Law Commons^™

Against Bankruptcy: Public Litigation Values Versus The Endless Quest For Global Peace In Mass Litigation, Abbe Gluck, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Adam Zimmerman

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Can bankruptcy court solve a public health crisis? Should the goal of “global peace” in complex lawsuits trump traditional litigation values in a system grounded in public participation and jurisdictional redundancy? How much leeway do courts have to innovate civil procedure?

These questions have finally reached the Supreme Court in Harrington v. Purdue Pharma L.P., the $6 billion bankruptcy that purports to achieve global resolution of all current and future opioids suits against the company and its former family owners, the Sacklers. The case provides a critical opportunity to reflect on what is lost when parties in mass torts find …

Bankruptcy Grifters, Lindsey Simon

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Grifters take advantage of situations, latching on to others for benefits they do not deserve. Bankruptcy has many desirable benefits, especially for mass-tort defendants. Bankruptcy provides a centralized proceeding for resolving claims and a forum of last resort for many companies to aggregate and resolve mass-tort liability. For the debtor-defendant, this makes sense. A bankruptcy court’s tremendous power represents a well-considered balance between debtors who have a limited amount of money and many claimants seeking payment.

But courts have also allowed the Bankruptcy Code’s mechanisms to be used by solvent, nondebtor companies and individuals facing mass-litigation exposure. These “bankruptcy grifters” …

The Settlement Trap, Lindsey Simon

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Mass tort victims often wait years for resolution of their personal injury claims, but many who successfully navigate this arduous process will not receive a single dollar of their settlement award. According to applicable bankruptcy and state law, settlement payments may be an asset of the estate that the trustee, exercising its significant authority, administers and distributes to creditors instead of a claimant who had filed for bankruptcy. This distribution power maximizes repayment, a critical counterbalance to the robust protections and benefits that debtors receive in bankruptcy.

Setting aside the perceived unfairness of taking desperately needed money from tort victims, …

The Guardian Trustee In Bankruptcy Courts And Beyond, Lindsey Simon

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Litigation systems create dangers of unfairness. Citizens worry, and should worry, about exploitive settlements in aggregate litigation, potential biases in administrative proceedings, and troubling power imbalances in criminal trials. Public confidence in adjudicative processes has eroded to an all-time low. This Article explores the untapped potential of adding independent watchdog entities to address systemic threats to the integrity of government decisionmaking. These entities, which I call “guardian trustees,” do not fit within the traditional framework of our adversary system. Though guardian trustees already operate in bankruptcy proceedings, they have thus far received little attention in scholarly literature. This Article begins …

Statute Of Limitations For Child Sexual Abuse Civil Lawsuits In Georgia, Emma Hetherington, Jean Mangan, Chase Lyndale, Michael Nunnally, Wilbanks Child Endangerment And Sexual Exploitation Clinic, University Of Georgia School Of Law

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Only 29% of child sexual abuse reports result in criminal charges being filed. As a result, most states have enacted civil statutes of limitations to allow survivors to file claims both against abusers and also those who owed them a duty of care and knew or should have known about the abuse. In 2015 the Georgia legislature passed the Hidden Predator Act (HPA) to amend the state’s civil statute of limitations. Under the HPA, survivors of child sexual abuse that occurred prior to July 1, 2015 were given a two-year retroactive window under which to file claims against their abusers. …

Brandeis’S I.P. Federalism: Thoughts On Erie At Eighty, Joseph S. Miller

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Justice Brandeis is, in intellectual property law’s precincts, most famous for his lone dissent in International News Service v. Associate Press, the misappropriation case one can find in virtually every i.p. survey casebook (and many property law casebooks as well). But in the wider legal world, Brandeis is likely most famous for his earthquake opinion in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins. Do Brandeis’s opinions in these two cases speak to each other? Can considering them together inform broader reflections on the texture of our federalism in the i.p. context? This piece, prepared in connection with an “Erie at Eighty” conference …

Constructing The Original Scope Of Constitutional Rights, Nathan Chapman

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In this solicited response to Ingrid Wuerth's "The Due Process and Other Constitutional Rights of Foreign Nations," I explain and justify Wuerth's methodology for constructing the original scope of constitutional rights. The original understanding of the Constitution, based on text and historical context, is a universally acknowledged part of constitutional law today. The original scope of constitutional rights — who was entitled to them, where they extended, and so on — is a particularly difficult question that requires a measure of construction based on the entire historical context. Wuerth rightly proceeds one right at a time with a careful consideration …

Telling Stories In The Supreme Court: Voices Briefs And The Role Of Democracy In Constitutional Deliberation, Linda H. Edwards

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On January 4, 2016, over 112 women lawyers, law professors, and former judges told the world that they had had an abortion. In a daring amicus brief that captured national media attention, the women “came out” to their clients; to the lawyers with or against whom they practice; to the judges before whom they appear; and to the Justices of the Supreme Court.

The past three years have seen an explosion of such “voices briefs,” 16 in Obergefell and 17 in Whole Woman’s Health. The briefs can be powerful, but their use is controversial. They tell the stories of non-parties—strangers …

The Preliminary Injunction Standard In Diversity: A Typical Unguided Erie Choice, David E. Shipley

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The standard for granting preliminary injunctions in some states is not the same as the preliminary injunction standard that is followed in the federal district courts in the federal circuit where the state is located. For example, the interlocutory injunction standard in Georgia’s superior courts is not as demanding as the preliminary injunction standard in Georgia’s federal courts. Although state and federal courts in Georgia consider four similar factors in deciding whether to grant or deny provisional injunctive relief, a balancing or sliding scale approach can be used in Georgia’s courts; the moving party need not prove all four of …

Discouraging Frivolous Copyright Infringement Claims: Fee Shifting Under Rule 11 Or 28 U.S.C. § 1927 As An Alternative To Awarding Attorney's Fees Under Section 505 Of The Copyright Act, David E. Shipley

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The United States Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons resolved a disagreement over when it is appropriate to award attorney’s fees to a prevailing defendant under section 505 of the Copyright Act, and ended a perceived venue advantage for losing plaintiffs in some jurisdictions. The Court ruled unanimously that courts are correct to give substantial weight to the question of whether the losing side had a reasonable case to fight, but that the objective reasonableness of that side’s position does not give rise to a presumption against fee shifting. It made clear that other factors …

Facilitative Judging: Organizational Design In Mass-Multidistrict Litigation, Jaime Dodge

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Faced with the emerging phenomenon of complex litigation—from school desegregation to mass torts—the judiciary of the last century departed from the traditional, purely adjudicative role in favor of managerial judging, in which they actively supervised cases and even became involved in settlement talks. I argue that a similar transition in judicial role is now occurring. I contend that transferee judges are now stepping back from active participation in settlement discussions but playing a far greater role in structuring and administering the litigation. This new judicial role focuses on facilitating the parties’ resolution of the case, whether through settlement or remand …

With Apologies To Paxton Blair, Peter B. Rutledge

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Much has been written on the forum non conveniens doctrine, yet I nonetheless believe that recent developments in related areas still enable scholars to offer an original perspective on the subject. In this brief essay, I advance the following thesis: the forum non conveniens doctrine developed in response to a specific set of doctrines and specific social phenomena. The waning of some of those doctrines have diminished though not altogether eliminated the need for forum non conveniens, which always has had a suspect status following Erie’s declaration that there is “no federal general common law.” While it is most certainly …

How Congress Could Defend Doma In Court (And Why The Blag Cannot), Matthew I. Hall

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In one of the most closely watched litigation matters in recent years, the Supreme Court will soon consider Edith Windsor's challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The Court surprised many observers by granting certiorari, not only on the merits of Windsor's equal protection and due process claims, but also on the question whether the defendants — the United States and the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the House of Representatives (the BLAG) — have Article III standing to defend DOMA. The United States has agreed with plaintiffs that DOMA is unconstitutional, prompting the BLAG to intervene for the …

Triaging Appointed-Counsel Funding And Pro Se Access To Justice, Benjamin H. Barton

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For decades, scholars and advocates have lauded Gideon’s guarantee of appointed counsel in criminal cases and sought to extend it into a civil-Gideon right in a range of civil cases. This past Term, the Supreme Court disappointed the civil-Gideon movement in Turner v. Rogers, unanimously rejecting an across-the-board right to counsel while encouraging reforms to make courts more accessible to pro se litigants. Turner is mostly right, we argue, because funding limitations require reserving counsel mostly for criminal cases, where they are needed most. For the first time, the Court recognized that lawyers can make cases not only slower and …

The Limits Of Procedural Private Ordering, Jaime L. Dodge

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Civil procedure is traditionally conceived of as a body of publicly-set rules, with limited carve-outs – most commonly, forum selection and choice of law provisions. I argue that these terms are mere instantiations of a broader, unified phenomenon of procedural private ordering, in which civil procedure is no longer irrevocably defined by law, but instead is a mere default that can be waived or modified by contract. Parties are no longer merely selecting between publicly-created procedural regimes but customizing the rules of procedure to be applied by the court – from statutes of limitations, discovery obligations and the admissibility of …

Righting The Historical Record: A Case For Appellate Jurisdiction Over Appeals Of Sentences For Reasonableness Under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, Briana Lynn Rosenbaum

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This Article is the first to analyze critically the jurisdictional basis for the Supreme Court’s mandate in United States v. Booker that all courts of appeals review the length of criminal sentences for “reasonableness.” The availability of appellate review has expanded greatly since the Booker opinion, and, indeed, recent research shows that the number of sentence appeals has risen. Unfortunately, the Court did not explain the jurisdictional basis for its expanded “reasonableness review.” The omission is not trivial. For decades, federal courts have held that courts of appeals do not have jurisdiction to review the length of criminal sentences. This …

Introduction: Dukes V. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

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This short introduction to Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. aims to explain the case and to set the table for what promises to be thought-provoking roundtable discussion hosted by Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc. Accordingly, what follows is a concise overview of the legal background and current debate over the two procedural issues that the Ninth Circuit explored in detail – how to evaluate Rule 23(a)(2)’s commonality when common questions heavily implicate the case’s merits, and when a Rule 23(b)(2) class can include relief apart from injunctive or declaratory relief without endangering due process.

The Procedural Foundation Of Substantive Law, Thomas O. Main

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The substance-procedure dichotomy is a popular target of scholarly criticism because procedural law is inherently substantive. This article argues that substantive law is also inherently procedural. I suggest that the construction of substantive law entails assumptions about the procedures that will apply when that substantive law is ultimately enforced. Those procedures are embedded in the substantive law and, if not applied, will lead to over- or under-enforcement of the substantive mandate. Yet the substance-procedure dichotomy encourages us to treat procedural systems as essentially fungible-leading to a problem of mismatches between substantive law and unanticipated procedures. I locate this argument about …

Setting Foot On Enemy Ground: Cease-And-Desist Letters, Dmca Notifications And Personal Jurisdiction In Declaratory Judgment Actions, Marketa Trimble

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In declaratory judgment actions brought by alleged infringers against rights holders, such as actions for declaration of invalidity or non-infringement of intellectual property rights, U.S. courts have long maintained that sending a cease-and-desist letter alone, absent other acts in an alleged infringer's forum, is not a sufficient basis for personal jurisdiction over the rights holder who mailed them to the alleged infringer's forum. Notwithstanding the similarities between cease-and-desist letters and notifications under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals recently decided that sending a notification alone does establish a basis for personal jurisdiction over the …

There's A Pennoyer In My Foyer: Civil Procedure According To Dr. Seuss, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

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This is what it purports to be: a Seussian take on civil procedure. It’s a short, fun essay that covers (1) the iron triangle of civil procedure - the role of lawyers, judges, and juries, and (2) prominent civil procedure doctrines, such as personal jurisdiction, Erie, pleading, discovery, and joinder.

Contracting Out Of Process, Contracting Out Of Corporate Accountability: An Argument Against Enforcement Of Pre-Dispute Limits On Process, Meredith R. Miller

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There have been many well-articulated and convincing critiques aimed at mandatory arbitration. Indeed, presently before Congress is proposed legislation titled the Arbitration Fairness Act, that would ban pre-dispute arbitration in the consumer, franchise and employment contexts. However, maligned as the plaintiff bar's pro-lawsuit legislation, the Arbitration Fairness Act is predicted to have very little chance of enactment. Consequently, across varying industries, the pre-dispute arbitration regime endures unheedingly. Thus, this Article sets aside the arguments aimed generally at pre-dispute arbitration clauses and, instead, sets its sights on some of the terms that seem to arise in such clauses. The focus here …

Mandating Minimum Quality In Mass Arbitration, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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The Supreme Court's decision in McMahon and its progeny has led many businesses and employers to embrace what was once deemed a localized, industry-specific practice. The "new" or "mass arbitration" only mildly resembles the traditional system employed by niches in industry for settling commercial matters among commercial actors. While the "old" system involved parties who were relatively equal in bargaining power and knowledge, these systems for mass arbitration lack a freely entered bargain and resemble more closely, contracts of adhesion. Privatized arbitration resolves issues of both statutory and substantive law, and there is a strong argument, given the inexperience of …

Class Actions And Limited Vision: Opportunities For Improvement Through A More Functional Approach To Class Treatment Of Disputes, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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This Article describes the evolution of the perception of the modern class action from populist darling to greedy lawyer pariah, including recent passage of CAFA. It then examines the degree to which different types of cases present different potential benefits and detriments of class action treatment and explains why investor class actions, including those brought by institutional investors, are particularly likely to benefit from class treatment, are resistant to many of the perceived problems of class actions in other contexts, and should receive a warmer welcome from courts, both in absolute terms and relative to other types of class actions. …

Foreward: Competing And Complementary Rule Systems: Civil Procedure And Adr, Jean R. Sternlight

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This is a foreword to articles submitted as part of the Association of American Law School’s Symposium during at the January 2004 AALS’s Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia entitled "Competing or Complementary Rule Systems? Adjudication, Arbitration and the Procedural World of the Future." The session brought together panelists whose expertises ranged across the academy. The legal academics were joined by the federal district judge now chairing the committee charged by the Judicial Conference of the United States to draft federal civil procedural rules. The stimulating session reflected on the relationship between litigation and non-litigation approaches to dispute resolution. Participants explored …

Between 'Merit Inquiry' And 'Rigorous Analysis': Using Daubert To Navigate The Gray Areas Of Federal Class Action Certification, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

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In recent years, the class action certification hearing has become the latest forum for disputes over the reliability of expert testimony. Since these hearings may involve complex technical matters, litigants frequently try to introduce expert testimony to either establish or challenge the basic requirements for class certification. Yet, most courts do not conduct a Daubert analysis before admitting expert testimony during certification, evaluate the evidence according to a uniform standard, or adequately weigh opposing expert opinions.

Even though the Federal Rules of Evidence codify procedures to ensure the reliability of expert testimony, courts have been reluctant to employ them during …

Symposium Introduction: Perspectives On Dispute Resolution In The Twenty-First Century, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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No abstract provided.

Jurisdiction, Jurisprudence And Legal Change: Sociological Jurisprudence And The Road To International Shoe, Logan E. Sawyer Iii

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While scholars espousing ideological explanations have noted the correlation between the intellectual trends of the New Deal and International Shoe, they have not demonstrated the strength of this connection. Some merely assert that ideology caused International Shoe,12 while others point to only very general similarities between International Shoe and the ideology of the age.' 3 This Article attempts to strengthen the ideological explanation by examining closely the intellectual context of International Shoe. That examination reveals that the decision did not result simply from the expansion of interstate business or the inherent weakness of the Pennoyer system. Instead, International Shoe was …

Witnessing The Process: Reflections On Civil Procedure, Power, Pedagogy, And Praxis, Deseriee A. Kennedy

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No abstract provided.

Contracting Access To The Courts: Myth Or Reality? Bane Or Boon?, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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Many scholars of the dispute resolution system perceive a sea change in attitudes toward adjudication that took place in the mid-1970s. Among the events of the time included the Pound Conference, which put the Chief Justice of the United States and the national judicial establishment on record in favor of at least some refinement, if not restriction, on access to courts. In addition, Chief Justice Burger, the driving force behind the Pound Conference, also used his bully pulpit as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to promote ADR, particularly court-annexed arbitration. The availability of judicial adjuncts such as court-annexed arbitration …

Halting Devolution Or Bleak To The Future? Subrin's New-Old Procedure As A Possible Antidote To Dreyfuss's "Tolstoy Problem", Jeffrey W. Stempel

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Professors Rochelle Dreyfuss and Stephen Subrin first presented their ideas on the 1993 Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (Civil Rules) at the 1994 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) in a program titled, “The 1993 Discovery Amendments: Evolution, Revolution, or Devolution?” After the program, I was left with the depressing view that the answer was devolution, which is defined as a “retrograde evolution,” or “degeneration.” Dreyfuss provides a detailed but succinct review of the changes in discovery occasioned by the new rules as well as a vantage point for assessing the social and …