Complete
case brief of Nix v. Williams. You will see an example of a case brief
in your Week 7 Packet, along with a separate document with helpful hints for
how to brief a case. The Nix case can be found here: supreme.justia.com/us/467/431/case.html
In
a nutshell, the case brief is an explanation of what the court decided in the
case and why. See the attached worksheet as well as the resources under Case
Brief for information and examples. I expect the following sections:
Case citation
Facts
Procedural History
Legal Issues
Decision of the Court
Legal Analysis (should be the longest section)
Please remember that if you cut and paste something from the internet into your assignment, that is plagiarism and you will receive a 0 for the assignment and be reported to the school. A brief should not have footnotes and all citations should be in-text. Please submit to Turnitin
Case citation
Facts
Procedural History
Legal Issues
Decision of the Court
Legal Analysis (should be the longest section)
Please remember that if you cut and paste something from the internet into your assignment, that is plagiarism and you will receive a 0 for the assignment and be reported to the school. A brief should not have footnotes and all citations should be in-text. Please submit to Turnitin
Please submit all Assignments as a single word document
Example of a CaseBrief:
Case
Citation: Delahanty
v. Hinckley, 564 A.2d 758 (D.C. 1989).
Parties: Thomas
and Jean Delahanty, Plaintiffs / Appellants
John
Hinckley, Defendant / Appellee
Facts:
Thomas Delahanty was seriously injured when John Hinckley attempted to
assassinate President Ronald Reagan.
John Hinckley used a “Saturday Night Special” in the assassination
attempt that was manufactured by R. G. Industries, a subsidiary of Roehm.
Procedural
History: Appellants
filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against John
Hinkley, R.G. Industries, the gun manufacturer, Roehm, the manufacturer’s
foreign parent company, and individual officers of Roehm, for injuries
Appellant Thomas Delahanty suffered when Hinkley attempted to assassinate
President Ronald Reagan. The District Court dismissed appellants’ complaint
against R.G. Industries, Roehm, and individual officers of Roehm for failure to
state a claim. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia Circuit certified the question of whether, in the District of
Columbia, “manufacturers and distributors of Saturday Night Specials may be
strictly liable for injuries arising from these guns’ criminal use” to the
District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
Issue:
Whether established theories of tort law in the District of
Columbia provide a cause of action against gun
manufacturers and distributors for injuries arising from the guns' criminal
uses?
Holding: No. There is no basis under the law of the
District of Columbia for holding the gun manufacturer and its officers liable
for John Hinckley’s criminal use of the gun.
Reasoning:
Appellants
advanced the following three theories in support of their position:
1. Strict
liability for sale of defective product
The court rejected this theory of liability because
appellants put on no evidence that the weapon Hinkley purchased and later used
in the assassination attempt was in any way defective. Rather, appellants
argued that the manufacturers had a duty to warn of the dangers of criminal
misuse of the gun. The court found this argument unpersuasive, pointing out
that a manufacturer has no duty to warn because the dangerous nature of guns
self-evident.
2.
Strict liability for abnormally dangerous activity
Appellants argued that the manufacturer
should be held liable because the Saturday Night Special is “inherently and
abnormally dangerous with no social value. The “abnormally dangerous activity”
doctrine had never been applied to gun manufacturers in the District of
Columbia. The Court rejected this
application of the doctrine, since selling weapons is not an abnormally
dangerous activity “in and of itself.”
In response to appellants’ reliance on Kelly v. R.G. Industries,
304 Md. 124, 497 A.2d 1143 (1985), the court stated that it is not just cheap
guns that may potentially by used to commit crimes, and that the Maryland
legislature had specifically overridden the Kelly decision.
3. Negligence
While the general rule is that no tort liability
exists for harm resulting from the criminal acts of third parties, an exception
sometimes comes in to play when a special relationship exists between
parties. Examples of such “special”
relationships include landlord / tenant, hospital / patient, and school /
student relationships. The court declined
to extend this special relationship status to gun manufacturers and sellers /
gun purchaser, as Appellants neither argued that any special relationship
existed, nor suggested any way that gun manufacturers could prevent their gun
purchasers from misusing the purchased gun for criminal acts.
Decision:
The court certified the answer back to the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that there was no theory of
liability in the District of Columbia under which the gun manufacturer and its officers
could be held liable for Hinckley’s criminal misuse of the gun.
Comment:
This
case gives a good example of how appellate courts may certify issues to other
courts (either lower or in different jurisdictions) for opinions. In this case, the U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals for
the District of Columbia (federal appellate court) certified the issue to a
Washington D.C. court because it presented a question of local law, not federal
law.
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