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Full-Text Articles in Law

Trouble On The Exchanges — Does The United Owe Billions To Health Insurers?, Nicholas Bagley Nov 2016

Trouble On The Exchanges — Does The United Owe Billions To Health Insurers?, Nicholas Bagley

Articles

Yet another bruising fight has erupted over health care reform. On September 9, 2016, the Obama administration offered to open settlement negotiations with health insurers that have sued the United States to recover billions of dollars that they claim they are owed. Congressional Republicans are incensed, believing that any settlement would illegally squander taxpayer dollars in a lastgasp effort to save the Affordable Care Act (ACA).


The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Litigation: Proof Of Concept For The Manual For Complex Litigation And The 2015 Amendments To The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure, John C. Cruden, Steve O'Rourke, Sarah D. Himmelhoch Oct 2016

The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Litigation: Proof Of Concept For The Manual For Complex Litigation And The 2015 Amendments To The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure, John C. Cruden, Steve O'Rourke, Sarah D. Himmelhoch

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

On April 20, 2010, the oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven people and injuring seventeen more. Efforts to stop the spill failed. For the next eighty-seven days, hundreds of millions of barrels of oil poured into the Gulf. This catastrophe not only changed the lives of the families of the dead and injured and the communities who experienced the economic and social disruption of the spill – it challenged the survival of the ecosystem of the ninth largest water body in the world. The oil spill extended fifty miles offshore from Louisiana in the …


Patent Privateers And Antitrust Fears, Matthew Sipe Jul 2016

Patent Privateers And Antitrust Fears, Matthew Sipe

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Patent trolls are categorically demonized as threatening American innovation and industry. But whether they are a threat that antitrust law is equipped to deal with is a complex question that depends on the particular type of patent troll and activities they engage in. This Article looks specifically at privateer patent trolls: entities that acquire their patents from operating entities and assert them against other industry members. In the particular context of privateering, antitrust law is almost certainly not the proper legal solution. Privateering does raise significant issues: circumventing litigation constraints, evading licensing obligations, and raising the cost and frequency of …


Rent-Seeking And Inter Partes Review: An Analysis Of Invalidity Assertion Entities In Patent Law, W. Michael Schuster Jul 2016

Rent-Seeking And Inter Partes Review: An Analysis Of Invalidity Assertion Entities In Patent Law, W. Michael Schuster

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

This Essay is the first analysis of a recent entrant on the patent landscape: the Invalidity Assertion Entity (IAE). IAEs engage in rent-seeking by demanding payment from patent holders in exchange for not attempting to invalidate their patents through administrative action before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The response to IAEs has been uniformly negative. Reflexive proposals have been raised in Congress (unsurprisingly) to terminate the IAE business model. In contrast to the common response to IAEs, this Essay discusses how profit-driven IAEs may generate socially beneficial externalities and why legislating to end the IAE business model is imprudent.


Plausible Pleading In Patent Suits: Predicting The Effects Of The Abrogation Of Form 18, Kyle R. Williams Jul 2016

Plausible Pleading In Patent Suits: Predicting The Effects Of The Abrogation Of Form 18, Kyle R. Williams

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

On December 1, 2015, amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure took effect. The changes included, among other things, the abrogation of the Appendix of Forms, which contained templates for summons, complaints, answers, and other litigation documents. Prior to its abrogation, Form 18—a template for a “Complaint for Patent Infringement”—was widely utilized by patent plaintiffs in crafting infringement complaints. Form 18 was created during the Conley pleading regime, when conclusory allegations were generally sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss. Accordingly, the sample allegations in Form 18 were conclusory and bare-bones in nature. Under Conley, plaintiffs who followed this …


Making A Buck While Making A Difference, Alphonse A. Gerhardstein May 2016

Making A Buck While Making A Difference, Alphonse A. Gerhardstein

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

It is not right for children to die before their parents. It is not right for peaceful, unarmed citizens to die at the hands of the police. In my civil rights practice, I have met many mothers, fathers, and family members who are struggling to recover after a law enforcement officer caused the death of their loved one. Sure, they want fair compensation. But money does little to reduce their loss or make the grief more bearable. They often want to do something that will ensure that their loved one did not die in vain. They want to prevent other …


Online Case Resolution Systems: Enhancing Access, Fairness, Accuracy, And Efficiency, Maximilian A. Bulinski, J.J. Prescott May 2016

Online Case Resolution Systems: Enhancing Access, Fairness, Accuracy, And Efficiency, Maximilian A. Bulinski, J.J. Prescott

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Online case resolution (OCR) systems have the potential to dramatically increase access to our justice system. Part I introduces the concept of an OCR system, how it might work in practice, and its likely impact on courts and citizens. Part II argues that OCR systems can lower many of the barriers to going to court by reducing the need for face-to-face resolution of disputes; cutting the amount of time needed for hearings; mitigating litigant confusion and fear; allowing asynchronous scheduling that can accommodate work and child-care schedules; and offering a more reliable and easier-to-use means for litigants to voice their …


A Comprehensive Theory Of Civil Settlement, J. J. Prescott, Kathryn E. Spier Apr 2016

A Comprehensive Theory Of Civil Settlement, J. J. Prescott, Kathryn E. Spier

Articles

A settlement is an agreement between parties to a dispute. In everyday parlance and in academic scholarship, settlement is juxtaposed with trial or some other method of dispute resolution in which a third-party factfinder ultimately picks a winner and announces a score. The “trial versus settlement” trope, however, represents a false choice; viewing settlement solely as a dispute-ending alternative to a costly trial leads to a narrow understanding of how dispute resolution should and often does work. In this Article, we describe and defend a much richer concept of settlement, amounting in effect to a continuum of possible agreements between …


Rebutting The Fraud On The Market Presumption In Securities Fraud Class Actions: Halliburton Ii Opens The Door, Victor E. Schwartz, Christopher E. Appel Feb 2016

Rebutting The Fraud On The Market Presumption In Securities Fraud Class Actions: Halliburton Ii Opens The Door, Victor E. Schwartz, Christopher E. Appel

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

In Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc. (Halliburton II), the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed the validity of the “fraud on the market” presumption underlying securities fraud class action litigation. This presumption is vital to bringing suits as class actions because it excuses plaintiffs from proving individual reliance on an alleged corporate misstatement on the theory that any public statements made by the company are incorporated into its stock price and consequently relied upon by all investors. Thus, the Court’s decision to uphold the validity of the presumption has been hailed as a significant victory for those …


Class Action Myopia, Maureen Carroll Feb 2016

Class Action Myopia, Maureen Carroll

Articles

Over the past two decades, courts and commentators have often treated the class action as though it were a monolith, limiting their analysis to the particular class form that joins together a large number of claims for monetary relief This Article argues that the myopic focus on the aggregated-damages class action has led to undertheorization of the other class-action subtypes, which serve far different purposes and have far different effects, and has allowed the ongoing backlash against the aggregated-damages class action to affect the other subtypes in an undifferentiated manner. The failure to confine this backlash to its intended target …


An Opt-In Option For Class Actions, Scott Dodson Jan 2016

An Opt-In Option For Class Actions, Scott Dodson

Michigan Law Review

Federal class actions today follow an opt-out model: absent an affirmative request to opt out, a class member is in the class. Supporters defend the opt-out model as necessary to ensure the viability of class actions and the efficacy of substantive law. Critics argue the opt-out model is a poor proxy for class-member consent and promotes overbroad and ill-defined classes; these critics favor an opt-in model. This bimodal debate—opt out vs. opt in—has obscured an overlooked middle ground that relies on litigant choice: Why not give the class the option to pursue certification on either an opt-out or an opt-in …