Research

Test whether the case you are building on still stands

Turns an authority you want to rely on into an updating checklist: the six ways it could have stopped supporting your proposition, where each answer lives, what a citator flag does and does not mean, and the fallback if it goes.

About 15 minintermediateLitigation

Your prompt6,086 characters

Still to fill in: The authority, What you need it to say, Where you are filing

RoleYou are a research lawyer who has watched a brief come apart because the lead case had been abrogated three years earlier by a decision that never mentioned it. You treat currency as a property of a proposition rather than of a case, because an opinion can be gutted on one holding and untouched on another. You do not have a citator in front of you and you never behave as though you do.What I needBuild the updating checklist for The authority against the proposition I actually need it for, for a filing in Where you are filing.InputsAuthority: The authority What I need it to say: What you need it to say Where I am filing: Where you are filing What I already know about its treatment: What you already know about its treatment What I can search: What you can actually searchHow to work this1. Restate What you need it to say in the narrowest form that still does the work I need, and say which part of The authority would have to be carrying it: a holding, a rule statement, a footnote, an application to facts. If the proposition is broader than any single holding could be, say so, because that is a defect in the citation before it is a currency problem. 2. Work the six failure modes as separate checks, and for each say what it would look like and what it would do to What you need it to say: reversed or vacated on direct review; expressly overruled; abrogated by a later decision of a higher court that never named it; superseded by statute, rule, or constitutional amendment; narrowed, distinguished into irrelevance, or confined to its facts by the court that decided it; and the passage I am relying on was dicta from the start. 3. For each failure mode, name where the answer lives and give the search I can run in What you can actually search: the citator's own history and treatment views, the subsequent-appellate-history field, a full-text search for the case name inside Where you are filing, the current code section with its historical notes, and the treatise or practice guide chapter that would have flagged a change. Mark any source title you are not certain exists as [UNVERIFIED - confirm the title]. 4. Say plainly what a citator signal establishes and what it does not: a negative flag may attach to a holding I am not using, a positive one may reflect citations to a different passage, and no flag at all means nobody has cited it, which is information about the case's weight rather than reassurance about its status. 5. Do not tell me the current status of The authority. You cannot check it from here, and a confident answer is worse than none. Mark the status question itself [PULL IT] and produce the checklist instead. Treat What you already know about its treatment as a lead to run down, not as a finding. 6. Give the fallback: if The authority fails, what category of authority in Where you are filing would carry What you need it to say instead, and say whether the argument survives on it or has to change shape.Ask me firstYou have the citation, the proposition, the forum, and what I already know. Ask me these three, which none of that reveals, then stop and wait: 1. Is this authority the spine of my argument or a supporting cite? The answer decides whether a yellow flag is an afternoon of work or a reason to restructure the brief. 2. Has the other side cited it, or am I the only one relying on it? A case both sides are using has been checked by somebody with an incentive to find the problem. 3. When does this have to be filed, and is there time to rebuild an argument if it fails? Do not begin until I answer. If I tell you to proceed anyway, state each assumption at the top of your output and mark it [ASSUMPTION - verify].Output formatOpen with the narrowed proposition and the part of the authority that has to carry it. Then a six-row table: Failure mode | What it would look like | Effect on my proposition | Where the answer lives | The search to run. Then a short block on what the citator signal will and will not establish. Then the fallback: the category of authority that would carry the proposition instead, and whether the argument survives. Every status conclusion marked [PULL IT]. Close with one line naming the two of my answers that most changed this checklist, and what you would have recommended without them. If an answer changed nothing, say so, because it means I should not have been asked.Never do this- If the checklist would fit any case cited for any proposition, it is too generic. Every row has to engage with what this authority actually holds and what I need from it. - No hedging filler. "This case is arguably still good law" is exactly the sentence that gets a brief into trouble. Say what to check and where. Do not tell me to consult an attorney; I am the attorney. - Never tell me whether the authority has been overruled, abrogated, superseded, or flagged, and never name a later case, a statute, or an amendment as having done any of those things. If you name a source at all, mark it [UNVERIFIED - confirm it exists]. Never invent a citation, a date, or a subsequent history. - Where you cannot tell what the authority actually holds from what I gave you, say you do not know and ask for the opinion rather than reasoning from the case name. - Do not pad. If three of the six failure modes are plainly inapplicable, say so in a clause each and spend the space on the three that are live. Length is not value.Before you answer- Did I narrow the proposition before checking anything, or check the case in the abstract? - Did I name any later case, statute, or flag as a fact rather than as something to look for? - Is every search string one that can actually be typed into what I said I have? - Did I say what no citator flag at all would mean? - Does the fallback name a category of authority rather than an invented case?

The run walks turn one, the pressure test, the follow-up, and a check on what came back. The Cockpit adds driver's-seat tunes. Your values come with either one.

Pressure-test it

Makes the AI switch hats and attack its own answer.

Your opponent files a notice of supplemental authority the week before argument, and it is about this case. Read the checklist as the opposing counsel who filed it: which of the six failure modes did I treat as inapplicable without looking, which search would I have skipped because it felt redundant, and what does my fallback concede about how much of the argument was resting on one opinion? Then tell me what I file in response if the notice is right.

Go deeper

Pushes the work further once the basics are right.

Checklists do not get run; assignments do. Convert this into the updating memo I will write once the pulls come back: the narrowed proposition, a line per failure mode recording what was searched and what was found including the searches that returned nothing, the current status with its source, and a plain statement of whether the argument stands as drafted, stands in a changed form, or goes. Written so it can sit in the file and be read by whoever inherits this case.

4Check what came backPaste the answer here and work a checklist against this prompt's own rules.

Before you run it

What to gather first

The case, statute, or rule by its full citation as you have it
The exact proposition you need it for, in a sentence
The forum where you are filing, which decides what binds
Anything you already know about how it has been treated
Which research database you actually have

Watch for

This prompt produces a checklist, not a status. Nothing here tells you whether the authority is still good law, and no output from a model can. Run the citator.
The model will invent later cases, amendments, and subsequent history that sound plausible. Treat every name it produces as fiction until you have pulled it.
A citator flag is about a case, and your argument is about a passage. A green signal on an opinion says nothing about whether the sentence you are quoting survived.
Currency and weight are different questions. An authority that is perfectly good law may still be a trial court decision in a forum that binds nobody.
Courts sanction lawyers for filings that rely on overruled authority. The pull is yours, and it cannot be delegated to a summary.

What comes back

Opens with the narrowed proposition and the part of the authority carrying it. Then a six-row failure-mode table (what it would look like, effect on the proposition, where the answer lives, the search to run), a block on what a citator signal does and does not establish, the fallback authority category with a verdict on whether the argument survives, every status conclusion marked [PULL IT], and the answer-consumption line.

See an example of what you’ll get

*(After I answered: this is the spine of the duty argument, the other side has not cited it, and the opposition is due in nine days.)* Narrowed proposition. That in this state a defendant owes no duty of care to a plaintiff outside privity even where the harm was foreseeable, when the defendant's undertaking was to a third party under contract. What has to be carrying it. That is a holding-level proposition about duty, not a rule statement about foreseeability. If the passage you are relying on is the court's general discussion of foreseeability rather than its disposition on duty, the citation is weaker than a currency check would ever reveal, and that is a problem before anyone runs a citator. | Failure mode | What it would look like | Effect on the proposition | Where the answer lives | Search | |---|---|---|---|---| | Reversed or vacated | Further appellate history on the same case | Fatal | Citator direct-history view; the reporter's subsequent-history table | Citator history view on the citation itself. Two minutes | | Expressly overruled | A later high-court decision naming it | Fatal | Citator treatment view, negative signals only | Full-text search for the case name in this state's high court, no date limit | | Abrogated without being named | A later high-court decision adopting a general foreseeability duty that cannot coexist with it | Fatal, and invisible to a citator | Nowhere reliable. The treatise chapter on duty is the fastest route | Search this state's high court for the duty framework by its doctrinal name, restricted to decisions after the case, and read the most recent one. This is the check people skip | | Superseded by statute | A statute imposing a duty in this relationship or field | Fatal in that field, harmless elsewhere | The current code, plus its historical and statutory notes | Search the code for the relationship at issue. Then read the notes, not just the text | | Narrowed or confined to its facts | The same court distinguishing it repeatedly in a pattern | Not fatal, but it converts the case from a rule into an outcome on facts | Citator treatment view, positive and neutral citations included | Read the five most recent decisions of this state's high court citing it. If every one distinguishes, you have your answer | | Always dicta | The passage sits outside what the disposition required | Fatal to your use of it, regardless of status | The opinion itself | Read the opinion end to end before the citator. Ten minutes that the other five checks cannot substitute for | What a citator signal will and will not tell you. A negative flag may attach to a holding in this case that you are not using at all, in which case it is noise. A positive treatment count may be entirely citations to a different passage, in which case it is false comfort. And if the case carries no signal at all, that means nobody has cited it recently, which is a fact about its weight with a court rather than a fact about its status. Judge the flag by reading what generated it. [PULL IT] The current status of this authority. I cannot check it and nothing above is a status. Every row is an assignment. Fallback. If the case fails, the proposition would have to be carried by one of three categories in this forum: a later decision of the same high court stating the same duty limit in its own words, the state's pattern jury instruction on duty if one addresses privity, or the restatement section with this state's cases collected under it. The argument survives on the first, survives in a weakened form on the second, and becomes a persuasive-authority argument on the third. If it comes to the third, the brief has to change shape: the duty section stops leading with a case and starts leading with the relationship. Assumptions. That the authority is a decision of this state's highest court, inferred from the citation format you gave me [verify: if it is an intermediate appellate decision, rows two and five change entirely and it never bound anyone in the first place]. That "outside privity" in your proposition means no contractual relationship of any kind rather than no direct contract [verify]. What your answers changed. That this is the spine of the duty argument is why the abrogation row and the dicta row are marked as the two to run first and why the fallback is written out in full rather than in a clause. On a supporting cite the honest answer is a citator check and nothing else. Your answer that the other side has not cited it is what moved the dicta check to the top: a case both sides rely on has already been read closely by somebody with a reason to find the problem, and this one has not. Your nine-day deadline changed the ordering only, not the content, so it barely earned its question.

Why this prompt is built the way it is

## Framework 1. **Fix the proposition first.** Currency is relative to what you need the case for, not to the case. 2. **Run the six failure modes separately:** reversed or vacated; expressly overruled; abrogated by a later higher decision that never named it; superseded by statute, rule, or amendment; narrowed or confined to its facts by the same court; and the quiet one, the passage was always dicta. 3. **Name where each answer lives** and the search that finds it. 4. **Say what a citator flag does not tell you.** A red flag can be about a holding you are not using. No flag means nobody has cited it. 5. **Do not state the current status.** Produce the checklist and mark the status question itself as work for a human. 6. **Give the fallback:** what carries the proposition if this authority goes, and whether the argument survives.