Plaintiff vs. Defendant -- Who Won??

[chike_eze]

"Small Claims" Case:

Female Plaintiff: At 10 pm, I parked my car in bar-X's open parking lot and went into bar-X to meet with friends for drinks. Three hours later I came out to find my passenger side door and window damaged. Two witnesses say, at 12:30 am, the defendant's car collided with my car which caused the damages to my car; Both witnesses statements are included in the police report I have presented to the court. therefore, the defendant owes me $5000 in damages to fix my car.

Female Defendant: I agree I was at the bar, at 10 pm, on the day in question. But I left my car at the bar because I was drunk, so my friend drop me off at home, at midnight. I talked to my neighbor at 12:30 AM before going to bed. When I returned to the bar the next day I discovered that my car had been stolen. The report I filed with the police has been presented to the court. My car was stolen at the time of the incident so I was not driving my car when it hit the plaintiff's car; therefore, I am not responsible for any damages to the plaintiff's car.

The Law: If Defendant was behind the wheel when collision occurred, then Defendant is liable for damages to Plaintiff.
Burden of proof: Plaintiff to prove by a preponderance of the evidence (more likely than not) that the defendant is guilty

Which one of the following most helps the Plaintiff's argument ?

(A) Plaintiff presented a police report (to the Judge) that clearly stated (beyond any reasonable doubt) that the defendant's car was involved in the collision

(B) The Plaintiff claimed she talked to two more witnesses that saw the defendant leave Bar-X alone at 12:00 am (on day of incident)

(C) Defendant claimed that after talking with some lawyers, she did not deem it necessary to provide any witnesses to corroborate her story

(D) The Defendant was involved in a hit and run incident a month prior to this incident

(E) A call was made to the police at 12:20 AM, from BarX's parking lot, about a suspicious man attempting to break into the defendant's car


Provide Feedback:
1. What is the correct answer? Please explain your reasoning.
2. Rate Question difficulty: 1-5 (where 5 = highest difficulty)
3. Suggest other correct/wrong answer choices

[LSAT-Chang]

First of all, this is quite interesting!!

The answer that I picked was (B) but I'd like to explain why I eliminated the others just for extra practice for myself lol and would like to know the actual correct answer as well

So this is a strengthen question..

(A) - incorrect because it is a premise booster. We already know that the defendant's "car" wa involved in the collision. What we don't know is whether the defendant was behind the wheel - thus, liable for the damages.

(B) - this is the correct answer! If the plaintiff had talked to two more witnesses that saw the defendant leave Bar-X alone at 12am on the day of the incident, then the defendant's claim doesn't hold! The defendant claims that he or she was "drunk" and that he or she was dropped off at home by a "friend", but if the defendant left Bar-X alone.. the statement doesn't hold. Or wait, actually.. now I'm getting a little confused. Maybe the defendant left the Bar alone, but met a friend just right across the street or something -- in that case, it still could have been true that the defendant wasn't involed in the accident, right? Now I'm not so sure about my answer anymore. I feel like we would have to make unwarranted assumptions for it to be true that if the defendant had left the Bar-X alone, then in fact it was the case that the defendant was lying - and thus, the defendant was actually involved in the accident.

(C) - so what? It seems out of scope whether or not the defendant deems it necessary or not to provide witnesses to corroborate her story -- plus, we are trying to strengthen the plaintiff's claim, not the defendant's -- so wouldn't it be irrelevant??

(D) - I was very tempted by this.. however, I thought this was irrelevant as well since we can't assume that the defendant was involved in this collision just because the defendant was involved in a hit and run incident a month prior to this incident. I thought it might strengthen it due to the possibility that it might be more "likely" for the defendant to have been involved in the accident and just "lied" -- but again, I feel like I would have to make unwarranted assumptions for this to be true.

(E) - incorrect because this would actually weaken the plaintiff's argument. It is making the possibility that it wasn't the defendant who was involved in the accident -- but rather a suspicious man who was involved in the collision.


Feedback:
I would rate this question difficulty in between a 2 or 3 because I was able to eliminate a lot of the answers just after reading them once - had to contemplate just between two (not even sure if one of them is the actual correct answer after having written explanations for all) and also I wouldn't give it a 1 because the argument was quite long -- it took me about 5 minutes to solve this problem (mostly because I gave myself "unlimited" time).

[chike_eze]

First of all, this is quite interesting!!

The answer that I picked was (B) but I'd like to explain why I eliminated the others just for extra practice for myself lol and would like to know the actual correct answer as well

(B) - this is the correct answer! If the plaintiff had talked to two more witnesses that saw the defendant leave Bar-X alone at 12am on the day of the incident, then the defendant's claim doesn't hold! The defendant claims that he or she was "drunk" and that he or she was dropped off at home by a "friend", but if the defendant left Bar-X alone.. the statement doesn't hold. Or wait, actually.. now I'm getting a little confused. Maybe the defendant left the Bar alone, but met a friend just right across the street or something -- in that case, it still could have been true that the defendant wasn't involed in the accident, right? Now I'm not so sure about my answer anymore. I feel like we would have to make unwarranted assumptions for it to be true that if the defendant had left the Bar-X alone, then in fact it was the case that the defendant was lying - and thus, the defendant was actually involved in the accident.

You make a good point in the bolded section. Two things wrong with B. 1) The plaintiff's claim is not fact. This claim cannot be substantiated therefore it does not help her case in court. 2) As you pointed out, even if we accept the plaintiff's claim, we do not know if the defendant walked out to meet her waiting friend or if she "the defendant" walked to her car. It is unclear how (B) furthers the plaintiff's argument.

What do you think?

Feedback:
I would rate this question difficulty in between a 2 or 3 because I was able to eliminate a lot of the answers just after reading them once - had to contemplate just between two (not even sure if one of them is the actual correct answer after having written explanations for all) and also I wouldn't give it a 1 because the argument was quite long -- it took me about 5 minutes to solve this problem (mostly because I gave myself "unlimited" time).

The length of this question is longer than your typical LR passage. This question was crafted like an LR passage

[LSAT-Chang]

You make a good point in the bolded section. Two things wrong with B. 1) The plaintiff's claim is not fact. This claim cannot be substantiated therefore it does not help her case in court. 2) As you pointed out, even if we accept the plaintiff's claim, we do not know if the defendant walked out to meet her waiting friend or if she "the defendant" walked to her car. It is unclear how (B) furthers the plaintiff's argument.

What do you think?

I agree with your second point, however, I disagree with your first point because we always should take the argument as "fact". If we were to think of an argument as claims that cannot be substantiated, then we could say every single argument is wrong because we don't know if it is true or not. So I was thinking of the plaintiff's and defendant's claim to be "facts" -- as we need to perceive every LR arguments as "facts" -- right?? What do you think?

Also, is there a correct answer? I was able to eliminate all four but this, so if you eliminate this as well.. what is the answer? I'm curious to know!!

[chike_eze]

I agree with your second point, however, I disagree with your first point because we always should take the argument as "fact". If we were to think of an argument as claims that cannot be substantiated, then we could say every single argument is wrong because we don't know if it is true or not. So I was thinking of the plaintiff's and defendant's claim to be "facts" -- as we need to perceive every LR arguments as "facts" -- right?? What do you think?

We may be using the same term to refer to different things. To me, the following statements are different.

1. The plaintiff talked to two witnesses
2. The plaintiff claimed she talked to two witnesses

The first is a statement of fact which we assume to be true. The second is a claim made by the plaintiff. We accept that she made the claim, but we do not necessarily accept her claim as true. We need evidence to strengthen her claim.

Fact = we accept as true
Claim = needs evidence to support it

I hope we can get more insight into this particular issue.

I'll post the full explanation of the solution in the next post. Solution provided in the original post.

Thanks for your feedback.

[chike_eze]

(C) Correct Answer

The Issue:
Plaintiff argues that 'defendant owes $5000 to fix her car', Law says that 'If defendant is behind the wheel only then she's liable to pay'. Correct answer should support the fact that defendant was behind the wheel.

A. This has already been proven by witnesses. Hence it's of less help to Plaintiff's claim. (Premise booster)

B. This fact already present in defendants claim. The fact that she was home by 12:30 means she must have left early. Also, collision occurred at 12:30 (according to witnesses) so if she left at 12:00 according to this answer choice, it would not help Plaintiff. (Unclear how it helps)

C. If defendant does not bring any witness and relies on her story alone, it has low credibility and hence can be assumed to be untrue. We can keep this option as a contender, and look for better options.
Also worth mentioning '..after talking to lawyers ..' seems to play with common thinking that if lawyers approved it, it must be right and hence MAY BE an effort is made (by framers of question) to hide the answer.

D. This one incident may not be sufficient to prove the defendant is careless and bad driver, but still may be a contender. Let's keep this option aside too for analysis later.

E. This strengthens defendants argument, not plaintiff's. (Opposite)

Between C and D. C appears to be a better choice.
Answer is C

[LSAT-Chang]

We may be using the same term to refer to different things. To me, the following statements are different.

1. The plaintiff talked to two witnesses
2. The plaintiff claimed she talked to two witnesses

The first is a statement of fact which we assume to be true. The second is a claim made by the plaintiff. We accept that she made the claim, but we do not necessarily accept her claim as true. We need evidence to strengthen her claim.

Fact = we accept as true
Claim = needs evidence to support it

I definitely agree with you in that point. However, I think we are just having some misunderstanding because now that I read the problem, it is really not something like an actual LR problem, and since I was "trying" to solve it like it was an actual LR, I assumed that ALL the facts are TRUE -- since that is what we are supposed to do for all real LSAT problems. We can't have "doubts" as to whether or not the argument is true or not -- but yes, I agree that in this problem, there are two "claims" not "facts" -- one from plaintiff and one from defendant -- and agree with your definition of someone "claiming" something and something that is proven to be a "fact". If we were to solve this like an actual problem though, we would HAVE to assume that both are FACTS -- that both the plaintiff's and defendant's claim are TRUE with no doubt. So, in that case, if we are trying to strengthen the "plaintiff's claim" -- answer choice (C) wouldn't matter - since we don't care about the defendant's claim -- do I make sense? (C) would be a total out of scope answer since we don't care about anything that will strengthen/weaken or do whatever to the defendant's claim.

But I think we just took different approaches to this problem -- because this is really not something close to an actual LR problem. It is so hard to explain in words what I want to say.. this problem is just so different to start with, since it also has that "law" which is given and some other variables we need to account for. Also the fact that we have to deal with "claims" and "facts" -- it's really not something we do for actual LR problems, we just KNOW that they are true, right? Do you agree with me on this? I guess we were just taking different approaches. Because, if I was taking your approach, and taking into consideration the fact that the plaintiff's claim which we are trying to strengthen is just a claim and not a laid out fact, it is quite obvious that (C) would be the correct answer, since that obviously shows that the defendant's claim has no merit -- like it would be an obvious answer, but since I wasn't thinking of the plaintiff's claim as "hmm it is just a claim - not a fact" way, to me, all of the answer choices are wrong. It's just really hard to explain what I'm trying to say in words hahaha

[chike_eze]

Interesting.

Yeah, the bottom line is that the defendant did not provide any witnesses to support her claim that 1) Her friend took her home at 12:00 AM. 2) She was at home at 12:30 AM.

She had two witnesses that could have supported her claims -- the friend and the neighbor (actually, either one would have strengthened her argument).

The defendant's claim that "she spoke to lawyers before deciding on no witnesses" is irrelevant. The fact is she did not provide any witnesses to support her claims.

I agree, the prompt could have been worded better (more concisely). Regardless, (C) most helps the plaintiff's case because it weakens the defendant's argument. In fact, the Judge stated that he ruled in favor of the plaintiff, not because the plaintiff proved her case conclusively, but because the defendant's evidence was lacking. Therefore in his opinion, the plaintiff's conclusion was more likely true than that of the defendant.

(This was a real case in "Small Claims" court!)

Good discussion. Thanks!

[LSAT-Chang]

(This was a real case in "Small Claims" court!)

Good discussion. Thanks!

=) Wow didn't know that! Well this was really interesting and I had fun with it =)