Contracts
Professor Knippenberg
BRIEFING FORMAT
Case Name: (e,g,, Hamer v. Sidway)
(Jurisdiction, Court, and Date), page (in casebook) (e.g., (Ct. App. N.Y. 1891) p. 47
Facts
The brief is organized chronologically, so the statement of facts (three or four sentences)
refers to pre-litigation facts. As yet, there is no plaintiff or defendant, so parties are
referred to by last name. Include only those facts necessary to formulate your statement
of the issue and holding. If a fact makes no difference to the outcome of the case,
exclude it.
Cause of Action
Who sued whom for what? This stage represents entry into litigation through a petition
or complaint filed in the trial court. As to the parties, continue to refer to the disputants
by name rather than litigation status. For this course, the name of the action will be either
Breach of Contract or Restitution.
Remedy
This is the relief requested by the plaintiff. State the remedy sought, whether or not it
was actually recovered. The remedy will ordinarily be money damages, but might be
injunction, specific performance, restitution, or declaratory judgment.
Decision
This part of the brief contains a procedural history of the case, beginning with appellant's
procedural step in the trial court, and ending with the disposition of the matter on appeal.
Example: Smith moved for summary judgment as against Jones. The District Court
denied the motion and entered judgment for Jones after trial. Smith appealed the denial
of the motion and the Texas Supreme Court reversed for appellant, Smith.
Issue
Be fact specific, not abstract. Avoid generalities like "Did defendant breach," or "Can
plaintiff recover." State in one sentence the question peculiar to this case, which it is
necessary to resolve before answering the ultimate question, who wins?
*The contract roadmap enters at this point to provide a basis on which to isolate the
issue and to locate it in the context of this course. You will also find that a useful course
outline will naturally emerge from this use of the roadmap.
Rule
The rule is abstracted from the holding and is a generalization devoid of facts of the case.
Strip the holding of its facts to arrive at a proposition that can be applied to like cases.
Contracts
Professor Knippenberg
Holding/Application
Apply the Rule to the facts to resolve the issue. The Holding differs from the Rule in that
the former is fact-specific to the case at hand, while the latter is a generality or
abstraction. It is an amalgam of the Rule and Issue.