Case Research Online

1
Case Research Online

• Donna Nixon
• Head of Reference Services
• Lecturing Fellow

2
Structure of state federal courts-- 3 Levels

• Trial courts?
• Intermediate Appellate Court?
• Highest court (often called Supreme Court)

3
Jurisdiction Fed? State?

• Federal courts have jurisdiction of
• federal constitutional issues
• issues covered by federal law/statute
• State courts have jurisdiction over
• state level matters that are not trumped by
  federal law
• Some overlap of jurisdiction where there are both
  federal and state matters involved

4
There are other jurisdiction limitations for
courts

• Geographic-does this court cover this area of the
  country or world?
• Subject matter-does this court adjudicate these
  types of matters (e.g. bankruptcy, military,
  family courts)
• Over the person-does this court have authority to
  bind this person or entity to a judgment?

5
Map of federal circuits (district appeals
courts)
6
What is Case Law?

• Federal and state appeals courts generate written
  explanations of rulings in cases. These are
  called opinions but are often simply referred
  to as cases, case law or common law.

7
Publication of Opinions

• Why needed?
• How published?
• Slip opinion-one opinion published by itself (can
  find electronically on court website)
• Reporters-opinions from the same time period,
  kept in chronological order and bound together
  into reporter volumes.
• By jurisdiction
• By type of case

8
Precedent

• Precedent-a higher courts decision must be
  followed by a lower court in the same
  jurisdiction.
• Trial courts must follow decisions of the appeals
  and high courts in their jurisdiction.
• Appeals courts must follow decisions of the
  highest (supreme) court in their jurisdiction.
• What happens if a federal appellate court makes a
  decision on a state level matter? Is that
  decision binding on the states trial courts?

9
Case Reporters

• The multi-volume sets of court opinions published
  in sets called reporters.
• The federal government publishes the opinions of
  the U.S. Supreme Court, but not the opinions from
  the courts of appeals.
• West Publishing publishes most of the other
  federal appeals court cases in addition to also
  publishing their own copies of the U.S. Supreme
  Court cases (LexisNexis publishes U.S. Supreme
  Court cases too).
• West also publishes the opinions of state appeals
  courts in regional reporters and some state
  reporters.

10
Federal Case Reporters

• U.S. Supreme Court
• U.S. Reports (official)
• Supreme Court Reporter (West)
• Lawyers Edition (Lexis)
• Bankruptcy Reporter
• Other specialty court reporters military, court
  of claim, federal rules reporters, etc.
• Federal Supplement (West) prints some trial court
  cases

11
State Case Reporters

• State reporters either official govt
  publication or West publication covering only
  state court decisions.
• We have all states in our library. Your employer
  will likely have only one state reporter in
  print.
• There are NO state trial court decision
  reporters.
• Regional reporters West combines neighboring
  states into groups/regions and then binds
  together all the cases from the states in that
  region in one set of reporter volumes. Your
  employer may have a regional print reporter
  instead of a state reporter.

12
(No Transcript)
13
Sample Legal Citations

• Supreme Court Citations Turner Broad. Sys. v.
  FCC
• 520 U.S. 180 (What is the reporter name?)
• 117 S.Ct. 1174
• 137 L. Ed. 2d 369
• Federal Appellate Court Citations
• 397 F3d 570
• 968 F2d 158
• 91 F. 114
• Federal Trial Ct. Citation 21 F.Supp. 19
• State Regional Reporter 78 SE2d 980
• State Reporter (N.C.) 25 N.C. 250

14
What the reporters include

• Summaries-called headnotes (Note headnotes on
  official reporters are completely diff. from
  headnotes on West reporters)
• Full written opinions/decisions
• Concurring and dissenting opinions, if any
• Some tables and indexes (front and back of
  volumes)

15
Caption
West's summary of whole case
Headnote
16
More headnotes
17
Counsel for parties
18
Finding a case by citation

• Use Get a Document in Lexis
• Use Find in Westlaw

19
(No Transcript)
20
(No Transcript)
21
(No Transcript)
22
Searching Case Law by Subject

• You will often search for a case by subject
  rather than by citation. Best method ONE GOOD
  CASE METHOD-locate one case that is really on
  point, then use to find other cases on point.
  How?
• Ask assigning attorney if there is any case that
  illustrates issue.
• Look at annotations to relevant statute, legal
  encyclopedia, journal or ALR article.
• DOING A FULL-TEXT DB SEARCH IS LEAST EFFICIENT
  MEANS

23
How to use One Good Case

• Use headnotes in that case to find other cases
  with the same headnotes
• More like this in Lexis
• Custom Digest in Westlaw
• Read decision and note any earlier cases cited in
  that one good case.
• Shepardize or KeyCite the case to find later
  cases on point (those that have cited your case).

24
Full-Text Searching

• IF YOU MUST DO A FULL-TEXT SEARCH OF WL OR LEXIS
  CASE DATABASES
• Use narrower database to limit unnecessary
  searching For instance if you are looking for
  case law for New York State then choose the
  database that covers only New York. (otherwise
  waste time employers money)
• Type of search
• Terms Connectors-Boolean (using connectors
  and, or, not etc.)
• Natural language-keyword search w/out having to
  use booleans.
• Choose limiters (field/segment restrictions)
• Use date restrictions or other helpful
  restrictions to narrow down your search. (E.g.
  if issue deals with the e-commerce, you probably
  dont need to look at cases before 1990, b/c
  internet commerce wasnt happening b/4 then.)

25
Searching Case Law by Topic

• Full-Text Searching. Choose
• Type of search
• Terms Connectors-Boolean
• Natural language-keyword search w/out having to
  use booleans.
• Use narrower database to limit unnecessary
  searching
• Choose limiters (field/segment restrictions, date
  limiters)
• Brainstorm alternate keywords (eg. death
  penalty capital punishment). Terms also may
  change over time.

26
Practice locating updating cases

• Case Arizona attorney sued by former client for
  malpractice because failed to find relevant state
  statute when she represented her.
• B/4 going online, brainstorm key terms

27
Searching for a case Westlaw
28
(No Transcript)
29
(No Transcript)
30
Remember your search operations cheat sheet
31
(No Transcript)
32
(No Transcript)
33
(No Transcript)
34
(No Transcript)
35
After you have done a search

• If not many hits, broaden your terms (in some
  cases, may need to broaden jurisdiction
• Once get a good 50 or less, look through the list
  of hits for cases on point
• Use cases youve found to locate other cases on
  point (remember custom digest more like this)

36
(No Transcript)
37
(No Transcript)
38
(No Transcript)
39
(No Transcript)
40
(No Transcript)
41
Now we need to update it?
42
What is updating and how does it work?

• Each case decision discusses several issues.
• Headnotes are the summaries of each of the
  issues.
• When a case cites to an earlier case, editors at
  Lexis West use those summaries/headnotes to
  match the issues in the two cases and determine
  whether the court has made some change that
  affects the value of this case on this particular
  issue.
• To update a case, use Shepards (Lexis) or KeyCite
  (West) to find out if your case has been
  reversed/overturned, overruled, modified by
  another decision or a change in the applicable
  statute.

43
Updating Cases

• Use to
• check the prior and subsequent history of a case
• to make sure a case is good law
• to find other later cases that have dealt with
  that area of law and cited your case
• to find other relevant material that have cited
  to your case (law journal articles, ALR, etc.)

44
Evaluating updating signals/flags

• If red flag, make sure that the flag is for the
  part of the decision on which you want to rely,
  if not, the flag is not as significant
• If yellow/caution flag check
• if it means criticism, modification,
  distinguished
• if it is from a binding jurisdiction (remember,
  your court is not bound by decisions of a lower
  or co-equal court

45
Updating Caselaw w/Shepards

• There are two types of Shepards (Lexis) reports
• Shepards for Research (FULL) provides a complete
  report for your case, including prior history
  subsequent history and every citing reference.
• Shepards for Validation (KWIC) provides a more
  limited report that allows you to quickly
  determine precedent.  It includes only those
  citing references with editorial analysis, and
  excludes any prior history.

46
What the Shepards signals mean
47
(No Transcript)
48
Westlaw Signals (cont)

• Blue H In cases or administrative
  decisions, a blue H indicates that there is some
  history but it is not known to be negative
  history.
• Green C A green C indicates that the case
  has citing references, but no direct or negative
  indirect history.
• Quotations marks Quotation marks indicate
  that the citing case directly quotes the cited
  case.

49
Updating cases with Westlaws KeyCite. What the
signals mean
50
Westlaw Flags
   

• Red Flag-In cases and administrative
  decisions, a red flag warns that the case or
  administrative decision is no longer good law for
  at least one of the points of law it contains.
• Yellow Flag-In cases and administrative
  decisions, a yellow flag warns that the case or
  administrative decision has some negative
  treatment, but has not been reversed or
  overruled.

51
Depth of treatment stars (West)

• 4 Stars - The citing case contains an extended
  discussion of the cited case, usually more than a
  printed page.
• 3 Stars - The citing case contains a substantial
  discussion of the cited case, usually more than a
  paragraph but less than a printed page.
• 2 Stars - The citing case contains some
  discussion of the cited case, usually more than a
  paragraph.
• 1 Star - The citing case contains a brief
  reference to the cited case, usually in a string
  citation.

52
Updating
53
(No Transcript)
54
KeyCite links
55
How an unreported case looks in Westlaw or Lexis

• Unreported cases are cases the court does not
  want to have precedent. Here are some examples
  of citations that should alert you to unreported
  status of a case
• 185 Fed. Appx. 716 (Federal Appendix)
• 2006 U.S. App. LEXIS 28127
• 2007 WL 465219
• Note if a case has a Westlaw or Lexis number,
  but also has a regular reporter citation, such as
  F3d, it is a reported case, not an unreported
  case.

56
(No Transcript)