Professor Franks

Final Examination, Summer 1999

1. Carefully analyze the facts and grasp the issues in each question before beginning to write. Spend time reading the question slowly and carefully.

2. State the issues and answers to each question concisely. Lengthy answers are not necessary.

3. Do not repeat questions in your answers. Write neatly and legibly on only one side of each page.

4. Number your answers to correspond with the question, e.g., "I-B."

5. If you feel it necessary to assume additional facts in any of the questions, give the facts that must be added and state why.

6. Do not write in the margin of the book.

7. All major questions are equally weighted unless otherwise indicated. Subparts are approximately equal but may be weighted slightly differently according to the number of issues involved in that subpart.

8. Write your personal identification number and the name and section number of the course on which you are being examined on the cover of each examination book.

9. If you use more than one book, indicate "Book One," "Book Two" and so forth on the cover of each book and write your PIN and the name and section number of the course on the cover of each examination book.

10. A GOOD ANSWER IS NOT NECESSARILY A LONG ANSWER.

Upon graduating from Southern University Law Center, you are in such a hurry to leave that you collide in the parking lot with a car driven by another graduating law student, Nigel Mansell, Jr. His 1999 Ferrari and your 1984 Honda Civic both sustains serious dents.

Feeling yourself in the right but unable to get any offer from his insurance company, you file suit in Baton Rouge City Court against Mansell and his insurer, Farm State, asking for the $800 it will cost you to repair your Honda. The citation is not issued immediately, and Mr. Mansell meanwhile leaves town. No service is made.

Two weeks after you receive your degree you head out to study for the bar, living and working part-time in the town of Bogalusa, Louisiana, in Washington Parish. You begin clerking for the one law firm that has made you the best job offer. Nigel Mansell, Jr. meanwhile takes a summer job at a truck stop in nearby Crossroads, Mississippi -- just across the state line five miles east of Bogalusa.

On your first trip to check out the inaction in nearby Poplarville, Mississippi, you refuel your car at the truck stop in Crossroads and you notice Nigel working there. He notices you, too. On your third visit to Mississippi, while you are waiting in line to pay for your gas, a strange man approaches you. He identifies himself as a deputy sheriff and hands you a summons and complaint directing you to appear before a justice of the peace in Crossroads, Mississippi, there to answer Mr. Mansell's suit for the $5,000 damage he claims you did to his Ferrari.

Please answer the following specific questions:

A. You decide you like the justice better in Baton Rouge. What steps should you take:

1. in the action in Mississippi?

2. in the action in Baton Rouge?

B. Despite your best efforts, the Mississippi case is set for trial. You file an answer and a counterclaim (reconventional demand). Does the Mississippi court now have jurisdiction? Would it have had jurisdiction had you filed only an answer without the reconventional demand? Did it have jurisdiction prior to your entry of an appearance? Discuss.

C. What substantive law should the Mississippi justice of the peace apply, and why? Discuss various approaches the Mississippi justice of the peace should or could use to decide what substantive law to apply.

D. In your reconventional demand, you bring in as a third-party defendant Mr. Mansell's liability insurer, Farm State Insurance Company, serving them through the Mississippi Secretary of State. Farm State is qualified to do business in Mississippi, but Mississippi does not have the direct action device. Your reconventional demand pleads that the court should apply the Louisiana direct action statute. Are there any steps you must take to bring this Louisiana statute to the attention of the Mississippi court? Should the Mississippi court recognize and consider this Louisiana device? Why or why not? Discuss.

The action in Baton Rouge was the first filed. The action in Mississippi is the first to come to trial. The justice of the peace decides to apply Mississippi law on direct actions "cuz I don't know nothin' about this direct action thang and I don't even care to learn about Louisiana's strange laws." Applying Mississippi rules of the road as well, he finds for the plaintiff, Mr. Mansell, awarding him judgment for $250 and not for the $5,000 he prayed in his complaint. Please answer the following additional questions:

E. Mr. Mansell is then served in Louisiana by certified mail with your Baton Rouge City Court suit. Mansell appears specially in the Baton Rouge court, contesting jurisdiction. Discuss the jurisdictional issue.

F. Mr. Mansell then claims the matter is res judicata. The Baton Rouge court decides initially not to recognize the Mississippi decision "because the Mississippi judgment is not properly certified." Discuss what steps Mansell needs to take to have the Mississippi judgment recognized in the Baton Rouge court.

G. The trial judge in Baton Rouge finally decides to receive the Mississippi judgment into evidence. You then tell the Baton Rouge court that the justice of the peace in Mississippi was wrong to apply Mississippi rules of the road and wrong again to refuse to apply Louisiana's direct action statute. What will be your chances for success? Discuss.

H. The Baton Rouge City Court finally accepts your argument that the Mississippi judgment is wrong, and renders judgment in your favor and against Mansell and his insurer for $450.

1. Which judgment now governs the parties? Discuss.

2. What if anything is Mansell's remedy? Discuss.

3. What result if Mansell follows that course? Discuss.

This semester you have been working as law clerk to one of the judges of the Family Court for the Parish of East Baton Rouge.

Fergie and Andrew York were married in 1990. They lived in Lake Charles from 1990 to 1995. One child, Prince, was born in 1995. That same year, 1995, Fergie and Andrew moved to the City of Little Rock, County of Pulaski, State of Arkansas. Their relationship left something to be desired, and they finally separated in June 1996.

In their divorce, in which both parties appeared, the Chancery Court for the County of Pulaski awarded sole custody of little Prince to Fergie. Andrew was given visitation on alternating weekends, and Andrew was ordered to pay the sum of $650 per month as child support. The judgment was signed in March 1997.

In April 1997, Fergie moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to begin her new life as a kindergarten teacher at Broadmoor Elementary School. Andrew left Little Rock that same month and moved west, to Fayetteville, Arkansas.

In January 1998, Fergie filed a petition to modify visitation in the Family Court for the Parish of East Baton Rouge. Andrew was served with process in Arkansas by certified mail and never appeared in the Baton Rouge action. Finding Louisiana to be the home state of the child and finding that a change of circumstances had occurred making visitation on alternating weekends inappropriate, the court modified the Arkansas order by awarding Andrew visitation for five weeks each and every summer, for one week during the Christmas, and for one week at Spring break.

Fergie told Andrew of the order and mailed him and copy, and Fergie shipped little Prince off to Fayetteville, Arkansas, for five weeks in the summer of 1998. Andrew dutifully returned Prince to his mother without incident at the end of those five weeks. A second visitation over the Christmas holidays also went well.

The visitation during the 1999 Spring break did not go so well. Fergie sent Prince to his father, who upon seeing the condition of the child immediately took him to a pediatrician. Andrew, enraged, then telephoned Fergie, telling her that she would never see Prince again. Fergie immediately caught the first plane to Fayetteville.

The very next day the father, Andrew, filed suit in the Chancery Court for the County of Washington, State of Arkansas, claiming that Prince was "covered with bruises" when he arrived and that Prince reports having been sexually abused by the mother's live-in boyfriend. The father documented his claim with photographs and with the affidavit of the pediatrician.

But while Andrew was at the Washington County courthouse filing his suit and getting an ex parte temporary restraining order against Fergie, Fergie swung by Andrew's house and picked up Prince, whom the nanny had left playing in the front yard of his father's house. Fergie returned directly to Louisiana with Prince.

Fergie was not served while in Arkansas. The Arkansas court, finding an emergency and further finding that the courts of Arkansas in any case have continuing jurisdiction to modify their custody decrees, granted a default judgment awarding permanent custody of Prince to Andrew.

Andrew has now retained Baton Rouge counsel, and has filed a properly certified and exemplified copy of the Arkansas judgment in the Family Court for the Parish of East Baton Rouge. Fergie through her attorney has asked the Family Court to declare the judgment not entitled to full faith and credit in Louisiana. Fergie has also filed suit in Louisiana for an increase in child support and for a division of her ex-husband's pension that the Arkansas divorce court simply forgot to divide at the time of the divorce.

The judge you are clerking for has asked you to prepare a memorandum advising him on the jurisdictional questions. Do so, discussing all issues.

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