Case Brief

Taylor v. Baseball Club of Seattle, L.P., 132 Wash.App. 32 (2006)

Case Brief Instructions

In this course, you will be required to read cases and write “case briefs” in which you provide a synopsis of a legal case. These case briefs will follow the “IRAC” format of legal analysis, which we will discuss in class and which is discussed in these instructions. The goal of a case brief is to condense the court’s opinion in a case into an easy to read synopsis for future reference.  Lawyers use case briefs to help them understand and make sense of voluminous and complex court opinions.  Learning to brief cases is an excellent exercise to help you both understand the law better, but also just to help your general reading comprehension and analysis skills as well as your writing skills. Synopsizing complex information is a common type of writing you are required to do in a business environment. 

In this class, your case briefs must meet the following requirements:  

· With respect to formatting, your case brief must be written in 12 point, Times New Roman font,
single spaced (0pt between lines

) with double spacing between paragraphs/sections. 
Both your right and left margins must be justified
.  If you don’t know how to justify the right margin in Word, it is a very simple setting. If you Google “how to justify right margins in Word” or something similar, you will find numerous videos and tutorials online which will show you how to do it. Headings must be bold font.  Failure to follow these formatting requirements will result in a reduction to your grade.  I have provided you with a sample case brief that is formatted properly which you can use as a template. 

· There is no set page length minimums or maximums, but I would expect you should be able to brief the cases in this course in 1-2 pages.  The point of a case brief is to have a concise document for easy reference, so focus on providing sufficient detail about the case, but doing so in as concise a manner as possible. 

· I will be grading for content as well as for grammar, sentence structure, style, etc.  Your case briefs should look like professional quality documents you would be proud to produce to an employer at work!

· It is acceptable to have a little bit of quoting from the opinion, particularly for very important parts of the court’s ruling which are important to record exactly.  However, most of the brief (with the exception of the “Rule” section) should be in your own words.  The point of the assignment is to learn to process and write a synopsis of complex information – you should not just be copying and pasting.  Excessive copying and pasting from the case will result in a significant point reduction, up to and including receiving a zero on the assignment!

· Plagiarism is an academic dishonesty violation, and I will be checking for plagiarism closely. You should not go search online for an existing case brief and copy it. If I find any copying, then you will receive punishment for academic dishonesty, up to and including a failing grade in the course.

· These case briefs are individual assignments. You should not be collaborating with others in the class in drafting your answer.

With respect to content, your case briefs must contain the following sections: 

· Title: A title that includes the name of the case with its citation.  You will find this information in the title of the case document. 

· Procedural Background: A section titled “Procedural Background.”  All of the cases you will be assigned to read are appellate cases.  That means that something happened to the case at the trial level and the action of the trial court has been appealed by one (or both) of the parties.  If the case you have been assigned is a Supreme Court case, then the case will have been appealed from the trial court to an intermediate Circuit Court of Appeals (for example, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Texas and some other states), and from there to the Supreme Court of the United States.  If the case you have been assigned is from a Circuit Court of Appeals, the case will have just been appealed from a trial court.  In the Procedural Background section, you will describe what happened in the case that led to the case ending up in an appellate court.  You will find this information in the case – make sure you read closely and locate it.

· Facts: A section titled “Facts.”  In this section, you will provide a brief synopsis of the factual basis of the case.  This case explains the factual background of what happened to the parties that led to a lawsuit being filed.  Make sure you focus on setting out all of the relevant facts necessary to understanding the case.
You want to be concise in this section, but you still must provide enough information to the reader that your reader can read your Fact section and have a basic understanding of why the parties to the case ended up in a legal dispute.

· Issue: A section titled “Issue.”  In this section you must state the issue(s) that the court is resolving in the opinion.  Sometimes you will find that the court expressly addresses this in its opinion (The court may say something like “The issue before the court is . . . “).  Other times the court will not expressly state the issue and you will have to figure this out for yourself.  This section should be very short – one case may have multiple issues (or may not) but you should be able to state each issue before the court in one sentence. 
The issue statement should be stated as a question – the “issue” in a case is the legal question(s) that the court has to address to resolve the case.

· Rule: A section titled “Rule.”  In this section, you will set forth the legal rules/laws being applied by the court to resolve the case.  It is important that you state the law used by the court correctly so that the application section is correct. 
In this section, it is OK to do some direct copying of the rule so you are sure you are writing it correctly.  If you copy from the case, make sure you put any copying in quotes.

· A common mistake students make in this section is that they state the “ruling” of the court (i.e. the legal conclusion the court reaches) in this section.
You should not be stating the court’s ruling in this section. You should be laying out the law that the court uses to reach this ruling. Reference the sample case brief to see this distinction.

· Application: A section titled “Application.”  In this section, you will set forth a synopsis of the court’s application of the law to the facts of the case – i.e. the court’s reasoning that justifies its ruling.  
This is the “meat” of your case brief and is the most important part of this assignment.  This is where you explain the rationale behind the court’s ruling in your own words.  This should be your longest and most detailed section, and the section on which you spend the most time.  Focus on taking the oftentimes dense language of the court and trying to re-write it in a way that is easier to understand, while still capturing the essence of the court’s ruling. There should be little to no copying from the case in this section.  

· This is the section that students struggle on the most. The reason is because it is hard and it requires you to do a lot of independent thinking. Make sure you start on your briefs early enough that you can put a lot of attention into this section.

· The key to getting your Rule and Application sections right is to understand that they have to flow into each other.
If your Application section does not reference back to your rule section, then either your Rule section is wrong or your Application section is wrong. The Application section should be like showing your work in a math problem, and the Rule section is like the formula you are applying. They have relate to each other or the analysis doesn’t make sense.

· Conclusion: A section titled “Conclusion.”  In this section, you will state the court’s ruling – i.e. the court’s ultimate conclusion to the issue addressed in the case.  This section should be relatively short – for the cases in this class, one, maybe two sentences will suffice. Keep in mind in this section you are not explaining the rationale of the court (that is for the previous section) but just briefly stating the conclusion. 

· If you find yourself writing a lot in this section, you are not doing your brief correctly.

To help you with this assignment, I have provided you with a sample brief that I wrote. Learning to brief cases well can be difficult, but is a very important and valuable exercise.  The trick to doing well on these assignments is: 1. read the cases closely, 2. fully and completely follow the instructions, and 3. work hard on the assignment and don’t just try to find the answer online!  I have found that students frequently just want to “look up” the answer rather than do the work themselves.  Doing the work is the point – you’ll never learn to do something well unless you go through the process of learning rather than just copying.  There is also a good chance that whatever you find online is either incorrect or is not in the format I am looking for, so your grade will suffer anyway.

Taylor v. Baseball Club of Seattle, L.P., 132 Wash.App. 32 (2006)

130 P.3d 835

© 2018 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.

*Edited by Justin Blount

132 Wash.App. 32
Court of Appeals of Washington,
Division 1.
Delinda Middleton TAYLOR, formerly known as Delinda Middleton, an individual, Appellant,
v.
The BASEBALL CLUB OF SEATTLE, L.P., a Washington corporation, also doing business as Baseball of Seattle, Inc., a related Washington corporation, Respondent,
Washington Baseball Stadium Public Facilities District, a quasi-governmental entity; Jose Mesa and Mirla Mesa, individually and/or the marital community composed thereof; and Freddy Garcia, an individual, Defendants.
No. 55803–0–I.
|
Feb. 27, 2006.
|
Publication Ordered March 22, 2006.
Synopsis

Background: Spectator at baseball game who was injured by ball errantly thrown into stands during team’s pregame warm-up brought negligence action against team. The Superior Court, King County, Mary Yu, J., granted team summary judgment. Spectator appealed.
 

[Holding:]
The Court of Appeals, Dwyer, J., held that implied primary assumption of risk barred spectator’s action.
 
Affirmed.
 
Opinion

DWYER, J.
. . .

FACTS

¶ 2 On July 23, 2000, Delinda Middleton (now, Delinda Middleton Taylor) went to a Mariners game at Safeco Field with her then-boyfriend, Glen Taylor, and her minor sons, Gavin and Jordan. Their seats were in section 114, along the right field foul line and four rows up from the field. They arrived more than an hour before the game began to see the players warm up and to get their autographs. As they walked to their seats, Taylor saw that players were practicing nearby. Mariners pitcher Freddy Garcia was standing in front of section 114 on or about the right field line facing center field. He was throwing a ball back and forth with José Mesa, who stood in right center field approximately 120 feet away. As Taylor stood in front of her seat, she looked away from the field and a ball thrown by Mesa got past Garcia and struck Taylor in the face, causing serious injuries.
 
¶ 3 Taylor sued the Seattle Mariners, José Mesa, Mirla Mesa, and Freddy Garcia, asserting that they were liable for the allegedly negligent warm-up throw.1
 
¶ 4 The Mariners moved for summary judgment, claiming that (1) their duty to protect spectators from balls entering the stands was satisfied by providing a protective screen behind home plate, and (2) Taylor was familiar with baseball and the inherent risk of balls entering the stands, and therefore assumed the risk of her injury.
 
¶ 5 With respect to their assumption of risk defense, the Mariners relied on the following facts. Taylor was a Mariners fan; she had gone to one game at the Kingdome, and she watched their games on television. Taylor knew professional ballplayers do not always catch the ball and that the ball could leave the field during a game. Also, Taylor’s son Gavin played baseball for approximately six years and her son Jordan played for seven years. She went to almost all of their games, during which she saw balls enter the stands.
 
¶ 6 The Mariners’ pitching coach Bryan Price testified that the pitchers warm up by playing “long toss,” during which they throw the ball back and forth at increasing distances, with one standing on or near a foul line and the other in center field. Price stated that this method is followed to avoid other players who are warming up, including the visiting team, and minimize the possibility that a player could be hit by an errant throw. Price further claimed that this warm-up procedure, though unwritten, is customary to the sport and followed at every baseball level, from Little League to the Major Leagues.
 
¶ 7 Taylor argued that summary judgment for the Mariners should not be granted because she was not aware that her circumstances posed any risk of injury. She claimed she did not know how players warmed up and never thought about the possibility of a ball entering the stands and hurting someone during a warm-up. Taylor further argued that the Mariners’ warm-up method was negligent, contending that they should have a formal policy prohibiting pitchers from practicing near the stands.
 
¶ 8 The trial court granted the Mariners’ motion and dismissed Taylor’s claims. Taylor appeals.
 

DISCUSSION

¶ 9 Taylor contends that the trial court erred in dismissing her claims against the Mariners on summary judgment. Specifically, she argues that there are issues of material fact regarding whether the Mariners’ warm-up method was negligent and whether she assumed the risk of being injured by an errant throw.
 
. . .
II. Implied Primary Assumption of Risk

¶ 11 Throughout the United States, for many decades, courts have required baseball stadiums to screen some seats—generally those behind home plate—to provide protection to spectators who choose it. In Washington, the law has long been that baseball stadiums have a duty to screen some seats and, as a corollary, a spectator who takes a seat in the unscreened portion of a stadium assumes the risk of being struck by a baseball.
 
¶ 12 A sport spectator’s assumption of risk and a defendant sports team’s duty of care are accordingly discerned under the doctrine of primary assumption of risk. The doctrine serves as a complete bar to recovery when an injury results from a risk inherent in the activity in which the plaintiff was engaged: “Implied primary assumption of risk arises where a plaintiff has impliedly consented (often in advance of any negligence by defendant) to relieve defendant of a duty to plaintiff regarding specific known and appreciated risks.” The Court in Scott further explained:
One who participates in sports “assumes the risks” which are inherent in the sport. To the extent a plaintiff is injured as a result of a risk inherent in the sport, the defendant has no duty and there is no negligence. Therefore, that type of assumption acts as a complete bar to recovery. The doctrine of primary implied assumption of the risk can perhaps more accurately be described as a way to define a defendant’s duty.
Under this implied primary assumption of risk, defendant must show that plaintiff had full subjective understanding of the specific risk, both its nature and presence, and that he or she voluntarily chose to encounter the risk. Unlike contributory negligence, where the standard applied is that of a “reasonable person of ordinary prudence,” implied primary assumption of risk applies a subjective standard, one specific to the plaintiff and his or her situation.
III. Errant Throws Into the Stands are an Inherent Risk of Baseball

¶ 14 The questions presented here are as follows: (1) did the warm-up activities occur outside of the sporting event for which Taylor impliedly assumed the risks inherent in baseball; (2) is it unusual for a ball to enter the stands due to an errant throw; and (3) was the errant throw foreseeable and avoidable by Taylor, given her familiarity with the game?
 
¶ 15 First, Taylor fails to articulate any cognizable reason for us to find that the warm-up portion of the event is not encompassed within the spectator’s implied primary assumption of risk. No Washington case explicitly states that warm-ups are a necessary and inherent part of the sports event. However, it is undisputed that the warm-up is part of the sport, that spectators such as Taylor purposely attend that portion of the event, and that the Mariners permit ticket-holders to view the warm-up.
 
¶ 16 Therefore, we reject Taylor’s attempt to delineate between portions of the event and assign varying standards of care to the defendant. Instead, we adopt the reasoning of
Dalton v. Jones,
260 Ga.App. 791, 581 S.E.2d 360 (2003), which held that warm-ups are integral to the game of baseball and that a spectator assumes the risk of being struck by a baseball during warm-ups:
Whether the ball was thrown or tossed during an inning of play or between innings lacks legal significance because, as the trial court noted, “this throw occurred during a time which was necessary to the playing of the game, during which time the Plaintiff has assumed the risk of injury from bats, balls, and other missiles.”
. . .
 
¶ 17 The second element of Taylor’s argument is that there are issues of fact regarding whether she suffered an “unusual injury.” She relies on
Jones v. Three Rivers Management Corp.,
483 Pa. 75, 394 A.2d 546 (1978),
Maytnier v. Rush,
80 Ill.App.2d 336, 225 N.E.2d 83 (1967), and
Cincinnati Base Ball Club Co. v. Eno,
112 Ohio St. 175, 147 N.E. 86 (1925), to support the proposition that the Mariners violated the duty of care by leading Taylor into “unusual danger.”
 
¶ 18 However, these cases do not support Taylor’s argument. Eno and Maytnier simply stand for the proposition that there may be liability when the baseball activity or the location of the baseball activity is unusual, not when it is unusual that a person is injured. See
Eno,
147 N.E. at 89 (when, between games of a doubleheader, ball batted from unusual location into unscreened seats struck plaintiff, there was a question of fact whether the plaintiff was aware of the particular danger);
Maytnier,
80 Ill.App.2d 336, 225 N.E.2d 83 (where plaintiff was struck and injured by a ball that was not in play in the game, but was thrown from the bullpen to his left while his attentions were focused on the ball actually in play in the game to his right, court could not say defendant did not breach its duty as a matter of law). Jones is also inapposite because the plaintiff there was on an internal walkway, not in an unscreened seating section, when she was struck by a ball during batting practice. The court concluded there was an issue of fact regarding her assumption of the risk because the particular stadium design contained a walkway that was not associated with the way baseball is played or viewed.
Jones,
394 A.2d at 551.
 
¶ 19 Here, there is no evidence that the circumstances leading to Taylor’s injury constituted an unusual danger. It is undisputed that it is the normal, every-day practice at all levels of baseball for pitchers to warm up in the manner that led to this incident. The risk of injuries such as Taylor’s are within the normal comprehension of a spectator who is familiar with the game. Indeed, the possibility of an errant ball entering the stands is part of the game’s attraction for many spectators.
 
¶ 20 The third element of Taylor’s claim is whether the risk of injury would be foreseeable to a reasonable person with Taylor’s familiarity with baseball. The record contains substantial evidence regarding Taylor’s familiarity with the game. She attended many of her sons’ baseball games, she witnessed balls entering the stands, she had watched Mariners’ games both at the Kingdome and on television, and she knew that there was no screen protecting her seats, which were close to the field. In fact, as she walked to her seat she saw the players warming up and was excited about being in an unscreened area where her party might get autographs from the players and catch balls.
 
¶ 21 Taylor nonetheless contends that she could not possibly expect that an overthrow could occur because no one associated with the Mariners had ever seen someone hit by an overthrown ball during long toss. The fact that no one has been injured simply shows that long toss does not pose an unreasonable risk. It does not support Taylor’s contention that she did not assume the risk of an overthrow. Accordingly, Taylor assumed the risk of a ball entering the stands.
 
¶ 22 Taylor also claims she could not be expected to avoid an errant throw because there was more than one ball in play on the field. But this element has no bearing on Taylor’s case because she did not allege that she was distracted by any action on the field. In fact, she said that she had turned her attention away from the field and toward the seats when she was struck. A reasonable person in Taylor’s position would realize that, if she is standing behind players who are throwing a ball back and forth, there is a possibility a ball might not be caught, and that an uncaught ball might injure her if she does not pay attention.
 
. . .
 
¶ 24 Affirmed.
 
WE CONCUR: BECKER and AGID, JJ.
All Citations

132 Wash.App. 32, 130 P.3d 835

End of Document

© 2018 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.

Justin R. Blount

August 20, 2020

Case Brief

Yeagle v. Collegiate Times., 255 Va. 293 (1998)

Procedural Background:

Yeagle sued the Collegiate Times in the Circuit Court, Montgomery County, for common law defamation, defamation per se, and use of insulting words. The trial court dismissed all of Yeagle’s claims, holding that the statement at issue was “void of any literal meaning” and thus could not sustain her claims. Yeagle appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court.

Facts

Yeagle is the assistant to the Vice President of Student Affairs at Virginia Tech. As a part of her job she helped to oversee participation in the 1996 Governor’s Fellows Program. The Collegiate Times, Virginia Tech’s student newspaper, wrote an article about this program that quoted Yeagle. The article as a whole was complimentary of the program and said nothing negative about Yeagle. However, beneath the quote Yeagle’s name appeared with the phrase “Director of Butt Licking.”

Issue

Is the phrase “Director of Butt Licking” as used in this context incapable of being defamatory because it carries no factual meaning?

Rule

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution places limits on defamation claims such that “speech which does not contain a provably false connotation, or statements which cannot reasonably be interpreted as stating actual facts about a person, cannot form the basis of a common law defamation action.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that “insulting, offensive, or otherwise inappropriate language” cannot serve as a basis for a claim of defamation if “no reasonable inference could be drawn that the individual identified in the statements, as a matter of fact, engaged in the conduct described.”

When determining the meaning of words “inferences cannot extend the statements, by innuendo, beyond what would be the ordinary and common acceptance of the statement.”

Application

Yeagle advances two arguments for why the statement “Director of Butt Licking” is factual and defamatory. First, she asserts the phrase accuses her of a violation of the Virginia sodomy statute by alleging that she actually licks butts. Second, she asserts that the phrase implies that she does not perform her job with integrity, but rather tries to curry favor with superiors through “disingenuous behavior.”

The court rules that both of these arguments fail because of the context in which the phrase was made. The law requires that for a statement to be defamatory, it must carry some factual connotation that can be proven false. Additionally, the law requires that to make this determination, the words must be interpreted in their context in the way a normal, reasonable person would. In this case, the Collegiate Times’ article never mentions any sexual act whatsoever, and thus no reasonable reader would interpret the phrase “Director of Butt Licking” as accusing Yeagle of literally licking butts. With respect to the second argument, the article never accuses Yeagle of doing a poor job. Rather, the article is complimentary of the program she administered. Thus, no reasonable reader would interpret the phrase as accusing Yeagle of currying favor as she asserts.

The court states that in the context of this article, the statement “Director of Butt Licking” was nothing more than an offensive statement that was made in bad taste. No reasonable reader would interpret the statement as conveying any actual factual meaning about Yeagle, and thus the statements made about her are protected by the First Amendment and cannot serve as the basis for her defamation claim.

Conclusion

The court affirms the judgment of the trial court, holding that the statement at issue conveyed no factual information about Yeagle and thus could not serve as the basis for a defamation action.