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"When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes": Myth And Reality About The Synthesis Of Private Counsel And Public Client, John C. Coffee Jr.
"When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes": Myth And Reality About The Synthesis Of Private Counsel And Public Client, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
A recurring fallacy in any debate over legal ethics or public policy is to assume that the particular problem under examination is unique and unprecedented. Expand one's field of vision, and precedents and analogs quickly turn up. This rule applies with special force to the debate over retention by state attorneys general of private counsel to represent them on a contingent fee basis in the recent litigation against the tobacco industry. Because this litigation produced a highly successful outcome, while most private litigation against the tobacco industry has not, some are led to the conclusion that this combination of private …
Class Action Accountability: Reconciling Exit, Voice, And Loyalty In Representative Litigation, John C. Coffee Jr.
Class Action Accountability: Reconciling Exit, Voice, And Loyalty In Representative Litigation, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
In two recent and highly technical decisions – Amchem Products v. Windsor and Ortiz v. Fibreboard Corp. – the Supreme Court has recognized that a serious potential for collusion exists in class actions and has outlined a concept of "class cohesion" as the rationale that legitimizes representative litigation. Although agreeing that a legitimacy principle is needed, Professor Coffee doubts that "class cohesion" can bear that weight, either as a normative theory of representation or as an economic solution for the agency cost and collective action problems that arise in representative litigation. He warns that an expansive interpretation of "class cohesion" …