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Articles 31 - 40 of 40
Full-Text Articles in Law
Coattail Class Actions: Reflections On Microsoft, Tobacco, And The Mixing Of Public And Private Lawyering In Mass Litigation , Howard M. Erichson
Coattail Class Actions: Reflections On Microsoft, Tobacco, And The Mixing Of Public And Private Lawyering In Mass Litigation , Howard M. Erichson
Faculty Scholarship
Ask anyone who follows legal news to name the two biggest litigation news stories in the United States at the start of the twenty-first century, and they will answer without blinking: Microsoft and tobacco. The Microsoft litigation, they will tell you, claims a place in the pantheon of antitrust landmarks that includes Standard Oil, Alcoa, and AT&T. The tobacco litigation is the most massive in a string of mass torts including asbestos, Dalkon Shield, and breast implants; it is arguably the most important public health matter ever litigated. Microsoft and tobacco each fit so well and so interestingly in their …
Class Action Accountability: Reconciling Exit, Voice, And Loyalty In Representative Litigation, John C. Coffee Jr.
Class Action Accountability: Reconciling Exit, Voice, And Loyalty In Representative Litigation, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
In two recent and highly technical decisions – Amchem Products v. Windsor and Ortiz v. Fibreboard Corp. – the Supreme Court has recognized that a serious potential for collusion exists in class actions and has outlined a concept of "class cohesion" as the rationale that legitimizes representative litigation. Although agreeing that a legitimacy principle is needed, Professor Coffee doubts that "class cohesion" can bear that weight, either as a normative theory of representation or as an economic solution for the agency cost and collective action problems that arise in representative litigation. He warns that an expansive interpretation of "class cohesion" …
Mass Tort Litigation And Inquisitorial Justice, Howard M. Erichson
Mass Tort Litigation And Inquisitorial Justice, Howard M. Erichson
Faculty Scholarship
In the past decade, settlement class actions have become increasingly popular in mass tort litigation, having been used successfully in cases such as the Dalkon Shield litigation, the Bjork-Shiley heart valve litigation, and the orthopedic bone screw litigation. Although the Supreme Court's opinion in Amchem has engendered some confusion over the continued viability of mass tort settlement class actions, it appears that such settlements remain a dominant approach to resolving mass tort lawsuits. With increasing frequency, plaintiffs and defendants come to court holding hands, and courts must launch their own vigorous inquiries into the merits of the parties' proffered settlement. …
Conflicts Consent And Allocation After Amchem Products – Or Why Attorneys Still Need Consent To Give Away Their Clients' Money, John C. Coffee Jr.
Conflicts Consent And Allocation After Amchem Products – Or Why Attorneys Still Need Consent To Give Away Their Clients' Money, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
If it was the goal of Silver and Baker to write a provocative article, they have succeeded. They ask probing questions; they are appropriately scornful of superficial answers; and they seek to relate their view of legal ethics to what they perceive to be the prevailing standards in the legal marketplace. All this is good. They also usefully focus on an underappreciated dichotomy: the ethical rules governing aggregated settlements in consensual litigation versus the rules applicable in aggregated nonconsensual litigation (i.e., class actions). Essentially, they argue that the rules in both contexts should be the same or very similar, the …
Under Cloak Of Settlement, Susan P. Koniak
Under Cloak Of Settlement, Susan P. Koniak
Faculty Scholarship
In this Article, we discuss examples of class action settlements in which the conduct allegedly engaged in by class counsel-and in some instances by the defendants and their lawyers--could constitute a civil wrong or a criminal act under state or federal law, but a court nevertheless blessed the conduct by approving the settlement. We argue that the findings made by federal and state courts in blessing these settlements, namely, findings on the adequacy of class counsel, the lack of collusion between class counsel and the defendants, and the fairness of the settlement terms, should not immunize the conduct of the …
Class Action Against Class Counsel, Susan P. Koniak
Class Action Against Class Counsel, Susan P. Koniak
Faculty Scholarship
These remarks are based on a paper that I wrote with Professor George Cohen of the University of Virginia Law School, which is entitled, "Under Cloak of Settlement."' What we mean by that is that in the class action settlement process some illegal cesspool-like activity is occurring. We believe some lawyers are committing fraud, committing gross malpractice, committing violations of the antitrust laws, and that this behavior is going unregulated, unpunished and unchecked by law
Corruption Of The Class Action: The New Technology Of Collusion, John C. Coffee Jr.
Corruption Of The Class Action: The New Technology Of Collusion, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
Professor Coffee's article, an oral version of which was given at the Cornell Mass Torts conference, is appearing in the Columbia Law Review. However, because commentators in this volume have responded to it, he has authorized the following summary of his views.
Class Wars: The Dilemma Of The Mass Tort Class Action, John C. Coffee Jr.
Class Wars: The Dilemma Of The Mass Tort Class Action, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
Legal change – like organic evolution – can occur at varying paces. Long periods of gradual evolution are sometimes punctuated by brief moments of rapid, irregular change. Recent developments in class action practice bear witness to this phenomenon: during the 1990s, evolution has given way to mutation. At least with respect to mass torts, the development of the class action had been slow and halting. Well into the 1980s, federal courts uniformly resisted attempts to certify such mass tort class actions, largely out of concern that the interests of the individual litigant would be submerged within any large-scale proceeding. By …
The Regulation Of Entrepreneurial Litigation: Balancing Fairness And Efficiency In The Large Class Action, John C. Coffee Jr.
The Regulation Of Entrepreneurial Litigation: Balancing Fairness And Efficiency In The Large Class Action, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
Just as war is too important to be left to generals, civil procedure – with apologies to Clemenceau – is too important to be left to proceduralists. Although it would be a serious overstatement to claim that all civil procedure scholars are confined by a tunnel vision focused only on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, they have as a group been reluctant to engage explicitly in incentive-based reasoning and seem particularly hesitant to reexamine what they must know to be a noble myth: namely, that the client can and should control all litigation decisions. Within an important and expanding …
Federal Tort Claims At The Agency Level: The Ftca Administrative Process, George A. Bermann
Federal Tort Claims At The Agency Level: The Ftca Administrative Process, George A. Bermann
Faculty Scholarship
Tort actions against the federal government and its agencies are currently governed by the FTCA and various other statutes, agency rules and procedures. Claims against the government are increasing rapidly, and the agencies enjoy broad settlement authority, often at the expense of coordination among the appropriate statutes. This Article examines the various procedures allowed and those that are actually practiced by the agencies. The author points out that, though claims officers are supposed to be fair-minded, the process can take on an adversarial nature, often a prelude to litigation rather than settlement. He proposes that the current processes be made …