David Allen Gore

The case to be assigned must be one of the appellate court decisions from the David Allen Gore cases.

CASE BRIEF FORMAT

FACTS- The facts section should only include those that were relevant to the courts decision.  In other words, a case brief should not include, the defendants eyes were blue, if the court didnt consider the color of the defendants eyes in making its decision.
ISSUE – Published cases are generally appellate, which means they were appealed from a lower court, such as the trial court, or a lower appellate court.  Therefore, the issue section of a case brief should begin with a question that centers around what happened in the lower court.
LAW-  Law includes cases, statutes, constitutions, administrative rulings, etc.  The court may use one case, or it could use only one statute, or it could use one case and one statute, etc.  Whatever it uses will be clearly cited in the case.

REASONING- by the time students get to this section of the case brief, they have analyzed and summarized the facts, formulated the issue(s) and cited the law the court used to make its decision. In other words, they should know the case very well.

HOLDING – This part of the case brief is generally very short.  It could be one or two words, e.g., affirmed, reversed, remanded, etc.  It is merely a restatement of the courts disposition of the case, i.e., its answer to the question(s) stated in the issue section of the case brief.  The following is the holding in the Dalk case.  It is generally longer than normal because there were several things decided.

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