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Improving Predictability And Consistency In Class Action Tolling, Tanya Pierce
Improving Predictability And Consistency In Class Action Tolling, Tanya Pierce
Faculty Scholarship
Class action tolling means that when parties in a suit allege federal treatment, the individual claims of putative class members are tolled federal courts while the class action is pending. Commonly referred to as American Pipe tolling, this rule prevents duplicative litigation that would result if plaintiffs were required to intervene or file independent lawsuits to protect their interests while the class action was pending. Federal courts have long settled the application of American Pipe tolling in scenarios involving later-filed individual actions. In other scenarios, however, the application of American Pipe tolling has caused considerable uncertainty. This Article examines the …
It's Not Over 'Til It's Over: Mandating Federal Pretrial Jurisdiction And Oversight In Mass Torts, Tanya Pierce
It's Not Over 'Til It's Over: Mandating Federal Pretrial Jurisdiction And Oversight In Mass Torts, Tanya Pierce
Faculty Scholarship
In 2004, just five years after introducing the drug, Vioxx, pharmaceutical company, Merck, voluntarily withdrew the prescription pain-killer after a clinical study suggested that the drug increased the risk of heart attack and stroke. But in that relatively short time, an estimated 20 million Americans had already taken the drug. By late 2007, Merck announced it would pay $4.85 billion — the largest drug settlement ever — in “global settlements” for Vioxx-related claims. These settlements ultimately included roughly 47,000 individual lawsuits and about 265 potential class actions, but the Vioxx settlements were far from global.
In 2012, a purported parallel …
Rethinking Civil Rico: The Vexing Problem Of Causation In Fraud-Based Claims Under 18 U.S.C. § 1962(C), Randy D. Gordon
Rethinking Civil Rico: The Vexing Problem Of Causation In Fraud-Based Claims Under 18 U.S.C. § 1962(C), Randy D. Gordon
Faculty Scholarship
To recover in a private action, the three-part structure of RICO demands proof of particularized crimes at two levels and civil standing to sue for those crimes. The interpretation and application of the standing requirement — which arises from the statute’s mandate that compensable injuries be caused “by reason of” acts of racketeering — have bedeviled courts and litigants for decades. Recent developments in class action law have exacerbated the problem. As more and more courts have rendered it nearly impossible to certify classes asserting state-law claims, class plaintiffs have turned to uniform federal laws like RICO. But civil RICO …