Law Commons^™

Guidelines And Best Practices For Large And Mass-Tort Mdls (Second Edition), Bolch Judicial Institute

Bolch Judicial Institute Publications

Mass-tort MDLs dominate the federal civil docket, yet they present enormous challenges to transferee judges assigned to manage them. There is little official guidance and no rules specific to the management of mass-tort MDLs, often requiring the transferee judge to develop procedures out of whole cloth.

Beginning in 2013, the Bolch Judicial Institute (then the Center for Judicial Studies) sought to address this issue through a series of annual bench-bar conferences. From these conferences came the Guidelines and Best Practices for Large and Mass-Tort MDLs document — now in its Second Edition — which is designed to help judges and …

Segmented Settlements Are Not The Answer: A Response To Professor Squire’S Article, How Collective Settlements Camouflage The Costs Of Shareholder Lawsuits, Christopher C. French

Journal Articles

In his recent article, Professor Richard Squire offers a provocative theory in which he claims the underlying claimants in shareholder litigation against corporate policyholders are overcompensated due to what he describes as “cramdown” settlements, under which insurers are forced to settle due to the “duty to contribute” that arises under multi-layered directors and officers (“D&O”) insurance programs. He also offers a novel idea regarding how this problem could be fixed by what he refers to as “segmented” settlements in which each insurer and the policyholder would be allowed to settle separately and consider only its own interests in doing so. …

Common Challenges Facing Shareholder Suits In Europe And The United States, Randall Thomas, James D. Cox

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Episodic and even sometimes systematic misbehavior by businessmen and corporate entities is ubiquitous. While Enron and WorldCom were the battle cries for corporate reform in the U.S. so it was with Ahold and Parmalat across Europe. No country is free of concern that company officers will misbehave thereby injuring investors, consumers and destroying shareholder value. Thus, this symposium issue collects the recent experiences across Europe in strengthening shareholder suits. Most recent legislative efforts in Europe, and hence the comments in the symposium, are focused on the derivative suit. Just as the American experience with class actions, reviewed separately in this …

Access To Justice And The Evolution Of Class Action Litigation In Australia, Bernard Murphy, Camille Cameron

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The federal and Victorian class action regimes are intended to facilitate aggregation of multiple claims. Aggregation can improve efficiency by combining similar claims and can enhance access to justice by providing a mechanism to litigate small claims. This article considers whether these efficiency and access aims are being achieved. The authors argue that whilst some developments in class action jurisprudence have been consistent with these legislative aims, other have not. Several features of Australian class action jurisprudence and practice have hampered the healthy development of the legislative regimes, including adverse costs orders, unclear threshold requirements, evasive posturing and unresolved class …