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Case Fact Memo With Evidence Register
River grades every fact by what actually supports it, so the memo shows which propositions survive a motion and which need a witness first.
River reads the pleadings, the production, the transcripts and the client's own account together, and returns the facts the case rests on as numbered propositions. Each one carries the material that supports it, cited to the page, the Bates range or the line. The register is the artifact and the memo is written from it, so a proposition never appears in prose without the citation that makes it checkable. Facts the record contradicts are kept, paired with what contradicts them.
Then every proposition is graded by what actually supports it, because supported and unsupported is two states where there are four. A fact resting on a produced document behaves differently from one resting on the client's recollection of a phone call, and both behave differently from a fact whose only witness nobody disclosed. The fourth is the fact you believe and cannot yet prove, which has a permitted form and a required label. The grade is the column that decides what gets drafted.
Each grade also comes with its own next move: a declaration to take, a disclosure to supplement, a subpoena to serve, or a claim to drop before it is pleaded. The memo names them and dates them. It reads on top of the dated events the production established and the page and line behind every answer, and the propositions that survive are the ones the filing checker measures against the page limit.
The rules grade the facts for you
At summary judgment, a party asserting that a fact is or is not genuinely disputed supports it by citing to particular parts of materials in the record. The same rule adds that the court need consider only the cited materials. A document sitting in a production nobody indexed is not evidence in the court's hands. That is what makes the register the working artifact rather than a tidy byproduct: the record counts only to the extent somebody has written down where in it each fact lives.
The test is not whether a document is admissible as it sits. The other side is entitled to object that the cited material cannot be presented in a form that would be admissible in evidence, which asks about trial rather than about the exhibit. An email nobody can authenticate fails that. The same email survives it where a competent witness exists to put it in. A declaration rests on personal knowledge, and a witness testifies to a matter only where evidence supports a finding that the witness has personal knowledge of it.
Two rules close the set. A party that fails to identify a witness or produce information as the disclosure rules require is not allowed to use that witness or information to supply evidence on a motion, unless the failure was substantially justified or harmless. So a true fact with a real document behind it is unusable because of a form filed months earlier. And a factual contention with no support yet is permitted where the paper specifically identifies it as a contention likely to have evidentiary support after further investigation. Both are columns.
How it works
Hand over the case
The pleadings, the production, the transcripts and whatever the client has told you so far.
Facts get numbered
Every proposition the case rests on, written once, with the material that supports it attached.
Support gets graded
Each fact takes one of four states, decided by the source rather than by conviction.
The memo writes itself
Built from the register, so no proposition reaches prose without the citation that makes it checkable.
What you get
- One numbered proposition per fact, each carrying the page, line or Bates range behind it
- Every fact graded by what supports it, not by how strongly anyone believes it
- Facts locked out by a disclosure nobody supplemented, flagged while there is time to cure
- The client's account kept separate from the record, with the declaration each assertion would need
- Contradicting evidence paired to the fact it contradicts, rather than filed somewhere else
- A dated action against every gap: a declaration, a subpoena, or a claim to drop
Common questions
What does it need to run?
The pleadings, whatever has been produced, any transcripts, and the client's own account in whatever form it exists, including notes of a phone call. It runs on a partial set and marks the gaps as gaps. The client's account is the input people leave out, and it is the one that changes how half the register grades.
How is this different from a chronology?
A chronology answers when. A fact memo answers whether, and the two sheets have different columns. The chronology built from the production establishes the dated events and the metadata behind each date. The register takes those events and asks what could be put in front of a judge, which is a separate question with a different answer for most rows.
Does it decide whether evidence is admissible?
It grades and you rule. Each row shows the source, whose personal knowledge stands behind it, whether the substance could be presented in an admissible form at trial, and whether the source was ever disclosed. Those are the facts an evidentiary judgement is made from. Laying them out is what turns a two-hour reconstruction into a two-minute read.
What happens to a fact only the client can attest to?
It gets its own state and its own action, which is the declaration that would have to be signed. The row records who would sign it, what they personally witnessed, and which parts of the assertion fall outside that. Plenty of client facts survive this. The ones that do not are better found now than in an opposition brief.
When in a matter should this run?
Early, and then again before every dispositive filing. Run early, the gaps are curable: a supplemental disclosure, a subpoena, a deposition question worth adding to the digest of the next transcript. Run late, the same gaps are findings. Graded rows feed the statement of facts in the pack that reconciles a filing. The register is rebuilt from the same inputs each time, so the second run shows what moved.
Does it handle the other side's facts too?
Yes, and the grading runs the same way in both directions. Their asserted facts get the same four states, which is how an opposition gets built: a fact of theirs resting on an undisclosed witness or on nothing citable is the paragraph worth attacking. The register holds both columns, so both motions come off one sheet. The same split runs earlier, on the numbered allegations in a demand letter.
Case Fact Memo With Evidence Register
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