1. MEMORANDUM
TO: Junior Associates N-Z
FROM: Senior Partner Goering and Senior Associate Stromberg
RE: Potential representation of Proctor & Gamble, Inc.
DATE: September 7, 2006
Yesterday I met with the general counsel of Proctor & Gamble (P & G), a
potential client whose accounting employee, Jenny Fordham, recently suffered a back
injury at work. P & G has asked us to represent the company against Fordham’s claim
for workers’ compensation to cover the medical costs of treating her injury. Fortunately
for P & G, she does not seek ongoing workers’ compensation benefits because she was
able to return to work after the accident.
The employee, Jenny Fordham, lives in Gladstone, Missouri. She works as a
payroll accountant at P & G’s manufacturing facility in Kansas City, Kansas. On
November 6, 2005, she clocked into work at 8:21 a.m. and began waiting for a required
morning meeting with other accounting staff, scheduled for 8:30. As she was waiting for
the meeting to begin, she sat in a conference chair with rollers, her legs extended and her
feet propped up on another conference chair. She was engrossed in solving a sudoku
puzzle while she waited for other employees to arrive for the meeting.
Before the meeting started and while Ms. Fordham was thus engaged, a fellow
employee, Bill Gordon, came up behind her. Gordon was Ms. Fordham’s friendly rival
in P & G’s voluntary Sudoku Singles Club, whose members met at least twice weekly
during coffee breaks and occasionally socialized after hours. Gordon noticed that Ms.
Fordham was concentrating on the Sudoku Singles Challenge Puzzle of the Month.
Whoever completed the puzzle first would win a $1,000 purse, contributed by members
of the club. To distract her, he playfully took hold of the chair’s back and pushed it
forward, dumping her off the chair and onto the terrazzo tile floor. Ms. Fordham hit the
floor and immediately suffered a low back injury.
Ms. Fordham insists she did nothing whatsoever to provoke Gordon to push the
chair out from under her and dump her on the floor. She did not argue with Gordon
before the incident, and she and Gordon had no feelings of ill will toward one another. In
fact, they were good friends. Before the incident that morning, Ms. Fordham did not
email or converse with Mr. Gordon or communicate with him in any other way. In fact,
she did not even know he was approaching until she found herself sitting on the floor of
the conference room.
As a result of the incident, Ms. Fordham suffered a low back injury. After
medical treatment she was able to return to her accounting position, but her low back
remains symptomatic. To control continuing low back pain, she wears a TENS unit
during waking hours, and she continues to require physical therapy and medical treatment

2. to monitor her condition. Work disability is not an issue; Ms. Fordham just wants P & G,
our potential client, to pay her ongoing medical costs under its mandatory workers’
compensation coverage.
The facts are not in dispute. After reviewing the attached legal authorities, please
write a short office memo addressing the issue of law using the appropriate legal terms.
I have attached the relevant statute and all the other materials you will need; please limit
your research to these materials and do not look up any other legal authority or
background information. However, you may consult a law dictionary to ensure you
understand any unfamiliar terms.
Your memo should follow the standard format for office memoranda discussed in
the Edwards text, including the appropriate headings. Please use 12-point Times New
Roman font and 1.25-inch margins on all four sides, and please double-space your memo.
Your completed memo should be approximately 5-7 pages in length. I will not read past
the end of the seventh page, so be sure you include all required memo components within
that overall page limit.
A draft of your memo, including at minimum the Question Presented, Brief
Answer, Facts, an outline of your Discussion, and Conclusion, is due no later than
Thursday, September 14, at 5:00 p.m. The final memo, which will be graded, is due
on or before Thursday, September 21, at 5:00 p.m.
In preparing your office memo, please cite case authority consistent with the
ALWD citation manual. For statutes, please use the following format: Kan. Stat. Ann. §
xx-xxx (2006). While I expect you to make a reasonable effort to accurately cite your
authorities, the precise form of your citations will not affect your grade on this
assignment. You are expected to demonstrate that you know when you should cite
authority to support a statement in your memo.
You may discuss the research materials and your analysis with other students who
are working on the same closed memo assignment. However, you may not discuss the
assignment or any of the materials with anyone else – including other law students, your
parents, your lawyer, your roommate, or your significant other. In addition, you may not
show your written work to anyone, including your classmates in this course. Writing,
revising, editing, and proofreading of your memo must be done by you alone. Any
departure from these requirements will be considered a violation of the Washburn School
of Law Honor Code and handled accordingly.