Syllabus | Colin Doyle | Law Professor

Logistics

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Contact information

Colin.Doyle@lls.edu
Office: Burns 315
Telephone: 213-736-1148

Email is my preferred method of communication. I do not regularly check my phone voicemail. If you have something important to communicate, use email.

Please note that although you may email me substantive questions, I typically do not answer substantive questions in an individual email reply. I prefer to answer substantive questions during office hours or immediately after class. If your question is of general interest, I will share my answer with the entire class.

My faculty assistant is Colin Goward, and his email is: Colin.Goward@lls.edu

Class schedule

Fall 2023
Tuesdays & Thursdays from 8:15am to 9:30am
Hall of the 70s

Spring 2024
Wednesdays & Fridays from 8:45am to 10:00am
Hall of the 70s

Open office hours

Fall 2023
Thursdays from 1:00pm to 2:30pm
Outside the Robinson Moot Courtroom

Spring 2024
Fridays from 12:00pm to 1:30pm
Outside the Robinson Moot Courtroom

During open office hours, any student or group of students from our class may stop by without an appointment. Anyone in the class is welcome to join or leave during that time. Please know that I love office hours. While I am always up for talking about torts, I am also happy to talk about anything you’re interested in discussing: navigating law school, legal careers, the research I’m conducting when I’m not teaching, the latest season of the Great British Bakeoff — anything is fair game. My office hours are during lunchtime, so feel free to bring your lunch and eat as we chat about torts. Sometimes I’ll even have cookies or brownies to share. Show up to find out.

One-on-one office hours

By appointment in Burns 315. To schedule an appointment, email me.

Please note that open office hours are the norm, and one-on-one office hours are the exception. If you have a question about tort law or about the class itself, I recommend that you ask this question during open office hours. One-on-one office hours are available for students who cannot attend open office hours or who wish to have a private conversation.

At the beginning of the spring semester, I will host one-on-one office hours for students who would like to go over their midterm exams. A midterm review memo will be distributed along with midterm grades. I encourage all students to read through my commentary on each question and mark out on the exam the issues that you missed. Take notes on how you would rewrite your exam if given the chance. Compare your answers to the sample student answers to understand how you can better structure your answers, string together arguments, and write more precisely and succinctly. Once you have taken these review steps, I am more than happy to meet with you individually (or in groups) to go over your exams. If you finish your review of this exam and still have questions about how to approach an exam for this class, this is great timing for meeting with me one-on-one so that I can understand your approach and coach you for the final. At the start of the semester, I will put a form on our class website for students to schedule one-on-one meetings with me. Depending on the number of students who request these meetings, we may need to spread them out across the first half of the semester.

Reading Assignments

You do not need to purchase a casebook for this class.

You can download a pdf of your reading assignments here. Please note that you will need to log in to Brightspace to access this material.

To allow for this course to be flexible in response to the pace and dynamics of our in-class discussions, reading assignments will be scheduled on a rolling basis. To allow you enough time to read the assigned material, I plan to post reading assignments at least one week in advance of class. Once I have posted a reading assignment for a particular day, I will not change the assignment by adding more reading for that day.

As I assign readings to particular class dates, the reading assignments will appear both in the Reading Assignments page on this website and on a Google calendar. You can view and bookmark this calendar in a separate browser window. With a Google account, you can subscribe to the calendar with read-only access. If you subscribe to the calendar, you can turn on notifications to automatically receive an email when new reading assignments are added. Here’s how to do that:

Open Google Calendar and locate the “Torts Reading Assignments (2022-2023)” calendar under “Other calendars.”
Click on the three dots next to the calendar name.
Click on “Settings”
Add notifications for new events, changed events, and canceled events.

Teaching Method & Class Policies

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Attendance

Class attendance is required.¹ Class starts at exactly 8:15am. Don’t be late. Arrive early and use the time before class starts to get settled so that you are ready to take notes and answer questions.

If illness or exigent circumstances prevent you from being able to attend class, you must email me or contact the Office of Student Affairs at studentaffairs@lls.edu.

Preparation & Participation

Class preparation is also required. According to ABA Standard 310, for a five-credit two-semester course, you are expected to spend at least five hours per week on course-related work outside of class. I expect that you will come to class having completed the reading and ready to speak about the cases and materials assigned for that day.

I conduct class primarily through Socratic “cold calling,” with limited volunteering. I plan to call on a large portion of the class during each session, using a randomized list. This means that being called on once does not preclude you from being called on again in the same class or the following day. Because all students are expected to read the materials and come to class prepared to answer questions, students are not allowed to “pass” when I ask them to answer a question. If exigent circumstances prevent you from being able to prepare for class, you may place your name on a “no call list” by emailing me before 7:45am on the morning of class.

Many students begin their 1L year nervous about cold-calling — and for good reason. You want to impress your classmates and your professors. Flubbing a cold call can be embarrassing, and cold calls can sometimes seem like a cruel hazing ritual. My purpose with cold calling is not to humiliate or intimidate but to facilitate a dialogue. It’s a method for us to collectively interrogate what we think we know and what we think that we have learned about the law. Being prepared for cold calls in this class means that you are ready to engage in questions — not that you already have the answers. We are here to get it right, not to be right already. You will be prepared for cold calls if you have read the assigned cases closely enough to engage in a spirited discussion. As you work through your reading assignments, don’t read passively and don’t take anything in the cases for granted. Reading without taking notes is not reading at all. As you read, write down questions that come to mind. Ask questions of each other, and consider studying or discussing readings together. And you should always feel free to ask me questions, both in and outside of class. Ask about anything unfamiliar. Please don’t be embarrassed to ask about things you don’t understand — there will likely be others with the same question.

Classroom Norms

To foster an environment that supports curious critical thinking, our class has a set of norms that I ask you each to follow.

Professionalism
Law school is a professional environment. Your classmates are your future colleagues, co-counsel, judges and policymakers. You should treat law school as the beginning of a professional career rather than as an extension of college.

Professionalism and ethical conduct are central to the practice of law, and thus to legal education. We will cover topics in this course that are sensitive and may have personal and significant implications for any one of us in the class, for our families and for others we hold dear. All communication for the course is expected to be professional, respectful, and on topic. For the reasons explained here, I ask that you address me as “Professor” or “Professor Doyle.”

Generosity
We should all strive to be good listeners and to be respectful of different viewpoints. Being respectful does not mean that we should hold back from critiquing others’ views, but it does require us to be be generous in how we interpret and respond to others. Particularly when disagreeing with an argument that someone else has made, try to address the strongest version of their argument. If a statement is made that offends you or that you think might offend others, do challenge it; but show respect for the person who made it. Remember, we all make mistakes sometimes in our speaking and listening.

In this classroom, we disagree with ideas, not with people. When a disagreement targets a person, it often causes that person to become defensive and unreceptive to the point being made. But when a disagreement targets an idea, it allows the person who initially voiced that idea the space to consider the point being made and gives them the opportunity to change their mind.

This year, I hope that each of us — myself included — has the opportunity to be wrong. The luxury of an academic environment is that it is a retreat from the demands of the world and is a safe space for reconsidering what we have taken for granted or assumed to be true. Our classroom should be a supportive space where our ideas, preconceptions, and convictions are open to challenge and critique. Let’s be curious together.

Learning Outcomes

At the conclusion of the course, students should be able to:

Understand and articulate the common law principles of torts, with an emphasis on negligence, strict liability, products liability, intentional torts, and alternatives to tort.
Apply these principles, standards, and rules to novel fact patterns by: (1) identifying relevant legal issues; (2) applying the relevant legal rules and standards; and (3) developing clear, organized, and persuasive arguments about potential liability.
Demonstrate knowledge of the various policy goals of tort law and the different theoretical frameworks that inform the development and interpretation of tort law.
Understand and describe the relationship between systemic inequality and tort law, including (1) how certain assumptions, values, and social context can explicitly and implicitly influence decisionmaking by judges and juries, and (2) how tort law can explicitly and implicitly reinforce the uneven distribution of resources and limit access to justice for marginalized and subordinated groups.

Reasonable Accommodations

Loyola Law School adheres to a policy of nondiscrimination in its educational programs, admissions policies, financial aid, and other school-related programs on the basis of sex, age, race, color, religious creed, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, marital, parental or veteran status. The Law School complies fully with the provisions of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and related administrative regulations and executive orders promulgated thereunder.

If you have, or think you might have, a disability that requires an accommodation in order to maximize your prospects for success in law school, please contact Student Accessibility Services in the Office of Student Affairs at accessibility@lls.edu or 213-736-8151. You can review the application guidelines and appeals process here.

Interpersonal Misconduct

Loyola Law School is dedicated to fostering the education of the whole person and strives to provide an environment that encourages the search for truth and freedom of inquiry. The Law School recognizes the important contribution a diverse community of students, faculty and staff makes towards the advancement of its goals and ideals. The Law School is committed to providing an environment that is free of discrimination and harassment as defined by federal, state and local law, as well as under this policy. Any violations of this policy will be treated as serious misconduct and result in appropriate disciplinary action up to and including dismissal from the Law School.

As responsible employees, faculty are required to report any case of suspected sexual or interpersonal misconduct and cannot protect student confidentiality. For more information, visit the Office of Student Affairs webpage.

Section 3.2 of the JD Handbook states, “A student is required to attend classes regularly. A student may be withdrawn, and/or excluded from an examination, and given a failing grade in any course in which the student has not maintained a satisfactory attendance record.” ↩︎

Course Technology

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Laptops in Class

This class has a minimal laptop use policy.

Students are expected to take notes by hand. A student may take notes using an electronic tablet and stylus provided that the student use the tablet as they would use a physical notebook and does not use other features of the device during class.

When answering a question in class, students are allowed to briefly use their laptop to look at their notes or the casebook. In general, class participation should be extemporaneous and does not require consulting these materials.

Students will often be allowed to use laptops for in-class exercises, particularly when the text for those exercises is on the course website and is too large to fit onto a slide.

Students who have auditory processing challenges may use laptops for reading the Otter.ai transcript as a form of closed captioning for the class. If you would like to have Otter.ai open during class, please email me. I am happy to allow the accommodation for any students who find it helpful.

Course Website

You’re on the course website right now. I may also use our course Brightspace page to make announcements and to host content that cannot be shared publicly.

Class Recordings

The Instructional Technology Department will post video recordings of class here as soon as the video files have been received and processed.

Following the first day of class, I will give each student access to a shared folder that I maintain that contains audio recordings and automated transcriptions of each of our class sessions.

Please note that you are not allowed to record or share all or a portion of classes at Loyola Law School (video, audio, or photo) without the express permission of your instructor or the law school administration.

Slides

In general, I will post a copy of my slides to this website in the afternoon following our class.

Technical Assistance

Should you encounter any hardware or software issues during this course, please contact the ITS Service Desk at helpdesk@lls.edu or by calling 310-338-7777, option 2.

For assistance with class technology, such as class recordings, Brightspace, or Zoom, please contact LLS Instructional Technology at:
instructional.technology@lls.edu.

Exams & Grading

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This course is a yearlong course worth five credits. As required by Loyola Law School policy, this course will be graded anonymously according to a mandatory curve.

Your grade will be based on a midterm exam at the end of fall semester and a final exam at the end of spring semester. The midterm exam will count for 25% of your grade, and the final exam will count for 75%. The final exam will be cumulative. The midterm is purposefully weighted less than the final exam to give you the opportunity to improve your work in this class over time. At the start of the spring semester, I’ll provide feedback on the exam and offer advice for studying for the final exam and for other law school exams in the future. For those eager to start studying for finals now, I’m happy to share with you a super-secret way to perform perfectly on any kind of law school exam, regardless of subject matter, format, or difficulty, which you can access at this link.

We will discuss the details of the exams later in the semester.

Exam logistics are handled by the Office of the Registrar, not by me. Because grading is anonymous, the law school has adopted rules and procedures to protect student anonymity during the grading process. Under these rules, I am prohibited from learning about any logistical issues related to your exams. Please avoid making comments that would jeopardize your anonymity and do not include your student identification number on any communication with me. If you have questions about exam scheduling and accommodations, or if any problem arises during the administration of an exam, contact the Registrar at registrar@lls.edu or 213-736-1130 and do not include me in this communication.

I reserve the right to reduce grades by one-third of a letter grade for poor class participation due to repeated instances of unpreparedness, lack of attention in class, refusal to participate in good faith, and absences. Any decision to reduce a grade for poor class participation is at my discretion and is non-negotiable.