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Articles 1 - 12 of 12
Full-Text Articles in Civil Procedure
Rights And Retrenchment In The Trump Era, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
Rights And Retrenchment In The Trump Era, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
All Faculty Scholarship
Our aim in this essay is to leverage archival research, data and theoretical perspectives presented in our book, Rights and Retrenchment: The Counterrevolution against Federal Litigation, as a means to illuminate the prospects for retrenchment in the current political landscape. We follow the scheme of the book by separately considering the prospects for federal litigation retrenchment in three lawmaking sites: Congress, federal court rulemaking under the Rules Enabling Act, and the Supreme Court. Although pertinent data on current retrenchment initiatives are limited, our historical data and comparative institutional perspectives should afford a basis for informed prediction. Of course, little in …
Idea Class Actions After Wal-Mart V. Dukes, Mark C. Weber
Idea Class Actions After Wal-Mart V. Dukes, Mark C. Weber
Mark C. Weber
Wal-Mart v. Dukes overturned the certification of a class of a million and a half female employees alleging sex discrimination in Wal-Mart’s salary and promotion decisions. The Supreme Court ruled that the case did not satisfy the requirement that a class have a common question of law or fact, and said that the remedy sought was not the type of relief available under the portion of the class action rule permitting mandatory class actions. Over the last two years, courts have struggled with how to apply the ruling, especially how to apply it beyond its immediate context of employment discrimination …
To Skin A Cat: Qui Tam Actions As A State Legislative Response To Concepcion, Janet Cooper Alexander
To Skin A Cat: Qui Tam Actions As A State Legislative Response To Concepcion, Janet Cooper Alexander
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The Supreme Court's decision in Concepcion is widely regarded as heralding the demise of small-claims class actions whenever contracts of adhesion are involved in the transaction-which means for virtually all consumer and employment claims. Amending the Federal Arbitration Act to overturn Concepcion would be a relatively simple exercise in legislative drafting, but in the current political climate such efforts are unlikely to succeed. Thus far, proposed federal corrective legislation has failed to pass, and federal agency regulation of class waivers has been lacking. State legislatures might have the political ability to pass corrective legislation, but virtually all state limitations on …
Concepcion's Pro-Defendant Biasing Of The Arbitration Process: The Class Counsel Solution, David Korn, David Rosenberg
Concepcion's Pro-Defendant Biasing Of The Arbitration Process: The Class Counsel Solution, David Korn, David Rosenberg
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
By mandating that numerous plaintiffs litigate their common question claims separately in individual arbitrations rather than jointly in class action arbitrations, the Supreme Court in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion entrenched a potent structural and systemic bias in favor of defendants. The bias arises from the parties' divergent stakes in the outcome of the common question litigation in individual arbitrations: each plaintiff will only invest to maximize the value of his or her own claim, but the defendant has an incentive to protect its entire exposure and thus will have a classwide incentive to invest more in contesting common questions. …
Iron Man Of The Rules, Patrick E. Higginbotham
Iron Man Of The Rules, Patrick E. Higginbotham
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
To grasp Professor Cooper's contribution to rulemaking, it is helpful to review issues that the Advisory Committee confronted during his tenure. I will focus on the first four of his twenty years of service.
Professor Edward Cooper: The Quintessential Reporter, Mary Kay Kane
Professor Edward Cooper: The Quintessential Reporter, Mary Kay Kane
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Ed Cooper's twenty-year service as the Chief Reporter for the Civil Rules Advisory Committee deserves special recognition and tribute not only because of its longevity-which is remarkable in and of itself-but more particularly, because of the scope and depth of the rule changes he has helped to shepherd into law.
Professor Ed Cooper: Zen Minimalist, Linda S. Mullenix
Professor Ed Cooper: Zen Minimalist, Linda S. Mullenix
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
In celebration of his twentieth year as the Reporter for the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules, I write to contribute some modest reflections on Professor Cooper's tenure as Advisory Committee Reporter. My comments are those of an academic who had the opportunity to observe the Advisory Committee for nearly a decade, but they are largely the comments of an outsider. Readers might be disappointed to find that there is no dish or inside baseball here.
Revitalizing Motive And Opportunity Pleading After Tellabs, Marvin Lowenthal
Revitalizing Motive And Opportunity Pleading After Tellabs, Marvin Lowenthal
Michigan Law Review
Congress passed the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 ("PSLRA") to prevent frivolous lawsuits that had been draining resources from businesses. This legislation included provisions for heightening the pleading requirements for the scienter, or state of mind, requirement for securities law violations. Many circuit courts debated whether the motive and opportunity test for scienter, applied initially by the Second and Third Circuits, survived the passage of the PSLRA. This Note argues that while the motive and opportunity test has been discounted by numerous circuits, it not only remains viable for pleading scienter under the PSLRA, but it accomplishes the …
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.
Did The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act Work?, Michael A. Perino
Did The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act Work?, Michael A. Perino
Faculty Publications
In 1995 Congress passed the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (the PSLRA or the Act) to address abuses in securities fraud class actions. In the wake of Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, and other high profile securities frauds, critics suggest that the law made it too easy to escape liability for securities fraud and thus created a climate in which frauds are more likely to occur. Others claim that the Act has largely failed because it did little to deter plaintiffs' lawyers from filing nonmeritorious cases. This article employs a database of the 1449 class actions filed from 1996 through 2001 to …
What Counts As Fraud? An Empirical Study Of Motions To Dismiss Under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, Adam C. Pritchard, Hillary A. Sale
What Counts As Fraud? An Empirical Study Of Motions To Dismiss Under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, Adam C. Pritchard, Hillary A. Sale
Articles
This article presents the findings of a study of the resolution of motions to dismiss securities fraud lawsuits since the passage of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA) in 1995. Our sample consists of decisions on motions to dismiss in securities class actions by district and appellate courts in the Second and Ninth Circuits for cases filed after the passage of the Reform Act to the end of 2002. These circuits are the leading circuits for the filing of securities class actions and are generally recognized as representing two ends of the securities class action spectrum. Post-PSLRA, the Second …
Federal Class Action Reform In The United States: Past And Future And Where Next?, Edward H. Cooper
Federal Class Action Reform In The United States: Past And Future And Where Next?, Edward H. Cooper
Articles
Predicting the likely future developments in class action practice in the federal courts of the United States must begin in the past.