Law Commons^™

Treating Sexual Harassment With Respect, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Warning Defect: Origins, Policies, And Directions, Robert E. Keeton

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

On a spectrum from the polar extreme of generality to the opposite pole of specificity, "What should warnings say?" is near the extreme in its degree of generality. A question phrased this way invites a correspondingly generic response. Such a response is not very useful to the trial judge and lawyers who regularly must fashion clear explanations on the law of warning defect for layperson juries. As used here, this question is not intended as a signal inviting just any kind of response that might be acceptable under the mores of casual conversation. It is a more serious request for …

Property Rights, Reliance, And Retroactivity Under The Communications Act Of 1934, William L. Fishman

Federal Communications Law Journal

Although the FCC and courts have concluded that licensees have certain property interests in their licenses, they do not acquire any ownership interests even when, via a spectrum auction, they pay for their licenses. What narrow property interests licensees maintain are limited, and the FCC has broad power to modify existing licenses if doing so is in the public interest. License owners have sought to limit or defeat otherwise lawful FCC actions to alter their licenses by asserting a reliance interest on prior agency action or policy. Licensees may find comfort in the fact that some courts have acknowledged these …

The Persistent Vegetative State: A View Across The Legal Divide, H. Richard Beresford

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Praise for Fred Plum can take many forms: for pedagogical dynamism, for depth and breadth of contributions to neurology and neuroscience, for sure-handed guidance of a department that has infused neurology with today’s and tomorrow’s leaders, and for a truly uncanny ability to fan a drive to excel in those he has touched. Mindful of his admonition to be substantive in what one says and does, my praise will embody a few reflections on the enduring legal and social impact of the “point of view” he and Bryan Jennett authored for the journal Lancet in 1972.

Class Action Law In Georgia: Emerging Trends In Litigation, Certification, And Settlement, Jeffrey G. Casurella, John R. Bevis

Mercer Law Review

In the litigation world, few words trigger more attention and more debate than the term "class action." At the term's first appearance, the playing field is set. Plaintiffs urge that class actions are a necessary vehicle to litigate paltry and duplicitous claims otherwise inconvenient or uneconomical to prosecute. In response, defendants argue class actions constitute an abuse complicated by individuality and unmanageability. Rarely do the parties agree to the utility of class actions. Notwithstanding this classic disagreement, this type of litigation serves a useful purpose, filling a vacuum left otherwise empty when legislatures fail to legislate and attorneys general fail …

Trial Practice And Procedure, C. Frederick Overby, Jason Crawford, Teresa T. Abell

Mercer Law Review

The most interesting and significant developments in the area of trial practice and procedure during the survey period came not from Georgia's appellate courts but from the Georgia General Assembly. This Article will first analyze the significant legislation that came from beneath the gold dome in 1997. It will then review the most significant appellate cases.

Rescuing Multidistrict Litigation From The Altar Of Expediency, Carter G. Phillips, Gene C. Schaerr, Anil K. Abraham

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Class Action Reform, Qui Tam, And The Role Of The Plaintiff, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Juries: Arbiters Or Arbitrary?, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Governmental Liability Under Cercla, Steven A.G. Davison

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

How Will Lawyering And Mediation Practices Transform Each Other?, John M. Lande

Faculty Publications

This article sketches out some aspects of both lawyering and mediation practice that may be affected by development of a litimediation culture. Part II examines the growth of the private market for mediation and an accompanying specialization of mediation practice. These changes seem likely to require mediators to develop market niches with identifiable characteristics of their mediation practices. Simultaneously, lawyers, as regular buyers of mediation services, will be expected to recognize and make decisions based on significant distinctions between mediation providers.

Georgia's Professional Malpractice Affidavit Requirement, Robert D. Brussack

Scholarly Works

Section 9-11-9.1 of the Georgia Code might be the state's most notorious procedural statute. Enacted in 1987 to protect professionals against the harm done by groundless malpractice litigation, the statute provides that a professional malpractice claim ordinarily must be accompanied by an affidavit executed by an expert. In the affidavit, the expert must substantiate the claim by attesting that some act or omission alleged in the claim was a negligent act or omission--a departure from a professional standard of conduct. During the past decade, Georgia's appellate courts have returned again and again to the problem of what section 9-11-9.1 means, …

The Garbage Smuggling Case: Judgment Of Division One Of The Shanghai Municipal Intermediate Level People's Court January 13, 1997, Janice Wingo

Washington International Law Journal

The American press has reported on the arrest and trial of William Ping Chen for the importation of garbage into China, alleging that he is a pawn in Sino-American relations. Whatever the political background, the decision of the Shanghai Municipal Intermediate Level People's Court shows that this case was decided according to established rules of law.

Trial Practice And Procedure, Philip W. Savrin

Mercer Law Review

This Article surveys the 1996 decisions of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals that have a significant impact on issues relating to trial practice and procedure.

Dashing Consumer Hopes: Strict Products Liability And The Demise Of The Consumer Expectations Test, Rebecca Korzec

All Faculty Scholarship

The threshold issue in American products liability litigation is whether the product was defective at the time it left the manufacturer's control. Traditionally, courts and scholars define “defect” in three functional categories: manufacturing defects, design defects and marketing defects. American products liability doctrine employs two major tests to determine whether a "defect” exists: the seller-oriented risk-utility test and the buyer-oriented consumer expectations test. The Draft of the Restatement Third of Torts: Products Liability, like some American jurisdictions, rejects the “consumer expectations” test as an independent standard in defective warning and design cases. Ironically, this limitation of the use of the …

Appellate Practice And Procedure, Lawrence A. Slovensky

Mercer Law Review

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit decided several cases during 1996 which represented significant additions or modifications to the law governing appellate practice and procedure in this circuit. For example, the court attempted to clarify the circumstances in which interlocutory collateral orders involving the qualified immunity defense can be appealed, announced a new definition for "excusable neglect" in determining whether an untimely notice of appeal can be allowed, and analyzed the use of the harmless error rule in instructional omission cases. This Article will survey developments in appellate practice and procedure in the Court of Appeals …

The Predictability Of Punitive Damages, Theodore Eisenberg, John Goerdt, Brian Ostrom, David Rottman, Martin T. Wells

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Using one year of jury trial outcomes from 45 of the nation's most populous counties, this article shows a strong and statistically significant correlation between compensatory and punitive damages. These findings are replicated in 25 years of punitive damages awards from Cook County, Illinois, and California. In addition, we find no evidence that punitive damages awards are more likely when individuals sue businesses than when individuals sue individuals. With respect to award frequency, juries rarely award punitive damages and appear to be especially reluctant to do so in the areas of law that have captured the most attention, products liability …

The Theory Of Fee Regulation In Class Action Settlements , Bruce L. Hay

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Awarding Attorney's Fees To Pro Se Litigants Under Rule 11, Jeremy D. Spector

Michigan Law Review

Among the myriad rules and statutes designed to curb litigation abuse, Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure ("FRCP") is "the most widely used and most controversial of the sanctions rules." The increased use of Rule ll during the last fifteen years and the recent proliferation of fee-shifting provisions in federal statutes4 have led to an onslaught of motions for attorney's fees in the federal district courts. Simultaneously, these courts are seeing an increasing number of pro se litigants appear before them. The confluence of these two trends has produced the seemingly paradoxical result of pro se parties …

The Cathedral At Twenty-Five: Citations And Impressions, James E. Krier, Stewart J. Schwab

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

It was twenty-five years ago that Guido Calabresi and Douglas Melamed published their article on property rules, liability rules, and inalienability. Calabresi, then a law professor, later a dean, is now a federal judge. Melamed, formerly a student of Calabresi's, is now a seasoned Washington attorney. Their article—which, thanks to its subtitle, we shall call The Cathedral—has had a remarkable influence on our own thinking, as we tried to show in a recent paper.

This is not the place to rehash what we said then, but a summary might be in order. First, we demonstrated that the conventional wisdom …

The Virginia Beach Quest For Water: Drowning In A Sea Of Litigation, Richard T. Probst

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Tobacco Litigation: Medicaid Third Party Liability And Claims For Restitution, Cliff Sherrill

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

When Physicians Balk At Futile Care: Implications Of The Disability Rights Laws, Philip G. Peters Jr.

Faculty Publications

Part I of this article reviews the factual background of the futility debate. Part II introduces the antidiscrimination laws. Thereafter, Parts III, IV, and V examine the three components of the proposal suggested above.

Do You Feel The Sunshine? Government In The Sunshine Act: Its Objectives, Goals, And Effect On The Fcc And You, Kathy Bradley

Federal Communications Law Journal

This Note posits that the Sunshine Act should be narrowed to allow the FCC to operate in the same way as Congress and the Federal courts. The FCC should be allowed to engage in open and frank discussion of issues facing the Commission without rigid restrictions on collegial conversation between Commission members.

Representing Race Outside Of Explicitly Racialized Contexts, Naomi R. Cahn

Michigan Law Review

Welfare "as we know it" ended in 1996, a victim of a conservatism that views welfare recipients as lazy and immoral. One aspect of welfare that is, however, unlikely to experience radical change is child support. More vigorous child support enforcement has become an increasingly important component of federal welfare reform bills over the past two decades because of the twin hopes of fiscal and parental responsibility: first, that child support will reimburse welfare costs, and second, that fathers will take more responsibility for their children. Child support programs within the welfare system perpetuate a negative perception of poor people. …

Trial Procedure—An Analysis Of Arkansas's Exceptional Treatment Of The Contemporaneous Objection Rule In Criminal Bench Trials. Strickland V. State, 322 Ark. 312, 909 S.W.2d 318 (1995)., Dale D. Smith

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Simplifying The Choice Of Forum: A Reply, Kevin M. Clermont, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

We have three things to think about here, as the real estate agents say—“location, location, location.” Accordingly, the two of us have engaged for several years in empirical studies aimed at gauging the effect of forum on case outcome. The results to date strongly suggest that forum really matters. An early piece of the puzzle fell into place in our study of venue. In that article, we examined the benefits and costs of the federal courts scheme of transfer of civil venue “in the interest of justice.” Ours was a pretty straightforward and simple cost-benefit analysis, but we supported it …

The Litigious Plaintiff Hypothesis: Case Selection And Resolution, Theodore Eisenberg, Henry S. Farber

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The process through which cases are selected for litigation cannot be ignored because it yields a set of lawsuits and plaintiffs that is far from a random selection either of potential claims or of potential claimants. We present a theoretical framework for understanding the operation of this suit-selection process and its relationship to the underlying distribution of potential claims and claimants. The model has implications for the trial rate and the plaintiff win rate at trial. Our empirical analysis, using data on over 200,000 federal civil litigations, yields results that are strongly consistent with the theory.

"And The Truth Shall Make You Free": Truth As A First Amendment Defense In Tortious Interference With Contract Cases, Robert L. Tucker

Akron Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Public Justice: Toward A State Action Theory Of Alterative Dispute Resolution, Richard C. Reuben

Faculty Publications

Various forms of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) are increasingly taking the place of litigation to resolve disagreements among parties. ADR is frequently imposed by court rule or legislative command for certain types of cases, or compelled by courts when private parties contract to use ADR. To date, ADR doctrine has focused on the structural issues attendant to bringing these processes into the mainstream of American dispute resolution. This Article contends that courts must now address the question of whether ADR-both court-related and contractual-can constitute state action, and therefore be subject to constitutional restraints. The author surveys the history and modern …