Case Briefing: Vasquez v. Empress Ambulance Service, Inc.

Summary of Case Brief Lesson

You will be assigned a variety of cases throughout the semester and you will need to be able to summarize them in a brief.  This is the single most important skill one learns in law school.  In the real world, you will not need to brief cases in HR practice, but you will need to read legal decisions with a critical eye for how the decision impacts your workplace. 

Headings you will use 

Citation:  This is the name of the case and the “address” where it can be found.  It also tells you who the named parties are.

Parties: The simple cases will list the name last name of the plaintiff v. the last name of the defendant.  However, many cases are anything but simple so the named parties may be switched or represent a group of parties or the agencies involved in a case.

Procedure:  How did we get to the place that we are reading about right now?

For example – Plaintiff sued his employer in trial court and won a wrongful termination case, the employer defendant appealed, and the appellate court overturned the trail court.  Plaintiff appealed the appeal to the higher-level appellate court here.

Facts:   The facts are just the facts…Ma’am! Tell the story about what happened only.  You are not concerned with any legal process or legal theory here.  You are only telling what happened and who did what to whom.

Issue:  The issue is always framed as a question.  You will need to decipher what the legal issue is after readying the whole case.  Sometimes it is easier to read the court’s decision and work backwards.  The issue is a result of combining facts and law.  For example:

• Did the ABC Company discriminate against Plaintiff X, pursuant to the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, when it told her that she had to work on her sacred religious holiday, or she would be fired?
• Is Company ABC liable to pay worker’s compensation to Employee Z when she tripped over her computer charger and broke her ankle while working from home?

Holding:  What did the court decide?  You are just telling us what the answer to the issue is. For example:

• Yes, Company ABC is liable to pay worker’s compensation to Employee Z when she tripped over her computer charger and broke her ankle while working from home. 

Reasoning : The reasoning is the WHY the court decided the way it decide.

 For example:

• Yes, Company ABC is liable to pay worker’s compensation to Employee Z when she tripped over her computer charger and broke her ankle while working from home because she was sent to work from home by her employer due to Covid-19 and she was working at a company owned computer doing her assigned work when she tripped and injured herself 

Then, you answer the philosophical question:  Why did we read this case?

• We read this case because it tells us that when an employer requires an employee to work from home, and injury that happens in the course of that work, it is considered a workplace injury.