Action Items

1. Write a 2 - 3 page research memorandum based on the court case as assigned by your instructor.
2. Structure your memo as follows:
3. Facts:Succinctly state the facts relevant to the resolution of the case you are analyzing. Doing so involves reviewing the facts to include only those relevant to answering the question(s) at issue in your memorandum.
4. Question Presented:State the question or questions your memorandum seeks to answer. If possible, present it in a single sentence or two (e.g., "Will Mr. Smith have to include the value of the property in his income?"). Most (if not all) of the memoranda you will be assigned will present a single, overarching question. Granted, there may be multiple issues that you have to analyze to answer this question, but all of them go toward answering the larger question--such as whether the taxpayer has to include the value of some property in his or her income.
5. Short Answer:State the answer to the "Question(s) Presented" as clearly and succinctly as possible--again, preferably in a single sentence or a few sentences. (For example, your Short Answer to the Question Presented above might be, "Mr. Smith will have to include the value of the property in his income.")
6. Analysis:This is the substantive portion of your memorandum and is worth the majority of the points on the assignment. It is where you present all of the analysis that is required to support your Short Answer. In performing your analysis, you should use the general "IRAC" approach you have learned and utilized to date, although you will not have specific sections within the Analysis listed as "Issue, " "Rule, " "Analysis, " and "Conclusion. " Once you have identified the issue or issues that you have to resolve to answer the Short Answer, you should address the authority for your position. Your analysis for each of these issues should review these authorities and then apply them to the facts of the case to draw conclusions.
7. Recommendations:Finally, it is very important that you analyze the case from a business perspective and provide recommendations on how a business could have avoided or mitigated the legal issue involved in the case. What recommendations will you make to management to prevent this issue from occurring in the future?

At 2:08 a.m., on Friday, December 29, 2006, the defendant received by e-mail the Lake in the Hills police department Daily Bulletin, and it reported that Carolene Eubanks had been charged with theft and obstruction of justice. As it normally does, the newspaper placed the information from the report in an article and then placed the article in line for publication in the upcoming issue of the newspaper. The article was eventually printed before 6 a.m. on January 2, 2007, and appeared in the defendant's newspaper on the same date.

The Lake in the Hills police department had also sent a second e-mail on December 29, 2006, at 10:25 p.m., that said to remove the name of Carolene Eubanks and replace it with the name of Barbara Bradshaw. Because the employee who posted the article had already gone home, and it was a long holiday weekend, no one was in when the second e-mail arrived, so it wasn't read until January 2, 2007, at 10:17 a.m.

Consequently, the January 2, 2007, edition of the defendant's newspaper, printed before 6 a.m. on that date, published the article indicating that the plaintiff had been arrested and charged with theft and attempted obstruction of justice. The defendant published a retraction of the article in its January 3, 2007, newspaper, stating that the plaintiff was not the one charged with those crimes.

On June 15, 2007, the plaintiff filed her complaint for defamation based on the January 2, 2007, publication. The trial court granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment based on its exercise of a privilege. Plaintiff appealed. What privilege do you think the court relied on? What do you think the outcome of the appeal was and why? [Eubanks v. Northwest Herald Newspapers, 397 Ill.App.3d 746, 922 N.E.2d 1196 (2010).]