-- Story and Photos by Maria Iacobo
On Monday March 22, 2010, Division Three of the California Court of Appeal, Second District, conducted business at USC Law, giving our entire first-year class the opportunity to watch, in person, as appellate lawyers argued their cases before three appellate justices.
The Court of Appeal visits the law school annually, turning a classroom into a courtroom for the day. Their visits are sponsored by the Legal Research and Writing Program. To allow more students to attend, the court divided its calendar into three sessions, with three cases being heard during each session. All first-year students were required to attend one session. The court’s annual visit is a highlight of USC’s first-year program. “Their visit is a wonderful learning experience for our students, who get to see real lawyers arguing real cases,” said Rebecca Lonergan, Associate Director of Legal Writing and Advocacy.
The cases that day represented a wide variety of claims. In one case, Chude v. Jack-in-the-Box, Inc, the appellate court was reviewing whether the trial court erred by granting summary judgment for the defendant, Jack-in-the-Box, Inc. The plaintiff had purchased coffee at a drive-through window and sustained second-degree burns to her thigh and buttocks when the coffee spilled in her vehicle in the drive-through lane. The plaintiff was unable to extricate herself from her seat – where the hot coffee pooled – because her car door was against the wall of the restaurant.
At the time of the accident, the plaintiff’s vehicle was not insured as required by California law. The trial court ruled that a specific section of the California Civil Code legally precluded the plaintiff from recovering nonpecuniary damages because she was “using” an uninsured vehicle at the time she was injured.
In oral arguments, the plaintiff’s lawyer argued that Jack-in-the-Box should not be allowed to avoid liability because his client’s injuries were the result of a negligent act by the food service worker, who failed to properly secure the lid on the coffee, not the result of plaintiff’s “use” of her vehicle. Citing the California Civil Code, the respondent argued that the plaintiff was legally barred from obtaining noneconomic damages for her injury because she was “using” an uninsured vehicle when she was injured.
The justices asked questions of each attorney concerning whether the car played a relevant role in the plaintiff’s injury and how the facts of this case differed from prior cases involving the same statutory section. After the arguments were done, the court took the matter under submission and moved on to its next case.
As an end to this great learning experience, each year, the Legal Writing Program sends the students information about how to find out the eventual decisions in the cases they watched, so no one should be left wondering what eventually happened.
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