It's not incredibly easy writing introductions. To briefs, to law review articles, or to anything. It's hard to capture complicated issues comprehensively in a couple of paragraphs.
So when I see an introduction done well, it jumps out at me.
When you read the introduction, you not only know what the case is about (and what it holds), but you also get a keen sense that the result makes sense. And hence that the opinion might well be a unanimous one.
Which it is.
Check it out:
"Plaintiff Aleksandr Vasilenko was struck by a car as he crossed a public
street between the main premises of defendant Grace Family Church (the Church)
and the Church’s overflow parking area. Vasilenko contends that the Church
owed him a duty of care to assist him in safely crossing the public street and that
the Church was negligent in failing to do so. The Church argues that it had no
control over the public street and therefore did not owe Vasilenko a duty to
prevent his injury under the principle that landowners have no duty to protect
others from dangers on abutting streets unless the landowner created the dangers.
(See Sexton v. Brooks (1952) 39 Cal.2d 153, 157–158 (Sexton).)
The parties do not dispute that the Church did not control the public street
and did not create the dangers on the street. But the Church, by locating its
parking lot on the other side of the street and directing Vasilenko to park there,
foreseeably increased the likelihood that Vasilenko would cross the street at that location and thereby encounter harm. Thus the circumstances here are different
from when a landowner merely owns property abutting a public street.
We conclude, however, that a landowner does not have a duty to assist
invitees in crossing a public street when the landowner does no more than site and
maintain a parking lot that requires invitees to cross the street to access the
landowner’s premises, so long as the street’s dangers are not obscured or
magnified by some condition of the landowner’s premises or by some action taken
by the landowner. Because Vasilenko does not allege that the Church did
anything other than maintain a parking lot on the other side of that street, we find
that the Church did not owe him a duty to prevent his injury."
Yep. That pretty much tells it like it is, eh?
