Judge: The case before me involves a plaintiff and three codefendants. The plaintiff has applied to the court for an ...

Mehran on October 17, 2018

@smilde11 of course! Let's take a closer look.

The conclusion here is, "Therefore, the order requested by the plaintiff cannot be granted."

What order did the plaintiff request?

"An order permitting her to question each defendant without their codefendants or their codefendants' legal counsel being present."

Why did the Judge decide against granting the order requested?

Because two of the codefendants share the same legal counsel and the court will not order any codefendant to find new legal counsel.

Notice the issue here. Imagine our codefendants are A, B and C.

B and C share the same attorney.

If plaintiff (P) was permitted to question B without the presence of C's attorney that would mean the questioning would occur outside of the presence of B's own attorney as well.

This is a Strengthen Principle question so we are looking for the answer choice that strengthens the Judge's decision to not grant the order requested by the plaintiff.

Now let's take a look at (B):

"Defendants have the right to have their legal counsel present when being questioned."

Does this strengthen? Absolutely! It tells us that B has a right to have his attorney present when being questioned by P, a situation that would not be possible under P's requested order.

So (B) strengthens the Judge's decision to deny the plaintiff's order and, as such, (B) would be the correct answer.

Hope that helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.

jensenhedley on October 19, 2021

it is still not making any sense to me

jensenhedley on October 19, 2021

it is still not making any sense to me

Ravi on February 5, 2022

@jensenhedley, the judge's assumption is that each defendant has the right to have an attorney present while they're questioned by the plaintiff. We're looking for an answer that more or less says this.

With B, if each defendant has the right to a lawyer during questioning, and if two defendants share the same lawyer, and if the judge will not order any defendant to get a new lawyer, then it has to be true that no defendant may be questioned outside the presence of her codefendants' lawyers. So B is correct.