34.2 Use the IRAC Method to breifly identify the Issue, the Legal Rule (Legal Te

Question

34.2 Use the IRAC Method to breifly identify the Issue, the Legal Rule (Legal Test), the Facts Applied to the Test (Analysis), and the Conclusion/ Holding of the given case.

Ballard v. Chicago Park District United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, 741 F.3d 838 (2014). Background and Facts Beverly Ballard worked for the Chicago Park District. She lived with her mother, Sarah, who suffered from end-stage congestive heart failure. Beverly served as Sarah's primary caregiver with support from Horizon Hospice & Palliative Care. The hospice helped Sarah plan and secure funds for an end-of-life goal, a "family trip" to Las Vegas. To accompany Sarah as her caretaker, Beverly asked the Park District for unpaid time off under the Family Medical and Leave Act (FMLA). The employer refused, but Beverly and Sarah took the trip as planned. Later, the Park District terminated Beverly for "unauthorized absences." She filed a suit in a federal district court against the employer. The court issued a decision in Beverly's favor. The Park District appealed, arguing that Beverly had been absent from work on a "recreational trip." In the Language of the Court FLAUM, Circuit Judge. We begin with the text of the [FMLAJ: an eligible employee is entitled to leave "in order to care for" a family member with a "serious health condition."

Explanation / Answer

I. Legal Reasoning - Generally

All legal reasoning follows one path. No legal argument can be accepted or rejected without all of the following pieces

1) Issue - What specifically is being debated?

2) Rule - What legal rule governs this issue?

3) Facts - What are the facts relevant to this Rule?

4) Analysis - Apply the rule to the facts.

5) Conclusion - Having applied the rule to the facts, what's the outcome?

II. Legal Reasoning - Explained with an Example

So, what does this mean?

1) Issue

The "issue" is the legal issue. It doesn't ask just any interesting question. It only asks whether THE LAW has anything to say about a particular topic. A classic example of this is a potential legal client who comes in and says that her boss is mean and rude -- he yells and screams and makes work wholly unpleasant. The client wants to know if she has a claim. I already know that there is no law (no rule) that generally prohibits a boss from being a jerk. However, experience tells me that the question should be:

(For those of you with quick logical minds, yes, this means there are forms of lawful discrimination.)

2) Rule

The "Rule" has two important parts. A lawyer, a judge, or whomever has to say what a rule is and where it comes from.

a) State the Rule

That rule says (paraphrasing): "It is unlawful to treat someone in a manner that negatively affects the terms and conditions of employment, if the affected person is in a 'protected class' and is treated differently from a 'similarly situated person' not in her protected class."

Each of the logical pieces you can break it into are called the "elements" of the rule. So, you could say the "elements" of discrimination are

Each of these pieces contain legal terms of art, terms that have their own legal rules. So, you'd actually end up with some nesting here.

b) Cite the Rule

The law is based on existing rules. Even when a decision is based upon what is "fair" (which isn't that often), it's because there's a rule that says that the decision of this type of issue will be based on fairness. And, there are so many rules that no one can know them all. So, an argument has no weight unless it says exactly which rule is being relied upon. As you've seen already this presents a variety of challenges:

If the lawyer provides the wrong law, she can lose the case (or the legal analysis), even if in the cosmos she should have won (ie., there's a law out there that gives her the result she wants). The law has mistakes in it, so the lawyer has to cite the law that exists and then provide some sort of annotation that explains why it's a mistake and/or where the mistake is. Like the Web, there are lots of versions of the same or similar things. You'll see this in case law. There can be lots of decisions that say the same thing on a particular issue. There are often decisions that cite other decisions for support. And, there's more than one publisher, so there's more than one citation to the exact same court decision. Within certain boundaries, any of these citations might be used.

In this example, the rules are:

3) Fact

There are lots and lots of facts that make up the client's story. For the purpose of legal analysis, we look for "material" facts. These are the facts that fit the elements of the rule.

So, in the example, we need to know: if the boss' behavior "affected" a "term or condition of employment"; if the potential client is in a "protected class"; if there are "similarly situated" employees; and if they've been treated in the same manner or differently. The facts that turn out to be relevant are:

4) Analysis

At this stage, we see if our material facts fit the law. So, in the example, we'll say

5) Conclusion

We see that all "elements" of the rule are met and conclude that her boss engaged in unlawful discrimination.

III. Our "Deadbeat Dad" Example

Applying all of this to our previously discussed "deadbeat dad" example, we see:

1) Issue:

Is Joe a Deadbeat Dad?

2) Rule:

a) State the rule:

Anyone is a Deadbeat Dad, if:

b) Cite the rule:

I know this is a rule, because it is a law passed by Congress. It's published at:

3) Fact:

We put together a hypothetical in which

4) Analysis:

Our analysis should say:

5) Conclusion:

When we following the chain of legal reasoning, we find out that I didn't provide enough information. We really don't know if Joe is a "deadbeat dad" because we missed one of the factual elements. We don't know if the debt is more than one year old.

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