Just start at the beginning

The thing I love about Legal Writing in Plain English is that it makes me feel less stupid. The author argues that writing is a difficult craft, and most lawyers are amateurs. When you take a bunch of amateurs and shove them into a text-rich environment with no real guidance, you get a lot of schlock. Legal documents are poorly organized and long-winded. What's worse is that they're littered with big BS words to hide the fact that they are schlock.

So when I try to read a case file and get nowhere, I have a handy excuse ready: "This guy sucks at writing."

Exercise 3 - Basic
Today I did an exercise in sequencing ideas. Garner's advice is to put items in chronological order. You might think starting at the beginning and moving forward is obvious, but many attorneys haven't figured it out yet. Why should a legal document summarize facts backwards (Memento), one concept at a time (Pulp Fiction), or Abrams-style (Lost)? Combining poor sequencing with the schlock-effect makes some of this stuff unreadable.

Anyway, I'll post my assignment to comments. Feel free to skip it since it will be totally out of context without the Legal Writing book. Or, give it a gander and point out all my grammatical errors.

Excercise 1, Basic

Serrano-Moran v. Grau-Gaztambide, No. 99-1513

Facts
Rufino Serrano-Rosado was beaten by four police officers and died in the hospital less than two weeks later. The victim's parents sued the police in federal court. They also sued Dr. Grau-Gaztambide and the hospital for malpractice resulting in death. The malpractice defendants argued that the cases should be tried separately. Plaintiffs argued that they must be tried together because the two defendants would simply blame one another for Serrano-Moran's death.

Questions
1. Should these cases be tried separately?

Holding
1. Yes

Reasoning
The facts relevant to the two cases are completely separate. Jurisdiction cannot be determined based on possible arguments the defense could make.