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Full-Text Articles in Law
Exploding The Class Action Agency Costs Myth: The Social Utility Of Entrepreneurial Lawyers, Myriam E. Gilles, Gary B. Friedman
Exploding The Class Action Agency Costs Myth: The Social Utility Of Entrepreneurial Lawyers, Myriam E. Gilles, Gary B. Friedman
Articles
In this article, we challenge the traditional view that entrepreneurial plaintiffs' class action lawyers operating entirely according to their own economic self-interest serve no social utility, or worse yet, tremendous disutility. In seeking to counter this notion, we try to show that the agency costs problem long derided in class action practice is overblown: in the majority of small-claims class actions, there is no legitimate reason to care whether class members are being undercompensated (or compensated at all), nor any reason to worry that entrepreneurial lawyers are being overcompensated. Rather, we assert that the driving force behind class action practice …
Use It Or Pretenders Will Abuse It: The Importance Of Archival Legal Information, Theodore Eisenberg
Use It Or Pretenders Will Abuse It: The Importance Of Archival Legal Information, Theodore Eisenberg
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Archival information about the legal system should inform policymaking. Despite claims of soaring civil damages awards, modem historical data show no to little growth in tort awards and no real growth in punitive damages awards. The data also show a dramatic forty-year decline in trial rates from more than ten percent of case dispositions to less than two percent. The decline needs to be explained in part by using archival data. Contrary to perceptions underlying the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, little systematic evidence exists that state and federal courts process class actions significantly different. These results contradict the …
The Allocation Problem In Multiple-Claimant Representations, Paul H. Edelman, Richard A. Nagareda, Charles Silver
The Allocation Problem In Multiple-Claimant Representations, Paul H. Edelman, Richard A. Nagareda, Charles Silver
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Multiple-claimant representations-classa ctions and other group lawsuits-pose two principal-agent problems: Shirking (failure to maximize the aggregate recovery) and misallocation (distribution of the aggregate recovery other than according to the relative value of claims). Clients have dealt with these problems separately, using contingent percentage fees to motivate lawyers to maximize the aggregate recovery and monitoring devices (disclosure requirements, client control rights, and third-party review) to encourage appropriate allocations. The scholarly literature has proceeded on the premise that monitoring devices are needed to police misallocations, because the fee calculus cannot do the entire job. This paper shows that this premise is mistaken …
Does The Plaintiff Matter? An Empirical Analysis Of Lead Plaintiffs In Securities Class Actions, Randall Thomas, James D. Cox
Does The Plaintiff Matter? An Empirical Analysis Of Lead Plaintiffs In Securities Class Actions, Randall Thomas, James D. Cox
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The PSLRA's lead plaintiff provision was adopted in order to encourage large shareholders with claims in a securities fraud class action to step forward to become the class' representative. Congress' expectation was that these investors would actively monitor the conduct of a securities fraud class action so as to reduce the litigation agency costs that may arise when class counsel's interests diverge from those of the shareholder class. Proponents of the provision claimed that there would be substantial benefits from having institutional investors serve as lead plaintiffs. Now, ten years later, the claim that the lead plaintiff is a more …
Tolling: The American Pipe Tolling Rule And Successive Class Actions, Rhonda Wasserman
Tolling: The American Pipe Tolling Rule And Successive Class Actions, Rhonda Wasserman
Articles
Timing is everything. Even the most meritorious lawsuit will be dismissed if the statute of limitations has run on the plaintiff's claim. In class action litigation, this hurdle is particularly daunting. Supreme Court precedent makes clear that if a class action complaint is timely filed, then the claims of all class members are deemed timely. Likewise, if a motion to certify the class is denied, absent class members may seek to intervene in the pending action or to file individual actions and either way, the statute of limitations is tolled from the date of filing of the class action complaint …
What The Shutts Opt-Out Right Is And What It Ought To Be, Alan B. Morrison
What The Shutts Opt-Out Right Is And What It Ought To Be, Alan B. Morrison
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This article discusses the ramifications of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Phillips Petrolem v. Shutts, 472 U.S. 797 (1985), regarding the right of an absent class member to opt out of a class action. The article addresses both the current prevailing understanding of Shutts, which is based on the personal jurisdiction strain of due process jurisprudence, and what the authors believe is a more useful understanding, based on the property rights strain of due process jurisprudence. As an addendum to the article, the authors propose a new civil procedure rule governing class actions that would implement their ideas about …
What The Shutts Opt-Out Right Is And What It Ought To Be, Brian Wolfman, Alan B. Morrison
What The Shutts Opt-Out Right Is And What It Ought To Be, Brian Wolfman, Alan B. Morrison
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This article discusses the ramifications of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 472 U.S. 797 (1985), regarding the right of an absent class member to opt out of a class action. The article addresses both the current prevailing understanding of Shutts, which is based on the personal jurisdiction strain of due process jurisprudence, and what the authors believe is a more useful understanding, based on the property rights strain of due process jurisprudence. As an addendum to the article, the authors propose a new civil procedure rule governing class actions that would implement …
Rewriting Shutts For Fun, Not To Profit, Edward H. Cooper
Rewriting Shutts For Fun, Not To Profit, Edward H. Cooper
Articles
It has not been easy to reconcile contemporary class-action practice with traditional adversary procedure. For that matter, it is not easy to craft a unitary "class-action" procedure that serves well the many different purposes pursued by the many different species of class actions. The practice has flourished, but few would dare say it has really matured. Many problems remain.