New legal search tool available from Casetext

New legal search tool available from Casetext

Source: Casetext, Inc., 430 Sherman Ave., Suite 305, Palo Alto, CA 94306

Using the latest computer technology, Casetext has a new tool for use in legal research, its Case Analysis Research Assistant [CARA]. Interested individuals may sign up for a free one-week trial period to test CARA's power using your "real-time" legal research projects.

With CARA the user starts with his or her document as the source to search for decisions and relevant comments the user might wish to consider in developing his or her brief, answer, memorandum of law, or argument.

The procedure is simple and user friendly. The researcher logs into his or her Casetext account, or creates his or her free account if new to Casetext, and goes to CARA -- https://casetext.com/cara -- to initiate the research project. If there are questions concerning using CARA during this trial period, the researcher may arrange for brief telephone consultation.

The researcher may then securely upload a brief, memorandum of law, or other document in WORD™ or a searchable PDF format. CARA suggests “the more citations, the better!” CARA then provides a list of relevant decisions and other information, with links to the document[s] located so the user may read them in full if he or she elects to do so.

Casetext notes that there are other research-related activities wherein CARA may prove useful such as:

1. Checking an opponent's or an amicus curiae's brief, answer, memorandum of law, etc., for relevant decisions than may not have been cited therein in the course of preparing your response;

2. Supplementing your research when preparing a client alert or article for publication;

3. Reviewing your draft brief periodically during the research stage and before filing to determine if there have been any recently published decisions and other relevant materials that should be referenced; and

4. Checking to see if memoranda of law or other records earlier prepared require updating.

Below is a truncated result from a draft memorandum upload to CARA’s secure website that included Garcia v San Antonio Metro. Transit Authority as one of the cases cited.

GARCIA v. SAN ANTONIO METRO. TRANSIT AUTH

469 U.S. 528 (1985)

Summaries from Subsequent Cases (25 subsequent decisions were listed.)

Holding district court did not err in granting dismissal rather than judgment where defendant's 12(c) motion raised what was essentially a 12(b)(6) defense.

Loncar v. Gaming, 2:13-cv-02218-JAD-GWF (D. Nev. Sep 22, 2015)

Key Passages from this Case (82 key passages were indicated.)

“We therefore now reject, as unsound in principle and unworkable in practice, a rule of state immunity from federal regulation that turns on a judicial appraisal of whether a particular governmental function is "integral" or "traditional." Any such rule leads to inconsistent results at the same time that it disserves principles of democratic self-governance, and it breeds inconsistency precisely because it is divorced from those principles. If there are to be limits on the Federal Government's power to interfere with state functions — as undoubtedly there are — we must look elsewhere to find them.”

Insights (2 comments concerning this case were returned.)

LI Village Treasurer Is Exempt Administrative Employee Based on Purchasing Duties

…Municipal workers have been protected by the FLSA since the Supreme Court’s landmark 1985 decision in Garcia v. San Antonio Metro. Transit Auth., 469 U.S. 528 (U.S. 1985) (though public sector employers are permitted to pay premium overtime via compensatory time rather than cash wages under 29 U.S.C. § 207(o)). However, as evidenced by a recent federal court decision, FLSA exemptions still apply to public sector employees who meet the applicable exemption standards.…

Noel P. Tripp, Esq.,

Jackson Lewis P.C.

CARA users also may access all of the advanced research technology on Casetext.

For more information concerning Casetext’s legal library and research tools, go to: https://casetext.com/about/research.