Your Role: Legal clerk for the firm of Carter, Carter and Drake
Audience: The firm partner, Sean C. Carter, and business owner Sean Combs.
Scenario: Mr. Combs, who has been known to have lavish parties in his dorm room, wants to know under what circumstances can he sue the university for injuries he sustained at a party he did not throw. One Saturday night, students in his dorm had a progressive party where students went from room to room drinking different drinks in each room. The 100 or so students drank for hours. And someone decided that they should turn the tile floors of the halls into a giant slip and slide. So, many of the student got shampoo and soap and threw it on the floor and also threew buckets of water in the hall. They ran and slid the the hall. It was all fun until Combs ran and slide, fell, hit his head on the floor, and received a serious concussion, causing him to miss half of the semester. He wants to sue the Resident Assistants, and the University for not stopping the party that cause his injury.
Your supervisor, Mr. Carter, asks you to summarize the Baldwin v. Zoradi case completely and also answer Mr. Combs’ question in a memo. Summarize the selected case using the following guidelines. This is to be in your words, not a cut-and-paste job.
Trial Court
- How did the case come to the trial court? Who sued whom?
- What was the cause of action?
- Were there any motions filed in the trial court? What were they?
- Did the trial court rule on the motions or the merits of the case itself?
- What did the trial court decide?
- Was the trial court decision appealed to a higher court?
Intermediate Appellate Court
- What was the question for appeal to the intermediate court?
- Name the primary precedent the intermediate court used to make its decision?
- What did the intermediate court decision say?
- Was this a good decision? Why?
