Assignment Description

After the completion of the IDL 3 final assignment, you will have developed a memorandum for the judge and jury in a class action lawsuit. You will be providing the final evaluation of the evidence needed to determine if the manufacturer in the lawsuit exceeded environmental regulations by exceeding the limits on chromium in the water released from their plant after the production process. To convince the jury that what you are doing is an effective way to evaluate the problem you must be able to speak in plain language about what your analysis accomplished.

You will complete and document the statistical calculations and develop a memorandum in the provided abbreviated legal format.

This assignment will bring together all of the data literacy skills you worked on this semester.

Problem

Dobre Textiles, Inc. has a textile production facility located in Baila, FL. It lies along a river that is used for drinking water for the surrounding town and is therefore tested regularly for chemical contaminants according to EPA standards. There is also a recreational beachfront with swimming and boating located ½ mile downstream of the plant. Over the last ten years, the incidence of a skin reaction called allergic dermatitis has increased dramatically for swimmers at the recreational beachfront.

Due to public concern, the local water utility began checking for elevated levels of several pollutants that cause skin reactions as well as monitoring discharge sources and possibilities for illegal dumping in the river. Careful surveillance and testing by other consultants have determined there are no chemicals being du . Additionally, over the course of a year, they collected 45 water samples from a location adjacent to the output of the Dobre industrial plant, the closest upstream industrial discharge site. These samples were tested and elevated levels of chromium were identified. The EPA’s Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for chromium is 0.1 mg/L. With the knowledge that chromium pollution can result from fabric dyeing within textile factories, a group of concerned citizens has brought a class-action lawsuit against ABC Textiles, Inc. The class claims that the company’s textile mill has contributed to elevated chromium levels in the river, causing skin reactions at the local beach. The class action lawsuit is Walters v. Dobre Textiles.

Due to the significance of this litigation, the Judge involved with the case, The Honorable Olena Leonova, has brought you in as an expert witness, independent of either side of the litigation, to give your expert opinion on the chromium exceedance. At your request, she is providing you with data from the 45 samples the water utility collected. She has requested that you analyze whether the chromium levels in the river exceed the EPA standard. Because there are no other outputs to the river within 5 miles, it can be presumed that the textile plant is the most likely source of elevated chromium levels, if they are present in the river.

The Judge is requiring that you complete your work with a high level of confidence, therefore you have suggested using a significance level of .01 (i.e., 99% confidence). You are to provide the jury with which side of the litigation you would support and why in a written document that makes the determination clear and believable to them. The document you are to provide is to follow the court’s template and their Legal memorandum guide. You will also copy the document to Art Tatum, Clerk of the Courts, Mykola Boiko, Plaintiffs’ Counsel, and Janelle Gibson, Defendant’s Counsel. Remember that you are only an expert on statistical analysis of the exceedance of chromium in the river, not on whether elevated chromium can cause allergic dermatitis. Be careful not to overstate your findings – don’t make any assumptions that aren’t very clearly suggested by the data.

(Data File) Download (Data File)

Completing the Assignment

Review and evaluate the problem presented – Using the tools learned in IDL 3 evaluate the problem: what you know, the significance of what you know to the problem, and what information you have that can be used in a statistical problem. Determine the appropriate hypothesis test to use, given what input you have, the problem, and the statistical tools you have learned. Additionally, determine the appropriate use of the null and alternative hypotheses for the problem. Sketch a diagram of the problem as it may help you think through how to use the hypothesis test. (This sketch is for your thinking and should not be included in the final document.) You can use the template from the preliminary assignment if it helps you think through the problem.

Complete the calculation – Complete the statistical analysis of the problem. Be clear that you understand all of the processes you have completed to get your answer, you will have to document it. You will need to know what you figure out from the analysis to complete the work.

Develop your document for the assigned audience and purpose – Be sure that you present a plain language, logical presentation of your process so the jury (a naive audience) can understand and believe what you are sharing. As you will have templates to use with many professional documents you will create, this assignment has a format that you must follow – the Legal Memorandum Template. Download the Legal Memorandum Template.This format includes appearance and content. See the Exemplar Download Exemplarfor a visual guide.

Memorandum Header – This section of the document provides the information a reader needs to know to determine if they need to read the rest of the document. It must be consistent in layout and format so that it is easy to read. This section is graded on your ability to follow directions.

TO – The person you have been asked to address the memorandum to. Follow the exemplar, on paper a judge’s title is ‘Honorable’.

Why? This section and the CC section may be addressed to one or more person(s). The amount of information included for each is dependent on an organization’s level of formality and the role of hierarchy in the organization. National culture may also play a role in these decisions, as some may place greater importance on titles (such as Mr., Dr., or General). The person’s role title is often included, as it will dictate what type of information they need from you. Finally, the location of the addressee can be included, when it also suggests the type of information the document will include. When in doubt, it is better to be more formal and include too much information than to find out it was needed but not included.

CC – Emulate the format of the Exemplar. Download Exemplar.The name of each person being addressed is on a new equally indented line.

FROM – Emulate the format of the Exemplar. Download Exemplar.Use your name, your title is Engineering Expert Witness

DATE – Use the due date of the assignment format as Month, day, year

RE – For a lawsuit, this will have the suit name and then what it is about relative to the lawsuit.

Question Presented – Present specifically, and concisely the question you are being asked to address. This question must include a technical and legal component. Do not present the details of the problem, just the question.

Brief Answer – Present specifically, and concisely the answer you got from your analysis. This answer must include a technical and legal component. The answer will not have details on your analysis or numeric outcomes. Do not overstate you findings in terms of what they show statistically and for the problem.

Facts – This section will present the input you were given by presenting the context, the data and its meaning in the context, and how this input allows you to structure an analysis to determine an answer. It will not proceed into the analysis.

Discussion – This section presents the logic on how you analyzed the problem in language a non-technical audience can understand, starting with the most basic reasoning for the use of this analysis for the problem. This section will end with what you found through your analysis and what it means for the case.

Conclusion – This summarizes the entire document ending with the outcome of your analysis and its meaning to the case.

Appendix – This section is on its own page (use ‘insert/page break). For this section type out the mathematics, you used to calculate an answer in detail, ending with the outcome, what it means for the hypothesis test and the case. (MS Word has the capability to insert formulas and statistical symbols. Look at some online resources to learn how, if you are not familiar with doing this.

Assignment Deliverable

Deliverable: A 3-page minimum, single-spaced legal memorandum, using the provided Legal Memorandum Template. Download Legal Memorandum Template.

This assignment will be completed as a (modified version) of a legal memorandum as documented by CUNY School of Law. (You should not reference their document, as a full legal memorandum is much more complex than what you will be doing.)

Refer to the Exemplar Download Exemplarprovided if you have questions about the way the document should be laid out.

Assignment Preparation

You will be expected to discuss the elements of this assignment accurately. There are several areas in which students have had difficulty in the past that you may want to make sure you are familiar with by doing some additional research

• • Be sure you clearly understand the specific issue you are discussing. If you are not familiar with it take the time to look up some information or watch a video on it before writing about it so, you can speak precisely.
  • Evaluate the information you have been given carefully, using the method we practiced in assignment IDL 3.
  • Be sure you are clear on the difference between the data and your evaluation of it.
  • Be sure you understand the difference between negligence and liability.
  • Be sure you understand what a class-action lawsuit (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.) is.