Litigation Commons^™

The Professor Anthony J. Santoro Business Law Lecture Series Presents Becoming A Valued Business Lawyer, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Michael M. Bowden

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

The Reverse Agency Problem In The Age Of Compliance, Asaf Eckstein, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

The agency problem, the idea that corporate directors and officers are motivated to prioritize their self-interest over the interest of their corporation, has had long-lasting impact on corporate law theory and practice. In recent years, however, as federal agencies have stepped up enforcement efforts against corporations, a new problem that is the mirror image of the agency problem has surfaced—the reverse agency problem. The surge in criminal investigations against corporations, combined with the rising popularity of settlement mechanisms including Pretrial Diversion Agreements (PDAs), and corporate plea agreements, has led corporations to sacrifice directors and officers in order to reach settlements …

Congressional Procedure And Statutory Interpretation, Larry Evans, Jarrell Wright, Neal Devins

Neal E. Devins

No abstract provided.

Internet Intermediary Liability In Defamation, Emily B. Laidlaw, Hilary Young

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Given the broad meaning of publication in defamation law, internet intermediaries such as internet service providers, search engines, and social media companies may be liable for defamatory content posted by third parties. This article argues that current law is not suitable to dealing with issues of internet defamation and intermediary responsibility because it is needlessly complex, confusing, and may impose liability without blameworthiness. Instead, the article proposes that publication be redefined to require a deliberate act of communicating specific words. This would better reflect blameworthiness and few intermediaries would be liable in defamation under this test. That said, intermediaries profit …

Deceptively Simple: The Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, Margaret E. Rushing

Arkansas Law Review

In the 2017 legislative session, the Arkansas General Assembly significantly changed the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (“ADTPA”). These changes now prohibit private class actions under the ADTPA and require plaintiffs to prove additional elements of reliance and actual financial loss when bringing a claim. The changes appear to limit the ability of a consumer to bring a private action under the ADPTA. With these changes, Arkansas joins a minority of jurisdictions with deceptive trade practices acts that increase a plaintiff’s burden and restrict private class actions.

Rights And Retrenchment In The Trump Era, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

Sean Farhang

Our aim in this Article is to leverage the archival research, data, and theoretical perspectives presented in our book, Rights and Retrenchment: The Counterrevolution against Federal Litigation, to illuminate the prospects for retrenchment in the current political landscape. In the book, we documented how an outpouring of rights-creating legislation from Democratic Congresses in the 1960s and 1970s, much of which contained provisions designed to stimulate private enforcement, prompted the conservative legal movement within the Republican Party to devise a response. Recognizing the political infeasibility of retrenching substantive rights, the movement’s strategy was to weaken the infrastructure for enforcing them. …

Politics, Identity, And Class Certification On The U.S. Courts Of Appeals, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

Sean Farhang

This article draws on novel data and presents the results of the first empirical analysis of how potentially salient characteristics of Court of Appeals judges influence precedential lawmaking on class certification under Rule 23. We find that the partisan composition of the panel (measured by the party of the appointing president) has a very strong association with certification outcomes, with all-Democratic panels having more than double the certification rate of all-Republican panels in precedential cases. We also find that the presence of one African American on a panel, and the presence of two females (but not one), is associated with …

Mashups And Fair Use: The Bold Misadventures Of The Seussian Starship Enterprise, Peter Menell, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, David Nimmer

All Faculty Scholarship

This amicus brief filed in the Ninth Circuit appeal of Dr. Seuss Enterprises v. ComicMix seeks to rectify and restore the balances underlying the Copyright Act of 1976 — particularly the interplay of the Section 106(2) right to prepare derivative works and the fair use doctrine. The District Court granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment on the ground that OH THE PLACES YOU’LL BOLDLY GO! — the defendants’ illustrated book combining Dr. Seuss’s OH THE PLACES YOU’LL GO! and other Dr. Seuss books with Star Trek characters and themes — made fair use of the Dr. Seuss works.

Based …

The Supreme Court And Public Schools, Erwin Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky

Review of Justin Driver's The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind.

Marijuana Issues For Voters: Studying Issues Us States Have Had With Legalizing Marijuana, Kody Kesler

WRIT: Journal of First-Year Writing

In the United States, the legalization of medical and recreational marijuana in individual states, rather than the whole nation, is a great example of states being “laboratories of democracy.” Legalizing marijuana in the states first is essential to deciding how to go about the issue on the national level, once Americans are ready for it. In most states where it is legal, employees can still be fired for having marijuana in their system, even if they have a medical recommendation. The drug tests that employers use don’t test for the recent use of drugs like marijuana, but for a part …

Department Of Insurance, Sarah Marie Burgh, Joseph Cheng, J. D. Fellmeth

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Due Process Supreme Court Rockland County

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Due Process Supreme Court Appellate Division Third Department

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Due Process Supreme Court Appellate Division

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Due Process Pringle V. Wolfe (Decided 28, 1996)

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Due Process People V. Scott (Decided June 5, 1996)

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Due Process Court Of Appeals

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Queens County

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Double Jeopardy

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Double Jeopardy Supreme Court Appellate Division Second Department

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Double Jeopardy

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

State Standing And National Injunctions, Bradford Mank, Michael E. Solimine

Notre Dame Law Review

Most of the growing literature on national injunctions makes only passing mention, if at all, of states being plaintiffs or of the appropriateness of state standing and how it might bear on the geographic scope of an injunction. This Essay undertakes to fill that gap in a more extended way. Part I of the Essay addresses the issue of state standing in suits against the federal government, and argues that such standing is well grounded in the traditional parens patriae powers of states and should be permitted to protect the health, welfare, and natural resources of their citizens. That is, …

The Private Rights Of Public Governments, Seth Davis

Notre Dame Law Review

This Essay charts the analytical and doctrinal confusion arising from the category of “proprietary” interests in state standing law. This category might be taken literally to include only the ownership of property and interests that stem from it. It might refer to interests that are analogous to those that a private corporation might litigate, or instead to any type of financial injury a state might suffer. Other possibilities would limit “proprietary” interests to those interests recognized under the common law, or only those interests recognized under private law. Perhaps the most that can be said is that “proprietary” interests should …

An Empirical Investigation Of Third Party Consumer Litigant Funding, Ronen Avraham, Anthony Sebok

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Exhibit, The Litigation Center Newsletter - Summer 2019, Golden Gate University School Of Law

Litigation Center at Golden Gate University School of Law

No abstract provided.

Public Relations Litigation, Kishanthi Parella

Scholarly Articles

Conventional wisdom holds that lawsuits harm a corporation’s reputation. So why do corporations and other businesses litigate even when they will likely lose in the court of law and the court of public opinion? One explanation is settlement: some parties file lawsuits not to win but to force the defendant to pay out. But some business litigants defy even this explanation; they do not expect to win the lawsuit or to benefit financially from settlement. What explains their behavior?

The answer is reputation. This Article explains that certain types of litigation can improve a business litigant’s reputation in the eyes …

Influencing Juries In Litigation "Hot Spots", Megan M. La Belle

Indiana Law Journal

This Article considers how corporations are using image advertising in litigation "hot spots" as a means of influencing litigation outcomes. It describes how Samsung and other companies advertised in the Eastern District of Texas--a patent litigation "hot spot"--to curry favor with the people who live there, including by sponsoring an ice rink located directly outside the courthouse. To be sure, image advertisements are constitutionally protected speech and might even warrant the highest level of protection under the First Amendment when they are not purely commercial in nature. Still, the Article argues, courts should be able to prohibit such advertisements altogether, …

Fictional Pleas, Thea Johnson

Indiana Law Journal

A fictional plea is one in which a defendant pleads guilty to a crime he has not committed, with the knowledge of the defense attorney, prosecutor, and judge. With fictional pleas, the plea of conviction is detached from the original factual allegations against the defendant. As criminal justice actors become increasingly troubled by the impact of collateral consequences on defendants, the fictional plea serves as an appealing response to this concern. It allows the parties to achieve parallel aims: the prosecutor holds the defendant accountable in the criminal system, while the defendant avoids devastating noncriminal consequences. In this context, the …

Quasi-Sovereign Standing, F. Andrew Hessick

Notre Dame Law Review

Judges have concluded that states do not have standing based on their quasi-sovereign interests to sue the United States for not obeying the law. Two different reasons have been given. First, because a state can assert quasi-sovereign interests only in its capacity of representing its residents, a state has standing to press those interests only if it can demonstrate that its residents have suffered an injury in fact. On this view, states do not have general standing to sue the federal government for disobeying the law; they have standing only if they can show that the disobedience injured a resident. …

Reining In State Standing, Ann Woolhandler, Michael G. Collins

Notre Dame Law Review

In upholding standing in Massachusetts v. EPA, Justice Stevens said that states “are not normal litigants for the purposes of invoking federal jurisdiction.” While one might agree that the states are not normal litigants, that abnormality might well suggest that states should get standing less easily than private parties.

As a historical matter, states were limited in the kinds of cases they could bring in the federal courts. States typically could not litigate their sovereignty interests (their powers to govern to the exclusion of other governments), nor could they litigate their parens patriae interests (the interests of their citizens) …