Going To Law School

I still think that wouldn't need to apply here because you're talking about her controlling dangerous conduct toward her own property. But I guess you can argue it either way. Bottom line is go through the steps and do the analysis.

The way my prof basically breaks it down is like this:

- in most cases there's a general duty of care (act reasonably under the circumstances to avoid causing harm)
- in a small minority of cases, you can use "limited duty" rules to do away with duty (e.g. no duty to rescue strangers)
- in some of those small minority of cases, there are exceptions to the limited duty rules (e.g. you DO have a duty to rescue in special situations -- parent-child, spouse, contractual, actions have created or increased the peril, etc.)

We didn't do any cases that I can think of that were specifically about controlling the behavior of others. We did read a bit about social host liability with intoxicated guests. Generally there's limited or no liability, but there were exceptional example cases where the host was in a good and unique position to prevent a guest from driving and it was exceedingly obvious that the person should have been driving. It's a tough hypo I think.

Man, I wish my professor went over that stuff. He only mentioned it the last day of class. "Remember students, what we're looking for is duty, breach, causation, and damages." And we were all like, "wait, this stuff is supposed to go together?"

What I was thinking is that the lady would argue nonfeasance for her conduct in order to collect full damages ... she had no duty of care beacause she took no action in relation to driving + drinking, since due to his spotless driving record, etc., it's not negligent entrustment. General duty of care completely inapplicable here since it only relates to action. But the defendant can argue that the plaintiff owed him a duty of care under a special relationship, and since she failed that, she's partially responsible for the damages to her own car. It's a stretch, but he obviously wants us to consider these nuances, Iguess.

A general duty of care can never, ever be used when there's no action (nonfeasance) unless you can argue for special relationships or statutes.

No, most negligence cases involve general duty of care. If I shoot a gun up in the air, and a bullet comes down and hits you, do I have to have some special duty to you for you to recover?

An action is created out of the breach of the general duty of care. That's how I learned it, anyway. We didn't use the term "nonfeasance." But I guess that's the problem with people from two different torts classes trying to compare notes.

That's misfeasance, or an action taken by you that affects another person. Nonfeasance is someone watching you playing with a gun and it looks dangerous to other people, and he walks away without saying anything. Should he be held responsible if you shoot someone? He can't. Unless it's possible to argue some kind-of special relationship he had with you or a statute regarding the conduct... those are the only ways to apply duty to nonfeasance.

Misfeasance is one half of duty, nonfeasance is the second half.

ILX accepts no liability for the failure of burt_stanton, law student, on any of his 1L exams.

Why, am I totally wrong here? :{

Oh, nevermind. I'm in a "zone" here.

ah ok, nonfeasance = non-action or omission

spent 11:00 am - 9:00 pm in the library. not a bad haul. of course the damn Asian kid was still there when I left. Damn him to hell.

lol!

I'm in medical school and can relate.

Unfortunately my section has 3 kids from China. 3!!!!!!!!

http://tbn0.google.com/hosted/images/c?q=63f0739d4337abad_landing

There's only 3 As to be given in the class. 3 kids from China. Hmmm.

Wow, kids from China. Everyone knows every law school is dominated by kids from China. You might as well quit now.

I'm just being tongue in cheek

Today was not as good as it could have been. 10am-1pm outlining, 1-4pm study group meeting, break, 5-6 meeting with some other dudes to study more crap, pretty much did nothing but make dinner between 6 and 10pm, now at library doing some review questions. If not for Erie I'd be golden though.

Eh, there's plenty of time for Civ Pro. I think I"m finally getting a handle on torts ... duty, breach, causation, damages. Yeah. For creative assignment or creation of duty I've listed the 6-7 common law concerns duty holds plus our little categories we did, with causation I've got the a) actual cause then b) legal cause tests plus all sorts of doctrines, etc. etc. different uses for negligence and strict liability. Yeah. Getting there.

anyway, no more thinking about this until tomorrow...

Am I correct that strict liability only applies in unreasonably dangerous activities and in certain kinds of products liability? I haven't looked at that stuff for a week and I'm already forgetting it. Torts isn't until the 19th.

Lucky bastard, I have torts this Wednesday. I'm revisiting it tomorrow. It's so easy to forget everything ... that's why I'm rereading every. single. case. on. the. syllabus. Screw outlines, I'm going down and dirty.

That's a little crazy if you ask me. Especially since some of the cases we read were badly reasoned and I actually want to forget them so I don't confuse myself.

Anyway, having CivPro on Wednesday is no better.

When preparing for exams I used to study 2 or 3 of the key cases for each proposition in detail, and just skim the others. I think if you try to absorb 150 cases you may be asking for a brain snap.

Nah, the professor told us if we want to do well we have to study "the hard way", which he defined as rebriefing each case over again; my other professor said that my approach was hers, and she graduated first in class at NYU. I mean, each case is a different proposition or amends the previous concept ... we had 150 of them. It's not like we did 3 cases of the same exact thing.

Also each case reiterates common law principles, so the repetition helps, too. Well, we'll see.

and re-reading the cases after finally understanding the 'big picture' so to speak is illuminating. Anyway, what counts are the results, so whatever. I like tough mental work, though. Makes you feel like you're ... alive for once, if only for a moment.

re-reading the cases is an amazing waste of time. kudos!

there's like one sentence (the HOLDING) you would need from any of those cases for an exam. that's what outlines are for.

yep i would have read the cases during the course, but i wouldn't have re-read them during exam prep. my approach was to understand the key cases in depth, so that you can demonstrate your ability to critically analyse a decision and apply it to a set of facts... not demonstrate that you've retained every case that ever had the words 'duty of care' in the catchwords. I graduated with Honours. Good luck with your approach though!

burt are you doing problems like i told you to? cutty is right about re-reading the cases

yep doing practice exam problems is how i used to spend my exam prep time too. there's a limit to how much info you can squeeze into an exam answer. i reckon quality over quantity.

also you have to make sure you know how to spit out the information and organize it quickly--memorizing cases isn't going to help

so true... when you're doing your practice exams, trying to work out a generic framework to apply to each subject is definitely helpful. Broadly, I used to start with: state the issues, state the law (i.e. the key case authorities), apply the law to the facts - then refine it for each topic by testing it on practice examples.

My friend is in law school and has fallen behind in her outlining so she has been pulling all-nighters for the past few days to prepare for exams, poor thing.

Do people actually enjoy law school? I hear that the first year is the hardest and it gets better after that. More and more medical schools are becoming pass/fail in their first year (including mine) so I'm wondering what being graded and ranked could do to a student in law school.

This is not to say that medical schools don't grade and rank, but there definitely have been efforts to move away from doing that during the first-year at least.

i dunno, i think it's gotten "better" in that it's less stressful because i don't care about the stuff that 1L's care about. but it's also more boring because you've learned how to learn things already. i worked a lot more this semester and i like my job so much better than school. i'm not motivated for exams at all.

Do people actually enjoy law school?

LOL. MAYBE you enjoy an academic environment. but there is nothing fun about law school. especially when you graduate and realize the case law method has not taught you one thing about actually being a proficient (or self-sufficient) lawyer.

cutty otm! i am currently doing a grad dip in applied finance because the case law method taught me nothing about the commercial context of the matters i work on, and commercial realities probably carry more weight in the advice we offer clients than accurate and/or insightful legal research. still enjoying it though. except for the long hours thing.

Following the advice of the professor who wrote the exams: bad. Following the advice of a bunch of random internet people who never took this professor: good.

He wants us to apply the basic principles of common law and the theoretical underpinnings of the doctrines we studied ... that shit was definitely not evident in the holdings of any case we read.

sure it is. the book is written that way.

i'm sure your professor did NOT recomment re-reading the cases. that is batshit insane.

Nah, he said do it "the hard way". I talked to my professors about what I planned to do, and they gave it a hearty thumbs up ... and they were all the #1 or #2 students in their classes. "Rebriefing all your cases? That's a great idea!" said the former SCOTUS clerk, honors fellow, and #1 student at NYU law.

a fair few of my lecturers used to deliver a speech about how if you don't read every single case on the case list you'll never do well (although i don't recall anyone saying 'read all these 150 cases 2 or 3 times'). after a while it became a question of time for me though. there simply was not sufficient time to devote to reading and re-reading entire cases. everyone has a different approach though. realistically you don't have to follow the advice of the professor or the random internet people or anyone else... you might have to be a little more flexible than blindly following what every lecturer says to you to find an approach that really suits you though.

If it doesn't work, fair enough. but I'm really starting to understand this shit by doing this.

So gem, where did you graduate ... 1, 2, or 3 in your class?

eagerly awaiting the results of this experiment.

haha you're classic burt! you'll fit right in at law school, it's full of people like you