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GuidetoReadingCases.docx

Guide to Reading Cases

Thank you very much to the several students who have contacted us and asked that we improve your understanding by including a guide to reading and understanding the cases. We consider the cases an important and integral part of the chapters. By viewing the court decisions included in the text, you get to see for yourself what the court considers important when deciding a given issue. This in turn gives you as a decision maker insight into what you need to keep in mind when making decisions on similar issues in the workplace. The more you know about how a court thinks about issues that may end up in litigation, the better you can avoid it.

We provide the following in order to help you better understand the cases so that you can use them to their fullest. In order to tell you about how to view the cases, we have to give you a little background on the legal system. Hopefully, it will only be a refresher of your previous law or civics courses.

Stare Decisis and Precedent

The American legal system is based on stare decisis, a system of using legal precedent. Once a judge renders a decision in a case, the decision is generally written and placed in a book called a law reporter and must be followed in that jurisdiction when other similar cases arise. The case thus becomes precedent for future cases.

Most of the decisions in the chapters are from federal courts since most of the topics we discuss are based on federal law. Federal courts consist of trial courts (called the “U.S. District Court” for a particular district), courts of appeal (called the “U.S. Circuit Court” for a particular circuit), and the U.S. Supreme Court. U.S. Supreme Court decisions apply to all jurisdictions, and once there is a U.S. Supreme Court decision, all courts must follow the precedent. Circuit court decisions are mandatory precedent only for the circuit in which the decision is issued. All courts in that circuit must follow the U.S. Circuit Court precedents. District court decisions (precedent) are applicable only to the district in which they were made. When courts that are not in the jurisdiction are faced with a novel issue they have not decided before, they can look to other jurisdictions to see how they handled the issue. If such a court likes the other jurisdiction’s decision, it can use the approach taken by that jurisdiction’s court. However, it is not bound to follow the other court’s decision if that court is not in its jurisdiction.

Understanding the Case Information

With this in mind, let’s take a look at a typical case included in this book. Each of the cases is an actual decision written by a judge. The first thing you will see is the case name. This is derived from the parties involved—the one suing (called plaintiff at the district court level) and the one being sued (called defendant at the district court level). At the court of appeals or Supreme Court level, the first name generally reflects who appealed the case to that court. It may or may not be page xliithe party who initially brought the case at the district court level. At the court of appeals level, the person who appealed the case to the court of appeals is known as the appellant and the other party is known as the appellee. At the Supreme Court level they are known as the petitioner and the respondent.

Under the case name, the next line will have several numbers and a few letters. This is called a case citation. A case citation is the means by which the full case can be located in a law reporter if you want to find the case for yourself in a law library or a legal database such as LEXIS/NEXIS or Westlaw. Reporters are books in which judges’ case decisions are kept for later retrieval by lawyers, law students, judges, and others. Law reporters can be found in any law library, and many cases can be found on the Internet for free on websites such as Public Library of Law (plol.org) or FindLaw.com.

Take a minute and turn to one of the cases in the text. Any case will do. A typical citation would be “72 U.S. 544 (2002).” This means that you can find the decision in volume 72 of the U.S. Supreme Court Reporter at page 544 and that it is a 2002 decision. The U.S. reporters contain U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Reporters have different names based on the court decisions contained in them; thus, their citations are different.

The citation “43 F.3d 762 (9th Cir. 2002)” means that you can find the case decision in volume 43 of the Federal Reporter third series, at page 762 and that the decision came out of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the year 2002. The federal reporters contain the cases of the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal from across the country.

Similarly, the citation “750 F. Supp. 234 (S.D. N.Y. 2002)” means that you can find the case decision in volume 750 of the Federal Supplement Reporters, which contain U.S. district court cases, at page 234. The case was decided in the year 2002 by the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York.

In looking at the chapter cases, after the citation we include a short blurb on the case to let you know before you read it what the case is about, what the main issues are, and what the court decided. This is designed to give you a “heads up,” rather than just dumping you into the case cold, with no background on what you are about to read.

The next line you see will have a last name and then a comma followed by “J.” This is the name of the judge who wrote the decision you are reading. The “J” stands for “judge” or “justice.” Judges oversee lower courts, while the term for them used in higher courts is “justices.” “C. J.” stands for “chief justice.”

The next thing you see in looking at the chapter case is the body of the decision. Judges write for lawyers and judges, not for the public at large. As such, they use a lot of legal terms (which we call “legalese”) that can make the decisions difficult for a nonlawyer to read. There are also many procedural issues included in cases, which have little or nothing to do with the issues we are providing the case to illustrate. There also may be many other issues in the case that are not relevant for our purposes. Therefore, rather than give you the entire decision of the court, we instead usually give you a shortened, excerpted version of the case containing only the information relevant for the issue being discussed. If you want to see the entire case for yourself, you can find it by using the citation provided just below page xliiithe name of the case, as explained above. By not bogging you down in legalese, procedural matters, and other issues irrelevant to our point, we make the cases more accessible and understandable and much less confusing, while still giving you all you need to illustrate our point.

The last thing you will see in the chapter cases is the final decision of the court itself. If the case is a trial court decision by the district court, it will provide relief either for the plaintiff bringing the case or for the defendant against whom the case is brought.

If a defendant makes a motion to dismiss, the court will decide that issue and say either that the motion to dismiss is granted or that it is denied. A defendant will make a motion to dismiss when he or she thinks there is not enough evidence to constitute a violation of law. If the motion to dismiss is granted, the decision favors the defendant in that the court throws the case out. If the motion to dismiss is denied, it means the plaintiff’s case can proceed to trial.

The parties also may ask the court to grant a motion for summary judgment. This essentially requests that the court take a look at the documentary information submitted by the parties and make a judgment based on that, as there is allegedly no issue that needs to be determined by a jury. Again, the court will either grant the motion for summary judgment or deny it. If the court grants a motion for summary judgment, it also will determine the issues and grant a judgment in favor of one of the parties. If the court dismisses a motion for summary judgment, the case proceeds to trial.

If the case is in the appellate court, it means that one of the parties did not like the trial court’s decision. This party appeals the case to the appellate court, seeking to overturn the decision based on what it alleges are errors of law committed by the court below. Cases cannot be appealed simply because one of the parties did not like the facts found by the lower court. After the appellate court reviews the lower court’s decision, the court of appeals will either affirm the lower court’s decision, which means the decision is allowed to stand, or it will reverse the lower court’s decision, which means the lower court’s decision is overturned. If there is work still to be done on the case, the appellate court also will order remand. Remand is an order by the court of appeals to the lower court telling it to take the case back and do what needs to be done based on the court’s decision.

It is also possible that the appellate court will issue a per curiam decision. This is merely a brief, unsigned decision by the court, rather than a long one.

Following the court’s decision is a set of questions that are intended to translate what you have read in the case into issues that you would likely have to think about as a business owner, manager, or supervisor. The questions generally are included to make you think about what you read in the case and how it would impact your decisions as a manager. They are provided as a way to make you think critically and learn how to ask yourself the important questions that you will need to deal with each time you make an employment decision.

The opening scenarios, chapter cases, and case-end questions are important tools for you to use to learn to think like a manager or supervisor. Reading the courts’ language and thinking about the issues in the opening scenarios and case-end questions will greatly assist you in making solid, defensible workplace decisions as a manager or supervisor.

(Bennett-Alexander xli-xliii)

Bennett-Alexander, Dawn. Employment Law for Business, 9th Edition. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 20180123. VitalBook file.

The citation provided is a guideline. Please check each citation for accuracy before use.