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Full-Text Articles in Law
Aggregating Defendants, Greg Reilly
Aggregating Defendants, Greg Reilly
Florida State University Law Review
No procedural topic has garnered more attention in the past fifty years than the class action and aggregation of plaintiffs. Yet, almost nothing has been written about aggregating defendants. This topic is of increasing importance. Recent efforts by patent “trolls” and Bit-Torrent copyright plaintiffs to aggregate unrelated defendants for similar but independent acts of infringement have provoked strong opposition from defendants, courts, and even Congress. The visceral resistance to defendant aggregation is puzzling. The aggregation of similarly situated plaintiffs is seen as creating benefits for both plaintiffs and the judicial system. The benefits that justify plaintiff aggregation also seem to …
The Perils Of Productivity, Emily Spottswood
The Perils Of Productivity, Emily Spottswood
Scholarly Publications
This Essay urges that those who seek to minimize delay in litigation should proceed with greater caution. Productivity reform proponents usually assume that an increase in case processing speed can be purchased at little cost to other procedural values, but this may not be the case. Such reforms may lower the quality of lawyers’ case preparation and worsen the quality of judicial decisions. The extent of these effects is unclear because the proponents of such changes have not made an effort to establish that increases in speed can be achieved without undermining the accuracy of litigation outcomes. Relatedly, it is …