Law Commons^™

Look To Windward: The Michigan Environmental Protection Act And The Case For Atmospheric Trust Litigation In The Mitten State, Jonathan M. Coumes

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Failure to address climate change or even slow the growth of carbon emissions has led to innovation in the methods activists are using to push decisionmakers away from disaster. In the United States, climate activists frustrated by decades of legislative and executive inaction have turned to the courts to force the hand of the state. In their most recent iteration, climate cases have focused on the public trust doctrine, the notion that governments hold their jurisdictions’ natural resources in trust for the public. Plaintiffs have argued that the atmosphere is part of the public trust and that governments have a …

21st Century Cures Act: The Problem With Preemption In Light Of Deregulation, Megan C. Andersen

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The 21st Century Cures Act introduced innovative changes to the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory processes. In an effort to address the slow, costly, and burdensome approval process for high-risk devices, the Cures Act modernized clinical trial data by allowing reviewers to determine whether devices merit expedited review and to consider post-market surveillance data in the premarket approval process. These changes will get life-saving devices to the people who need them faster than ever before. But the tradeoff is a greater risk of injury to the patient. The 2008 Supreme Court decision Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc., held that any …

Understanding Administrative Sanctioning As Corrective Justice, Eithan Y. Kidron

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

When should a regulator prefer criminal sanctions over administrative sanctions? What procedural protections should apply if a process is labeled civil but the sanctions are, in fact, criminal in type? And can the state justifiably conduct parallel proceedings for punitive sanctions against the same person or entity for the same conduct?

Throughout the years, judges and scholars alike have tried to understand and classify administrative sanctioning. Common to all of these conceptions is their failure to provide a complete normative framework for this unique body of law, which in turn makes it difficult to identify its practical limits and to …

Renovations Needed: The Fda's Floor/Ceiling Framework, Preemption, And The Opioid Epidemic, Michael R. Abrams

Michigan Law Review

The FDA’s regulatory framework for pharmaceuticals uses a “floor/ceiling” model: administrative rules set a “floor” of minimum safety, while state tort liability sets a “ceiling” of maximum protection. This model emphasizes premarket scrutiny but largely relies on the state common law “ceiling” to police the postapproval drug market. As the Supreme Court increasingly holds state tort law preempted by federal administrative standards, the FDA’s framework becomes increasingly imbalanced. In the face of a historic prescription medication overdose crisis, the Opioid Epidemic, this imbalance allows the pharmaceutical industry to avoid internalizing the public health costs of their opioid products. This Note …

Too Many Cooks In The Climate Change Kitchen: The Case For An Administrative Remedy For Damages Caused By Increased Greenhouse Gas Concentrations, Benjamin Reese

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Recent federal and state court decisions have made clear that federal common law claims against emitters of greenhouse gases are not sustainable; however, those same courts seem to have given state common law tort claims the green light, at least if the claims are brought in the state where the polluters are located. This Note contends that such suits are not an adequate remedy for those injured by climate change because they will face nearly insurmountable barriers in state court, and because there are major policy-level drawbacks to relying on state tort law rather than a federal solution. This Note …

Against Secret Regulation: Why And How We Should End The Practical Obscurity Of Injunctions And Consent Decrees (Symposium: Rising Stars: A New Generation Of Scholars Looks At Civil Justice), Margo Schlanger

Articles

Every year, federal and state courts put in place orders that regulate the prospective operations of certainly hundreds and probably thousands of large government and private enterprises. Injunctions and injunction-like settlement agreements-whether styled consent decrees, settlements, conditional dismissals, or some other more creative title-bind the activities of employers, polluters, competitors, lenders, creditors, property holders, schools, housing authorities, police departments, jails, prisons, nursing homes, and many others. The types of law underlying these cases multiply just as readily: consumer lending, environmental, employment, anti-discrimination, education, constitutional, and so on. Injunctive orders, whether reached by litigation or on consent, suffuse the regulatory environment, …

The Truth About Torts: Rethinking Regulatory Preemption And Its Impact On Public Health, William Buzbee, William Funk, Thomas Mcgarity, Nina A. Mendelson, Sidney Shapiro, David Vladeck, Matthew Shudtz

Other Publications

As consumers, we assume that the automobiles, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and other products we purchase are generally safe for their intended uses. We rely on manufacturers to design and produce safe products, and we assume that federal regulators are conscientious watchdogs of the marketplace. In most instances, our assumptions are valid and we safely go about our lives. But the regulatory system is now frayed to the point that dangerous products sometimes slip through the cracks. Vioxx, Firestone/ATX tires, and toxics-laden children’s toys have endangered and harmed millions. In these cases, society depends on the state courts as a venue …

Regulatory Standards And Products Liability: Striking The Right Balance Between The Two, Teresa Moran Schwartz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Common law courts have a long tradition of borrowing legislative and regulatory standards to define standards of care under the tort system. Treating such standards as setting minimum levels of care and safety under tort law, the courts uniformly have ruled that violations of standards constitute negligence per se, while compliance is merely evidence of negligence. Although critics of the tort system have urged legislatures and courts to adopt rules giving greater weight to regulatory compliance in products liability cases, the drafters of the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability have declined to do so. They have adopted instead an …

Reckless Endangerment Of An Employee: A Proposal In The Wake Of Film Recovery Systems To Make The Boss Responsible For His Crimes, Anne D. Samuels

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note argues that the traditional regulatory, civil, and criminal mechanisms are both ineffective and inappropriate to deter or punish corporate decisionmakers for decisions that pose risks to the safety or health of employees in the workplace. The Note proposes a new criminal offense to prevent and punish culpable corporate decisionmaking that results in employee deaths or injuries. Part I explains the novel application of the traditional murder offense in Film Recovery Systems and demonstrates that the case fails to lay the foundation for a standardized response to employee endangerment. Part II analyzes the traditional responses of the regulatory and …

Refunding Overcharges Under The Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act: The Evolution Of A Compensatory Obligation, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

The DOE's authority to order noncompensatory remedies has been seriously questioned. This Note will evaluate the propriety of such remedies in light of the history of petroleum price control enforcement. Although the DOE's enabling legislation does not explicitly impose a compensatory obligation, the Note finds that Congress anticipated that remedies would compensate, to the extent feasible, those persons actually overcharged. Part I traces the development of a compensatory obligation through the various stages of price regulation. Part II criticizes the DOE for abnegating that obligation. The Note concludes that the Department's recent consent orders violate both its own rules and …