Thursday, August 17, 2006

Legal Methods Brief

Well I know you are all dying to hear my observations about orientation and my first day of class (to sum it all up in one word: tiring), but I'm going to hold off on blogging about that stuff until my work is finished, so you might not get to hear all that stuff until Friday night or Saturday, when I can give you a week in review.

For everyone who is not really familiar with law school study methods, though, I thought I'd give you a little peak at what I'm working on (I promise I won't normally blog about law school work because that would be way more boring than hearing about my fictitious romances with world-class athletes). Since most law school classes use a case study method to introduce students to the law, and since most law school classes also ask that students have a certain mastery over the cases they've read, so as to be prepared to answer questions posed to them as part of the Socratic method (and yes, my professor totally "cold calls" and surprises people, but he's really nice even when people don't really give him what he's looking for), students develop "briefs" of cases, which are essentially handy references that allow you to talk about a case without memorizing it or having to wade through the text in the casebook.

Here is a brief I've done for one of the cases we'll be talking about tomorrow. At this stage, we're not reading cases for points of substantive law (it's not actually that important, in the case below, what 19th century British law says about employer liability and workman's comp). Rather, we're interested in seeing how the law develops over time and how it functions in response to different challenges (so in this case, we are interested in how a common-law court dealt with a new legal question by looking at potentially analogous situations it had addressed in the past, considering questions of social utility/policy, and then clarifying the issue of implied contracts and duties between masters and servants in a way that had not been done before).

Enjoy!

Priestly (servant) v. Fowler (master)

Procedural History

  • Priestly sued Fowler for thigh injury
  • Court awarded 100 pounds to Priestly
  • Fowler appealed (obtained a rule to show cause why the judgment should not be arrested)

Issues

Main issue:

Does the nature of the master/servant relationship imply a contract with the associated duty being that it is the responsibility of the master (Fowler) to ensure his servant’s (Priestly’s) safety?

Secondary issue:

Is the servant bound to risk his safety in the service of his master, or could Priestly have refused Fowler’s request to transport the goods in the van if he had reasonably apprehended danger to himself in carrying out that request?

Non-issue:

How does Fowler’s liability relate to his knowledge of the repair and loading status of the van?

Facts

  • Fowler, as master, directed his servant Priestly to transport goods in a van
  • The van was in disrepair, was overloaded, and Fowler was not properly secured within the vehicle
  • The van broke-down and Fowler fractured his thigh as a result

Rule of Law

The court recognizes “implied in law” terms to the contract between a stagecoach passenger and the stagecoach company, but there is “no precedent for the present action by a servant against a master.”

Reasoning

  • Because Fowler’s knowledge of the status of the van is unknown, the court will not treat his liability as it relates to his awareness of the van.
  • The servant is not bound to risk his safety and can refuse his master’s request.
  • There is no such implied contract between master and servant. Furthermore, a general servant has knowledge of the situation that a stagecoach passenger does not, so the analogy between the stagecoach and the master does not apply.
  • To have the master liable to the servant would have bad policy consequences.

Holding

The judgment was arrested (Lord Abinger), and Fowler was not required to pay Priestly.


VC

PS: It's totally not important in these cases what court the case appeared in (because it's an obscure British court that no longer exists) or who the legal personalities involved were (which is something we might focus on a lot more in a more recent Supreme Court ruling).