4: Case Briefing - Procedural History, Disposition, Applicable Statutes and Facts

Finding and Understanding the Procedural History

An important first step in writing your case brief is making sure you understand who’s who in terms of parties, lower courts and reviewing courts. Much of this information is contained in the caption of the court decision you are briefing, along with a lot of other information about the case.

Finding and Understanding the Disposition

The easiest place to find the reviewing court’s disposition is at the end of the majority opinion. In Ennabe v. Manosa, this is found on Page 33 of the opinion:

Writing the Disposition

Again, resist the temptation to simply copy and paste from the reviewing court’s decision! Instead, put the Disposition into your own words. There are many correct ways to do so; just make sure your Disposition contains all of the following content:

• The name of the Appellant. You can include the Appellant’s full party designation if you wish, but it’s not required
• A statement of the what the reviewing court did to the lower court’s action that is being reviewed
• A description of the impact/result of the reviewing court’s action on the parties’ claims

Here’s how the Disposition for the Ennanbe v. Manosa opinion decision could be written:

The Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeal's affirmation of the trial court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Manosa, and ordered Ennabe's ’ claims against the Defendants reinstated.

That’s it. No facts about underage drinking, and no explanation of why the Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals.

Remember, when you prepare your final draft of your case brief, the Disposition will go at the end. It’s helpful to write the Disposition right after you write the Procedural History because the two are so closely related.

Finding and Understanding the Applicable Statute(s)

The first step is to find the actual statute that is being interpreted and applied to the parties involved in the appeal. This can be tricky because reviewing courts also typically mention statutes that define the procedure that must be followed in the appeal (sometimes called the Standard of Review). The reviewing court may also mention the statute that gave the parties the right to file a certain motion (such as a Motion for Summary Judgment or a Motion to Dismiss). That means the first statute you come across in the decision might not be the substantive statute being interpreted in the decision and applied to the parties’ claims.

Modern courts typically identify the primary statute(s) being interpreted in the introductory paragraphs. For instance, on Pages 1 and 2 of the Ennabe v. Manosa opinion, the Supreme Court identified Business and Professions Code section 25602.1 as the statute at issue in its review:

It is critically important to read the entire decision thoroughly and carefully and use a highlighter or other methods to mark the statutes the reviewing court is interpreting and applying. Look for portions of the decision discussing the meaning and/or application of words or phrases in a statute beyond just a citation of the statute.

Writing the Applicable Statute(s)

Once you have found the statute(s) the reviewing court is interpreting and applying in its decision, writing the Applicable Statutes section of your case brief is fairly simple:

• Start with the complete and proper California Style Manual citation of the statute
• Copy and paste the actual language of the statute and put it in quotation marks
• If the statute is long or contains a lot of words and phrases that aren’t directly relevant to the legal questions on appeal, revise the statute by taking words out or paraphrasing it.

Do not include the reviewing court’s interpretation of the statute, or an explanation of its meaning. Include only the words of the statute itself. Here is the applicable statute in the Ennabe v. Manosa case brief:

Bus. & Prof. Code, § 25602.1: "Notwithstanding subdivision (b) of Section 25602, a cause of action may be brought by or on behalf of any person who has suffered injury or death against any person licensed, or required to be licensed, pursuant to Section 23300, or any person authorized by the federal government to sell alcoholic beverages on a military base or other federal enclave, who sells, furnishes, gives or causes to be sold, furnished or given away any alcoholic beverage, and any other person who sells, or causes to be sold, any alcoholic beverage, to any obviously intoxicated minor where the furnishing, sale or giving of that beverage to the minor is the proximate cause of the personal injury or death sustained by that person."

Understanding the Facts

The substantive facts tell us what happened to the persons involved in the appeal. Unlike procedural facts (which we detailed in the Procedural History and Disposition sections of the case brief), the substantive facts are the who, what, when, where, why (sometimes) and how of the contract, accident, transaction, etc., that forms the basis of the original court action. There are generally three different types of facts: legally significant, contextual (background) and irrelevant.

Legally significant facts are those facts that directly lead to or otherwise affect the legal outcome of the case. If the legally significant facts are changed, the outcome would likely change as well. Whether a fact is legally significant depends upon the legal issue in question. For example, the date of an accident would be legally significant if there was a question as to whether the statute of limitation had passed. In contrast, if there is no issue as to the statute of limitation, the date of the accident is merely background information.

Contextual facts provide you some background or “flavoring” of the case. Although such facts do not impact the legal issue, they do help us understand the issue better. Think of contextual facts as similar to supporting characters in a movie or book. Often, they help us to understand the main character and the plot, and their interaction with the main character adds interest.

Irrelevant facts are neither legally significant nor contextual. They really don’t add to our understanding and simply take up space. Usually, irrelevant facts relate to minor details, such as the color of the car the defendant was driving, or the name of the hairstylist the plaintiff uses. If you always keep the legal issue in front of you, it’s easy to determine which facts are irrelevant. If they don’t directly affect the legal issue, or help you to understand it, they are irrelevant.

Suppose the issue is whether the defendant breached a legal duty (one of the elements of negligence). A witness tells you the defendant drove a new blue SUV through a red light and smashed into the plaintiff’s old white Geo Metro. The fact that the defendant failed to stop at a red light is legally significant. The fact that the defendant drove a blue car is irrelevant. The location of the accident, the facts that the defendant drove a large SUV and the plaintiff drove a sub-compact, are contextual.

Finding the Facts

The facts are usually pretty easy to find. Typically, there is a distinct “facts” section of each decision. Sometimes the court uses a heading, as in the Ennabe v. Manosa case where it is titled “Background”. In shorter decisions, the facts section starts with a paragraph that states something like, “The following facts are before us on this appeal.” The synopsis also usually has a general statement of the facts. Be careful! Sometimes the “facts” or “background” section of the decision doesn’t contain all of the facts. The court may include additional legally significant facts when it discusses its holding or its reasoning. It can be helpful to highlight all instances of facts as you read the decision and decide later if the facts are legally significant, contextual or irrelevant.

Like many decisions, the Ennabe v. Manosa opinion has a “Background” section that contains most of the facts (facts highlighted):

This is not the only place in the decision that contains the facts. Later on in the decision, when discussing who owned the drinks at issue in Ennabe v. Manosa, the Court repeated these facts:

When facts are repeated in the reviewing court’s decision, or discussed in the portion of the decision that explains the reviewing court’s legal analysis, there’s a good chance those facts are legally significant.

Based on what we see in the decision, we know that:

With respect to the Ennabe’s appeal, the legally significant facts are those that relate to:

• A charge for entry to the party in which alcohol was served
• Payment for entry allowed guests, including minors, to consume alcohol
• A minor consumed alcohol

With respect to the Ennabe's appeal, the contextual facts are those that relate to:

• Who actually purchased the alcohol
• Where the minors drank the alcohol
• Whether someone served or distributed the alcohol or everyone who drank the alcohol
• Garcia's role at the party and his behavior that led to Ennabe's death

Writing the Facts

As with many of the other sections of your case brief, resist the temptation to simply copy and paste from the reviewing court’s decision! Instead, write the facts in your own words. Think about how you want to organize the facts. Most of the time you’ll write the facts as a chronological story about what happened. Here’s one way you could write the facts for the Ennabe v. Manosa appeal:

Jessica Manosa threw a party at a vacant rental house owned by her parents, Carlos and Mary Manosa, without their permission. The party was spread by word of mouth, phone calls, and text messages, bringing in 40 to 60 people, most of whom were under 21 years old, including Manosa.

Manosa used $60 of her own money to buy alcohol for the party, including rum, tequila, and beer. Manosa asked another guest to act as a bouncer at the gate. He was supposed to control who came in and charge uninvited guests $3 to $5 to get inside. The money collected, which was around $50 to $60, was used later in the night to buy more alcohol for the party. Once inside, people could drink the alcohol provided. Thomas Garcia, an uninvited guest who didn’t know Manosa, paid the fee to enter the party and drank at the party. Andrew Ennabe, a friend of Manosa and an invited guest, also attended the party.

At the party, Garcia became loud and inappropriate. He made rude and threatening comments to female guests, and either he or a friend dropped his pants at some point. Garcia’s behavior got him kicked out of the party. Ennabe and other guests escorted Garcia and his friends to their car. As they left, one of Garcia’s friends spit on Ennabe, which led to a chase into the street. Garcia, now driving, ran over Ennabe, causing severe injuries. Ennabe later died from those injuries.

If you compare the above paragraphs to what you read in the Ennabe v. Manosa opinion, you can see that the legally significant facts are included in detail, whereas contextual facts (most notably the facts about the accident and Ennabe’s injuries) are merely summarized.

Now that you have the Procedural History, Disposition, Applicable Statutes and Facts of the Ennabe v. Manosa decision, you have a good foundation for understanding and writing the case brief sections that explain the Court of Appeals’ legal analysis: The Issues, Holdings, and Reasoning sections.

Contributors

4: Case Briefing - Procedural History, Disposition, Applicable Statutes and Facts is shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Beth R. Pless, J.D. (Northeast Wisconsin Technical College) & edited and curated by James C. Harman, Assistant Professor, Santa Ana College.