Check Your Spelling

Young Lawyers Division

By: Seraphim D. Sparrow, Esq. Jones, Skelton & Hochuli

There is a lot of legal advice on the internet Experienced lawyers take to LinkedIn or their own blogs to post advice to the younger generation of attorneys While these experts do not always agree on the pathway to a successful legal career, all seem to agree a young lawyer’s work product is crucial Unless you start your own law firm right out of law school, the chances are high that a supervising attorney will be reviewing your work And this supervising attorney should be checking your work for issues you don’t have the experience to know yet how a local jury might value the case, whether experts are necessary, whether a specific judge might grant your motion, etc.

But you, as the young attorney, already have all the tools you need to spell words correctly, use the correct grammar, and to eliminate formatting errors When I was a law student, I thought I understood this concept I thought it was important to do good work for good work’s sake To stand out, even And while this is true, I didn’t realize that there was more to this idea

Remember that, at the end of the day, you and the supervising lawyer will be charging a client for your work Not only is the supervising attorney’s time wasted on correcting basic mistakes like spelling, but the client should not have to pay for this When your supervisor has to correct these errors, it adds time and money to the client’s bill.

Additionally, each written project you submit to your supervisor represents an opportunity to make a good impression When you take care of the little things, your supervisor will trust you more And this increased trust will lead to bigger assignments and more responsibility. So if you wouldn’t trust someone who recommends suing the “Untied States of America,” neither will your supervisor trust you when you write a memorandum about the “Govenor’s power to regulate local businesses ”

With this in mind, I have provided a few tips that I follow when proofreading my work:

Finish your work the day before it is due and proofread it the next morning with a fresh set of eyes.

Print your work out and proofread a physical copy. You might be surprised to see what errors you missed when you were reading on your computer

Don’t rely on spellcheck In the above examples, spellcheck did not catch the word “Untied” because it is a real word

When you have spent countless hours on a long project, proofread it backwards Start with the last sentence and work your way backwards until you reach the beginning Our brains start to skip words when we are used to reading something, and this trick will force your brain to read your sentences in a new way

Check your word processor’s settings to ensure spellcheck is enabled for capitalized words. This is particularly important for briefs with capitalized headers.

The Young Lawyer’s Division is happy to announce the return of the AADC/YLD Softball Tournament on April 1, 2023 was a success! The YLD raised $5,000 to support early childhood development services offered by Southwest Human Development in Arizona Eight firms fielded teams including Burch & Cracchiolo; Carpenter Hazlewood; The Cavanagh Law Firm; Gordon Rees; Jaburg Wilk; Jones, Skelton & Hochuli; Sanders & Parks and Snell & Wilmer Competition was fierce throughout the tournament, but the Sanders & Parks team prevailed taking home the 2023 tournament trophy with the Jaburg Wilk team taking Second Place Special thanks to all the firms who participated and helped support this great cause The Softball Tournament will be back again next spring, so keep an eye out for details and start recruiting your team!

The YLD will also host multiple CLE events this coming year More details will be provided in the fall We look forward to seeing everyone at these upcoming events!

The Ruling

The Supreme Court of Arizona found several compelling reasons to overturn DeGraff First, the Supreme Court found the ruling in DeGraff to be “clearly erroneous or manifestly wrong ”[6] The DeGraff majority correctly treated the dismissal of the claim against the employee with prejudice as an “adjudication on the merits”[7] but, according to the majority in Laurence, it failed to explain why that meant the employee had “been adjudged as not guilty of any negligence”[8] so as to preclude a respondeat superior claim against the employer.

In Laurence, the Supreme Court ruled that a dismissal with prejudice does nothing more than bar refiling the same claim in the same court, no matter the basis for the dismissal The dismissal does not bar a separate claim against another party

Second, the Court had already previously abrogated DeGraff in part, severely undercutting the efficacy of what remained. In Kopp, the Court “disavow[ed] [their] holding in DeGraff insofar as that case and its progeny conclude that a stipulated dismissal with prejudice operates as an adjudication that the dismissed party was not negligent in the treatment of the plaintiff ”[9] The Court reasoned that “[c]ontinuing to apply DeGraff to respondeat superior claims while carving out a different meaning for issue preclusion purposes would be confusing and unnecessary ”[10]

Third, the Court found that DeGraff conflicts with Arizona statute and case law which provide that, under the doctrine of respondeat superior, an employer is vicariously liable for its employees’ tortious acts, not adjudicated liability [11]

Fourth, the Court found DeGraff in opposition to the recognition that employers sued under respondeat superior cannot assert defenses that are personal to the employee. The respondeat superior claim, the Court explains, is “freestanding.”[12] When a plaintiff violates an employee’s procedural rights, that defense is personal to the employee and cannot be asserted by the employer Fifth, the Court found that public policy does not support upholding DeGraff Unless the finder of fact finds the employee did not commit a tort, or possibly that plaintiff released the employee from liability, it is fair to allow the respondeat superior claim to proceed [13]

For these reasons, the Arizona Supreme Court overturned DeGraff and held the superior court incorrectly entered summary judgment in favor of SRP since the claim was dismissed solely because plaintiff failed to timely file the claim