston to have a chance of prevailing, there must be a statute on the books that gives him a cause of action for his harm. In this case, the harm is emotional distress.
Listing the events in chronological order helps determine damages, remedies, and degrees of harm.
If someone hits you with a car, it helps to know whether they yelled at you before or after they hit you. The first could be a warning and could mitigate damages. The second could be revenge or hatred and might increase an award of damages.
Understand your position and that of your opponent.
In our example, Preston might state: \”Merrill was a professional and should have known his actions would inflict distress on me.\” Merrill might state: \”Preston was not my patient, so his distress was not my concern.\”
At this point, you should have a set of facts that can be used to prove or disprove a claim, counterclaim, or defense.
These are called relevant facts.
You should be reluctant to include facts beyond these.
Now that you know the facts, develop a question that needs to be answered by each side.
Preston\’s question: What duty does Merrill owe to protect me from harmful emotional distress?
Merrill\’s question: What duty do I owe to someone who is not my patient?
Match the facts, issues, and questions to areas of law that might apply. Start with general areas and narrow to specific areas or keywords.
Guess if you need to. If the questions or issues are off the mark, you can refine later.
Create a list of keywords for your search. Sources for keywords include the complaint, Google searches, Wikipedia, online encyclopedias, and dictionaries.
If you have a statute, begin with that and update the list as the search progresses.
Now that you know questions, keywords and issues, it\’s time to find legal sources for your arguments.