because these are contained in the offer. Nevertheless it is not uncommon for
problem questions to use indirect speech. What do you do? Translate the
reported speech to direct speech, adopting the most likely version or versions.
Facts Incorporating Legal Consequences
Facts may incorporate or infer legal consequences. For example, you may be
told: "Fred made a contract with Esmeralda”.
If you are told this, in the
absence of indications to the contrary you are also entitled to assume that the
contract is legal, valid and enforceable. If, in such a situation you do make
these assumptions then you may want to state clearly and briefly that you are
making them, and the reasons for your so doing.
An inference of law will usually appear in a problem because the teacher
wishes it to be taken as such, since it is not an issue. But slip-ups do occur.
There can be cases where the inference is not acceptable. If this happens,
point out in your answer that the inference in not acceptable giving your
reasons. Then at the appropriate place in your answer, deal with any issues
arising from this.
Surplus Facts
Surplus facts are the converse of omitted facts. Sometimes most of the facts
in a problem will be relevant. On other occasions there will be many surplus
facts. Whether or not a problem contains a lot of surplus facts depends on the
policy and imagination of the person setting it. There is an overwhelmingly
strong case for having a generous dose of surplus facts in a problem. Lawyers
deal every day in surplus facts. Not only is it the lawyer's art to sense
omissions in a client's story, they have also to prune away irrelevant facts.
Moreover, the exclusion of surplus facts from a problem gives the student an
artificial advantage, because every fact is then a cue to a legal principle.
Facts in Constitutional and Administrative Law
Facts in problems in constitutional law and administrative law are in a special
position. Whereas other branches of law are laws about facts, these are
branches about laws. Therefore the ‘facts’ of problems in these two areas will
contain laws, usually statutes, whose validity or operation is under question.
But despite the presence of these statutes, these are still ‘facts’ as that term is
employed in this discussion.
Parties
Introduction
To understand the tasks with parties it is necessary first to consider both the
simple case and the complicated cases. The complicated cases demonstrate
how there can be two or more permutations of parties (as well as two or more
causes of actions between parties).
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