Law Commons^™

Against Bankruptcy: Public Litigation Values Versus The Endless Quest For Global Peace In Mass Litigation, Abbe Gluck, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Adam Zimmerman

Scholarly Works

Can bankruptcy court solve a public health crisis? Should the goal of “global peace” in complex lawsuits trump traditional litigation values in a system grounded in public participation and jurisdictional redundancy? How much leeway do courts have to innovate civil procedure?

These questions have finally reached the Supreme Court in Harrington v. Purdue Pharma L.P., the $6 billion bankruptcy that purports to achieve global resolution of all current and future opioids suits against the company and its former family owners, the Sacklers. The case provides a critical opportunity to reflect on what is lost when parties in mass torts find …

Follow The Money? A Proposed Approach For Disclosure Of Litigation Finance Agreements, Maya Steinitz

Faculty Scholarship

Litigation finance is the new and fast-growing practice by which a non-party funds a plaintiff’s litigation either for-profit or for some other motivation. Some estimates placed the size of the litigation finance market at 50–100 billion dollars. Both proponents and opponents of this newly -emergent phenomenon are in agreement that the it is the most important development in civil justice of this era. Litigation finance is already transforming civil litigation at the level of the single case as well as, incrementally, at the level of the civil justice system as a whole. It is also beginning to transform the way …

Publicly Funded Objectors, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

On paper, class actions run like clockwork. But practice suggests the need for tune-ups: sometimes judges still approve settlements rife with red flags, and professional objectors may be more concerned with shaking down class counsel than with improving class members’ outcomes. The lack of data on the number of opt-outs, objectors, and claims rates fuels debates on both sides, for little is known about how well or poorly class members actually fare. This reveals a ubiquitous problem — information barriers confront judges, objectors, and even reformers. Rule 23’s answer is to empower objectors. At best, objectors are a partial fix. …

The Case For An International Court Of Civil Justice, Maya Steinitz

Faculty Scholarship

We live in a world in which the victims of cross-border mass torts de facto (not de jure) have no court to turn to in order to pursue legal action against American multinational corporations when they are responsible for disasters. 1 The only way to provide a fair and legitimate process for both victims and corporations is to create an International Court of Civil Justice (ICCJ). This Essay seeks to start a conversation about this novel institutional solution. It lays out both a justice case, from the plaintiffs' viewpoint, and an efficiency case, from a corporate defendant's viewpoint, for why …

It's Not Over 'Til It's Over: Mandating Federal Pretrial Jurisdiction And Oversight In Mass Torts, Tanya Pierce

Faculty Scholarship

In 2004, just five years after introducing the drug, Vioxx, pharmaceutical company, Merck, voluntarily withdrew the prescription pain-killer after a clinical study suggested that the drug increased the risk of heart attack and stroke. But in that relatively short time, an estimated 20 million Americans had already taken the drug. By late 2007, Merck announced it would pay $4.85 billion — the largest drug settlement ever — in “global settlements” for Vioxx-related claims. These settlements ultimately included roughly 47,000 individual lawsuits and about 265 potential class actions, but the Vioxx settlements were far from global.

In 2012, a purported parallel …

Debate: The Future Of Mass Torts, Sergio J. Campos, Howard M. Erichson

Articles

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Coverage Carnage: Asbestos Liability And Insurance After Three Decades Of Dispute, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Often overlooked are the insurance issues related to asbestos and the degree to which the asbestos mass tort has changed the face of liability insurance and liability insurance law. The asbestos mass tort brought insurance coverage litigation into the big leagues of litigation, adjudication, and scholarly examination (although even the most rabid insurance coverage junkie would concede this is not much silver lining to the asbestos cloud). But after 30 years of big-time liability insurance coverage litigation involving asbestos or influenced by asbestos, what is the outcome? My assessment is:

1. Despite their protestations, insurers have not been unfairly treated …

A Taxing Settlement, Hanoch Dagan, James J. White

Articles

The following essay is based on the talk "Government, Citizens, and Injurious Industries: A Case Study of the Tobacco Litigation," delivered by Hanoch Dagan last May to the Detroit Chapter of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, and on the article "Governments, Citizens, and Injurious Industries," by Dagan and James J. White, '62, which appeared in 75.2 New York University Law Review 254-428 (May 2000). The authors hold conflicting view on the underlying issue of this topic: tobacco company product liability. Professor Dagan holds the position that tobacco companies are liable for harm done by their products; Professor …

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.

Aggregation And Settlement Of Mass Torts, Edward H. Cooper

Articles

It is the way of symposia that, after conveners assign topics for discussion, participants interpret those topics to cover subjects that interest themselves. I understand my assignment to be discussion of "nonbankruptcy closure" and "settlement." The Judicial Conference Working Group on Mass Torts suggests possible approaches that might facilitate closure of mass tort claims by litigation or by settlement! This paper will explore two models prepared to illustrate the challenges that confront any approach to fair and efficient closure. The first model is the "All-Encompassing Model," while the second is a draft of settlement-class provisions for Federal Rule of Civil …

Governments, Citizens, And Injurious Industries, Hanoch Dagan, James J. White

Articles

In this Article, Professors Hanoch Dagan and James White study the most recent challenge raised by mass torts litigation: the interference of governments with the bilateral relationship between citizens and injurious industries. Using the tobacco settlement as their case study, Dagan and White explore the important benefits and the grave dangers of recognizing governments' entitlement to reimbursement for costs they have incurred in preventing or ameliorating their citizens' injuries. They further demonstrate that the current law can help capture these benefits and guard against the entailing risks, showing how subrogation law can serve as the legal foundation of the governments' …

Aggregation And Settlement Of Mass Torts, Edward H. Cooper

Articles

The following essay is the pre-editing draft of the introduction to a paper delivered at a Mass Torts conference held at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in November 1999. Thc conference grew out of the work of the ad hoc Mass Torts Working Group that on February 15, 1999, delivered a Report to the Chief Justice of the United States and the judicial Conference of the United States. The Working Group, chaired by Third Circuit Judge Anthony J. Scirica, '65, included members drawn from several Judicial Conference committees, including the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, …

Class Action Chaos? The Theory Of The Core And An Analysis Of Opt-Out Rights In Mass Tort Class Actions, Michael A. Perino

Faculty Publications

From breast implants to cigarettes, mass tort class actions are a prominent and controversial part of the contemporary litigation landscape. A critical component of these actions is the ability of class members to “opt out” and thereby exclude themselves from the effect of any class judgment. The tension between individual autonomy and the desire for global resolution of mass controversies has led to an intense debate concerning the circumstances under which opt-out rights should be constrained, if at all.

This Article makes five distinct contributions to the class action literature. First, the Article applies the game theoretic concept of the …

Mass Torts And The Rhetoric Of Crisis, John A. Siliciano

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Settlement Class Actions And The Limits Of Adjudication, James A. Henderson Jr.

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This paper is the Comment for a symposium on Individualized Justice, Mass Torts, and "Settlement Class Actions."

Complex-Litigation Reform And The Legislative Process, Charles G. Geyh

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.