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Today’s Lecture:

Jurisdiction and Goals

1. Jurisdiction and the game of “forum shopping”

2. Legal goals and their procedural structure

Lecture Organization:

• Class Announcements

• Brief Review

• More about the paper

• Getting Perspective

• Federal Court Jurisdiction

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• Forum Shopping

• Structuring Goals and Remedies

Class Announcements

1. First quiz posted tonight

-- 7 days to take it

-- assigned readings and the lectures

2. Steelers are still awesome

3. answering student questions

-- example: “when is the quiz?”

-- students are charged with course knowledge when lectures are online

-- there is no such thing in my class as “I wasn’t here.” That is not only NOT an excuse, it is no longer TRUE.

Class Announcements

3. Comment repository on online lectures ….

-- take a look: MyWebsite

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Questions?

More about the paper

1. neglected to emphasize something important

-- subject comparison and contrast

(you want to pick subjects that either make for a good comparison, or, at the very least, are not clones of one another)

Interview Paper (example):

prosecutor and a defense lawyer

Injury lawyer and an insurance defense lawyer

More about the paper

Observation Paper:

-- magistrate and trial court hearings

-- appellate court and trial court (difficult)

-- jury versus a bench trial?

2. Start lining up your subjects. Procrastination kills.

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Questions?

Review

1. The trial court and its power over the record

2. Appellate courts and their power over a form of law called “precedent”

3. Basic structure of the judiciary

4. Magistrate, petty and “recordless” courts

5. State versus federal court system

6. Court culture

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Let’s Get Some Perspective

1. We are in the process of learning the rules of monopoly …

2. Being presented with temporal organization ..

What Court?

Procedure organized by chronological sequence

Pleadings

Right paperwork

Pretrial practice

Getting information

Settling Cases

Frivolous or deficient cases

Trial AppealWhat For?

Type of Case, Remedy

Court structure, Organization and Culture

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Jurisdiction and Strategy

Jurisdiction

1. What is jurisdiction?

-- the power of the Court to hear a case

2. There are many kinds of cases that can be filed –

• juvenile, divorce, injury, criminal, misdemeanor, felony, bankruptcy, contracts, small claims, big claims, etc., etc.

3. There are rules that determine what court can hear what case.

… let’s first look at the state system

Supreme Court

Intermediate Appellate Court

Trial Court

State Court Trial

Jurisdiction

Magistrate or city courts

Court of General Jurisdiction –

Handles everything not specifically taken away.Misdemeanors Smaller civil cases

Felony Trials Bigger Civil CasesSpecialized Courts

Family Court– (state system)

Juvenile Court– (state system)

Jurisdiction

4. Federal Court Jurisdiction …

-- Federal courts do not hear family law matters

-- there are two basic kinds of federal court jurisdiction

-- very simple: federal courts hear any case that alleges a violation of federal law

Question:

What kinds of cases do federal courts handle?

Question:

Do they handle only the most important

cases in the country?

Answer:

No, they are not in the same kind of relationship that magistrate court is

with the trial court

Question:

Do they handle only cases concerning

interstate subject matter?

Answer:

No, not really. Parties to cases do not have to cross state borders

before a federal court can hear the case

Federal Question

JudLeg

… This is what courts are for!

State

Federal GovtJud

Exec

ExecLegPass Laws

Pass Laws

Adjudicate state law violations

Adjudicate fed law violations

“Federal Question” jurisdiction simply means

hearing a case that alleges someone broke one of “Uncle Sam’s”

rules.

Question:

Give me an example of a federal question …

• Constitutional violation

(e.g., Abortion)

• Federal criminal law

• Discrimination

(Civil Rights Act)

Jurisdiction

-- However, there is a SECOND kind of federal court jurisdiction

-- very strange invention

-- you can IMPORT a state law claim into the federal system if …

-- the claim appears to be worth $75,000 or more

-- not a family law matter; and

… COMPLETE diversity of citizenship

Question:

Anyone know what it is?

Diversity Jurisdiction

Question:

How does it work?

State-A State-B

Complete diversity: all the plaintiffs are from one state, all the defendants are from another

Bob Sally

If any of the defendants are from plaintiff states, you do not have complete diversity

= “sues”

Complete diversity

John No diversityStill no diversity

What if John and Sally are the plaintiffs?

JudLeg

… Major question

State

Federal GovtJud

Exec

ExecLegPass Laws

Pass Laws

Adjudicate fed law violations

If each government has its own court system …

Question:

Why are we allowing one government to import another’s

rule violations?

Adjudicate state law violations

Avoid “home court advantage” Time

Forum Shopping

1. Consider these hypotheticals …

-- out of state corporation injures a local citizen

(e.g., a Coke truck hits a little girl in the city street)

-- injuries are particularly severe

grandma is walking across the street

-- hit by a drunk, out-of-state student

-- she dies

Out-of-state DUI student

Question:

How does the community feel about this behavior?

Question:

Where is the jury pool going to be drawn from?

Question:

What attitudes might the judge have about this

case and why?

Question:

Does the fact that the judge lives in the community affect

anything??

Out-of-state corporation

Forum Shopping

2. Diversity jurisdiction is designed to give out-of-state litigants a chance to have a more balanced forum

(side point: notice that if the adversary system worked like a crystal ball, you wouldn’t need to have this concern)

3. Is this the end of the story, however?

-- just sue someone from the home state, too

• The bar who served the student???

• The state or city planners who constructed the intersection (negligent design)

[note: tell story of West Virginia intersection].

[Mention how safe everything looks around here. Cross walks are like end zones].

Question:

How might good legal preparation defeat this

rule?

Question:

Who else might we accuse of being

responsible for these injuries?

illustration

Normal intersection

Forum Shopping

• negligent snow removal? Failure to police speeders? Cross walk signal not audible?

• University?

-- the location of the busses blocked the view

-- carelessness in where to designate bus stops

-- poor lighting on the university side of College Ave.

POINT: find a good faith allegation that you can invent against another in-state defendant, and you have secured yourself “home court advantage”

-- this is perfectly legal, and good plaintiffs lawyers will do it if it is reasonably possible

Question:

What does this have to do with getting at the truth?

Notice:

Your midterm cometh!

Forum Shopping

4. Let’s consider the differences between the two fora

• state court judges and motions for summary judgment

-- more likely to be denied (good for the plaintiffs bar)

• federal court jury pool is larger (better for diversity, if that helps your case)

• federal court settlement conference procedures are different

POINT: a good lawyer will evaluate this before picking a state or federal forum

-- this is called “forum shopping”

Forum Shopping

5. “Duplicity in legal cause”

-- where the federal sovereign and the state sovereign have the same or similar laws.

(the state and federal law prohibits the same thing)

• Civil Rights Laws

POINT: before you file, you are going to do a strategic assessment

-- jury pool better in feds or state? [mention rural county attitudes]

-- which law is potentially more advantageous? [punitive damages, attorney fees]

Question:

Someone give me an example of this.

Question:

Let’s say you are a victim of discrimination, which

court are you going to file in, and why?.

Question:

What does this have to do with the truth?

Note that this has nothing to do with diversity jurisdiction!

Forum Shopping

6. “Multiple Adjudication”

-- if two sovereigns have the same laws, can you try the same case TWICE (once in each forum)?

Example: drug laws

-- same “transaction and occurrence”

“separate sovereign rule”

-- different sovereigns, same crime, does not violate double jeopardy

Criminal Rule

Careful! Old case

Forum Shopping

-- “Cooperative federalism”

(divide up the labor: feds take the big fish; states the smaller ones)

-- change the crime

(civil rights violation instead of murder)

[Rodney King, missing persons case in Indiana]

-- Another example:

• murder (shooting across state line)

• DUI laws

not the same “transaction and occurrence!”

illustration

State-A State-B

Question:

Does this even INVOLVE the separate sovereign

rule?

You are DUI here

And you are DUI there

Answer:

No separate sovereign involved!

Mike Vick – facing charges in Virginia, too?

Forum Shopping

-- the rule for multiple adjudication in civil cases

-- “Res Judicata” (claim preclusion)

1. same claimant against same defendant

2. first suit ended with a judgment on the merits

3. involving the same event

-- Therefore, civil parties cannot sue twice.

-- can’t invoke this in criminal cases because the parties change whenever the sovereign does.

Civil Rule

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-- so far, we’ve talked about which court to select

-- now we want to talk about something else:

• why are we doing this in the first place?

• what is it that we want out of this transaction?

• What types of rules apply to the kind of thing we want?

-- There are different types of lawsuits, each with distinct procedure

Criminal cases, civil cases, equitable remedies, damages, etc.

… let’s take a look …

Structuring Goals and Remedies

object label

resolution

final order executio

n

The goal that we want out of the litigation

object label

resolution

final order executio

n

What we call the lawsuit that facilitates this goal

object label

resolution

final order executio

n

How the system will decide who wins or loses

object label

resolution

final order executio

n

What we call the formal court paper granting the relief at the conclusion of the case

object label

resolution

final order executio

n

How the “final order” is complied with (the process for complying)

object label

resolution

final order executio

n

life, liberty

criminal case

larger juries

12-person: Felony6-person: misdemeanor

higher burden of proof

confinement order

Grants permission for you to be jailed

sheriff takes you away

If you are lucky, maybe they will grant you permission to self report

Property, “money”

civil case

smaller juries

Usually, 6-person

judgment

writ of execution

Is like a license that enables someone to take your property to satisfy the amount

This is how they take it. Three basic options:

(a) Have sheriff physically seize property

(b) bank levy

(c) a wage garnishment

Costs money; bankruptcy can stop it.

“do” or “not to do” We want someone to take

affirmative steps to do something, or we want someone to refrain from doing something

equitable remedy

bench trial

No jury

• injunction

• writ of prohibition

• writ of mandamus

Contempt of courtQuestion:

Can you give me an example of this?

-- prohibition/injunction = don’t do

-- mandamus = do

[example: civil rights and desegregation]

[explain a “restraining order”]

Good Quiz Question:

What if someone loses a civil case and has a judgment against them. Is it contempt of court not to pay?

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