Law Commons^™

Why Children Still Need A Lawyer, Marcia Robinson Lowry, Sara Bartosz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Every day approximately 500,000 children across the United States wake up in foster care, most in foster family homes, though many others in group homes and institutions. These children entered the state foster care system as innocent victims of abuse or neglect occurring in their birth homes. As wards of the state, they depend completely on the government to provide for their essential safety and wellbeing and to reconnect them with a permanent family, hopefully their own.

Though state child welfare agencies possess fundamental legal obligations under the United States Constitution and federal and state statutes to provide adequate care …

Reflections On Remedies And Philip Morris V. Williams, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

This essay is a series of reflections on the implications of Philip Morris for the tort reform movement, a movement for which I share considerable sympathy. First, I offer an ideal approach to punitive damages-based on my amicus brief in Philip Morris-and apply that approach to the case. I make an effort to find a middle ground between the positions of the plaintiff and defendant because, in any case that reaches the Supreme Court, one will find persuasive arguments to be made on both sides. That middle ground involves largely returning to the Supreme Court's pre-Gore treatment of punitive …

Class(Less) Action Reform, Eric Y. Choi

Seventh Circuit Review

The Seventh Circuit harbors a known distrust for class actions, particularly those adjudicated on the state level. One of the court's concerns involves class action plaintiffs that initially limit the value of their damages in order to avoid less-lenient federal courts, but later attempt to amend their complaint for greater damages after the defendant's opportunity to remove has foreclosed. In response to these and other concerns, Congress passed the Class Action Fairness Act, which greatly reduces plaintiffs' ability to keep class actions on the state level. Nevertheless, the Seventh Circuit continues to unnecessarily federalize class actions. Recently, in Oshana v. …

Class Actions And Group Litigation In Switzerland, Samuel P. Baumgartner

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Class actions have gone global. Foreign parties are no longer a rarity in U.S. class litigation, among other developments. In addition to being named as defendants, foreigners increasingly form a significant part of the group of absent class members. U.S. courts have thus begun to consider some novel issues, including whether due process requires foreigners to be treated as an opt-in rather than an opt-out class; whether a judgment or settlement in the suit is capable of being enforced or recognized as res judicata abroad and thus whether class certification is justified in the first place; and whether a foreign …

Class Actions And Group Litigation In Switzerland, Samuel P. Baumgartner

Samuel P. Baumgartner

Class actions have gone global. Foreign parties are no longer a rarity in U.S. class litigation, among other developments. In addition to being named as defendants, foreigners increasingly form a significant part of the group of absent class members. U.S. courts have thus begun to consider some novel issues, including whether due process requires foreigners to be treated as an opt-in rather than an opt-out class; whether a judgment or settlement in the suit is capable of being enforced or recognized as res judicata abroad and thus whether class certification is justified in the first place; and whether a foreign …

Dura Duress: The Supreme Court Mandates A More Rigorous Pleading And Proof Requirement For Loss Causation Under Rule Lob-5 Class Actions, Jared Neas

University of Colorado Law Review

The Supreme Court's holding in Dura Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Broudo imposes a heightened pleading requirement for private plaintiffins misrepresentation or omission securities class actions under Rule lOb-5. The Court verified that a plaintiff must adequately plead loss causation in its complaint and rejected the Ninth Circuit's interpretation of the loss causation standard. The Supreme Court held that the plaintif's pleadings in Dura did not meet the loss causation requirement of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act ("PSLRA'). The Court also rejected the Ninth Circuit's requirement that the alleged misconduct merely "touch upon " the economic loss. Instead, the Supreme Court …

Nsf Fees, James J. White

Articles

Overdraft fees now make up more than half of banks' earnings on consumer checking accounts. In the past century, overdrafts have gone from the banker's scourge to the banker's profit center as bankers have learned that there is much to be made on these short term loans at breathtaking interest rates. I note that the federal agencies have been complicit in the growth of this form of lending. I propose that the banks and the agencies recognize the reality and attempt to mitigate these rates by encouraging the development of a competitive market.

The Curious Complications With Back-End Opt-Out Rights, Rhonda Wasserman

Articles

Class action litigation seeks to mediate pressing conflicts between individual autonomy and collective justice; federal supervision and local control; self-interested class counsel and the represented class. These conflicts are exacerbated when a federal court that approves a class action settlement later seeks to enjoin state court litigants from violating its terms. Yet the demand for such injunctions has increased in light of the advent of back-end opt-out rights. In recent years, class members have been afforded back-end, or delayed, opportunities to opt out of a class action once the terms of the settlement are disclosed. These back-end opt-out rights may …