Your correspondent, not drunk at all, reflects on her Torts exam.

It was not particularly difficult, but I did fail to fully discuss the balancing of "burden of precaution" v. "likelihood and magnitude of harm" when evaluating the primary negligence claim. I remembered I should discuss it. I said to myself, "You need to make a note NOW so you don't forget to discuss that." And then I just kept hurtling along through the rest of my argument, failed to make the note, and left it out entirely.

What is it with the boy law students in my section that they got so obsessed with Samaritan statutes? I think one of them developed some kind of fascination, then it spread. After the exam, the hallways were all like "bzzz bzzz Samaritan defense bzz bz Samaritan." Just the guys. None of the girls. I have no theory about this. Maybe the Samaritan disease vector has primarily male friends?

But dudes, first, the Samaritan thing is a DEFENSE. Second, we haven't learned defenses yet. The prof talked about the Samaritan thing once, for about 10 seconds, probably in response to a question from the original source of the Samaritan contagion. Third, the test instructions explicitly stated that we should not waste our time discussing defenses. The only possible Samaritan action in the fact pattern was on the "duty to keep helping once you've started" exception to the "no duty to strangers" rule.

Dorks. (<------please note irony-------<<)

Will I feel like a total jackass if I'm wrong about this? Yes. Well, more like a partial jackass. We'll see.

The fact that the exam was not so hard makes me fear that the curve will be brutal.

Learnings: Make the damn note to yourself.