Employment Law/ Case Study

This unit includes a Case Study assignment. It is similar to the activities you have completed for your discussion board and subjective essays, but the deliverable (paper you submit) is more substantial. Your case study is based on a work scenario. For this scenario, pretend that you are an employee reporting to the the HR director and you are preparing a memorandum for the company president.

The memo will analyze a set of facts that occurred in your company and conclude whether your company is liable. This is a role-play assignment, which might be new to you. For the duration of this assignment, pretend that you are an HR employee reporting to the HR Director. He/she has asked you to do a legal analysis and come to a conclusion about possible liability for your company given the specific fact scenario (which you invent). Play the role all the way through your memo, just as if you were actually providing the requested report of this incident to the HR Director.

Look up the case (Chatfield v Children 's Services, 555F.Supp.2d 532 (E.D. Pa. 2008)on the Internet and read about it. You will come back to the case later for the writing part of the assignment. Be sure you understand the important facts of the case and why (or why not) liability was found in that case.

Pretend that a scenario similar to the case you chose has arisen in your company. You will have to invent a specific factual scenario! Use your imagination! Make it similar, but different, from the one you chose. As a matter of fact, to make the assignment more interesting, create a set of facts that do not arise to the level of whichever kind of liability (or cause of action) occurred in the case you chose from the book . Create a set of facts that are similar to liability but do not create a prima facie case. (Yes, I know I said it three times, but I wanted to be sure you understand what I mean.)

The HR Director has asked you to prepare a memorandum outlining the legal issues and outlining a recommendation.

Rather than a scholarly paper format, please use a technical writing format.

Here is a list of grading features for your memo:

Use standard memorandum format. (If you are unfamiliar with memo format, please look on the Internet using the key words memo format and choose any of the generally accepted formats. Be sure to put the term Memorandum at the top!)
Use these paragraph headings for your content:
Background (invented summary of the factual situation in your company),
Issue (statement of the primary relevant legal issue; use a format similar to: The issue is whether' such and such actions constitute such and such discrimination.),
Rule (statement of the status of the law in regard to that type of harassment),
Application (see paragraphs below for additional explanation),
Conclusion (statement of the way you believe your company's pretend scenario will be resolved based on your research of other cases),
Recommendation (make a firm recommendation to the President regarding the best resolution in this case and a method of preventing such a situation from occurring in the future),
Works Cited (Include at least three source citations for your paper: probably your textbook, the actual case, and a statute or other case).
The memo should not be over three double-spaced pages in length, excluding the works cited. You will have to be concise in what you say! (Yes, I know that memos are supposed to be short and single-spaced, but this specific assignment fits the memo format very well so we will use it.)
Hints for the application section:

The application section will contain two parts. Begin by analyzing the case you chose from the textbook. Use the same IRAC method of analysis, and provide a short analysis of that case. Make a single big paragraph (or possibly two) of text about the case; write the information in IRAC order but without the paragraph headings you will use for the main memo. Be sure to include quotations and/or citations from the case to show why it was decided the way it was. (You will base your result in the new (invented) case on the reasoning used in this case from the book.)
After analyzing the case from the book, apply the same factual analysis and the same law to your specific, invented, factual situation. Be sure to give specific details about why the case from the book was discrimination and why yours is not. Explain why those facts in the book case would not be applicable to your particular fact situation. (In other words, explain clearly why your case does not meet the requirements for a prima facie case.) Yes, I know I explained it three times again!
The application section is the most important section of your memo because this is where you make or break your case! In the real world, you might get an attorney's opinion, but it is important that you know how to do this analysis process yourself as well so you can make conclusions about some situations without contacting a lawyer each time.