Law Commons^™

Making Sense Of Abatement As A Tort Remedy, Anthony J. Sebok

Faculty Articles

Controversy over public nuisance in recent high profile cases invites the question of whether, and to what extent, it is limited by its roots in tort law. This article, which was prepared for the 2023 Clifford Symposium on “New Torts” focuses on causes of action in which the state seeks to enjoin the defendant by requiring that it abate the consequences of the invasion of a public right. In the most controversial of these public nuisance actions, such as lead paint and opioids, the wrongful conduct that is remedied by the injunctive relief has already ceased, and the state does …

Aaron Twerski: Practical Wisdom At Ground Zero, Anthony J. Sebok

Faculty Articles

This Article celebrates Professor. Aaron Twerski’s “practical wisdom” in crafting a solution (with Jim Henderson) to a problem faced by Judge Alvin Hellerstein in the so-called 9/11 First Responder cases. The problem was that Congress did not include these plaintiffs within the Victims Compensation Fund (“VCF”) despite there being every reason to suspect that the interaction of workersman’s compensation law and tort law, if left to operate on their own, would generate a politically unacceptable outcome. Despite his clear misgivings – —expressed decades earlier – —about allowing those who control the workplace to enjoy the benefits of limited liability guaranteed …

Inventing Deportation Arrests, Lindsay Nash

Faculty Articles

At the dawn of the federal deportation system, the nation’s top immigration official proclaimed the power to authorize deportation arrests “an extraordinary one” to vest in administrative officers. He reassured the nation that this immense power—then wielded by a cabinet secretary, the only executive officer empowered to authorize these arrests—was exercised with “great care and deliberation.” A century later, this extraordinary power is legally trivial and systemically exercised by low-level enforcement officers alone. Consequently, thousands of these officers—the police and jailors of the immigration system— now have the power to solely determine whether deportation arrests are justified and, therefore, whether …

Idaho's Law Of Seduction, Michael L. Smith

Faculty Articles

Seduction is a historical cause of action that permitted women's fathers to bring suit on their daughters' behalf in sexual assault and rape cases. This tort emerged long ago when the law's refusal to recognize women's agency left this as the only means of recovering damages in these cases. As time went on, the tort evolved, and women were eventually permitted to bring lawsuits for seduction on their own behalf. Today, most states have abolished seduction, along with other torts permitting recovery for damages arising from intimate conduct. One could be easily forgiven for thinking that such an archaic tort …

Third-Party Releases Under The Bankruptcy Code After Purdue Pharma, Jeanne L. Schroeder, David G. Carlson

Faculty Articles

The biggest bankruptcy case ever (as measured by unsecured claims against a debtor-in-possession) is In re Purdue Pharma, LLC. The bankruptcy court affirmed a plan discharging the Sackler family (equity owners and often officers of Purdue) of all “derivative” claims that belonged to the debtor-in-possession. The settlement was bought for a substantial sum payable over time by the Sacklers. A debtor-in-possession is the sole owner of a derivative claim and has the power to bind all the creditors to a settlement. Under the Bankruptcy Code, a plan discharging derivative claims is confirmable. In fact, as we will, show, a great …

The Deep Architecture Of American Covid-19 Tort Reform 2020-21, Anthony J. Sebok

Faculty Articles

The rapid emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic produced massive state actions to protect in public health through the exercise of the police powers by local, state and national governments. In the United States there were calls early in the crisis to exercise the state’s power over tort law: As early as April 2020, the American Tort Reform Association published a White Paper, Responding to the Coming Lawsuit Surge that called for “reasonable constraints on . . . lawsuits that pose an obstacle to the coronavirus response effort, place businesses in jeopardy, and further damage the economy.”

This article, prepared for …

Can Environmental Law Solve The "Forever Chemical" Problem?, Mark P. Nevitt, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Articles

Although federal environmental law purports to provide the public with comprehensive protection against chemical risks, the U.S. chemical industry is characterized by self­ regulation. This self-regulation is exemplified by the dangers posed by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (''PFAS'')­ broad classes of persistent toxic substances that have now entered nearly every American's bloodstream and hundreds of public drinking water systems. Despite data linking exposure to these "forever chemicals" to cancer, infertility, and a host of other public health harms, environmental law has failed to safeguard the American people from PFAS' toxic legacy. How did this occur? And what should be done …

Going Rogue: The Supreme Court's Newfound Hostility To Policy-Based Bivens Claims, Joanna C. Schwartz, Alexander A. Reinert, James E. Pfander

Faculty Articles

In Ziglar v. Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. 1843 (2017), the Supreme Court held that a proposed Bivens remedy was subject to an exacting special factors analysis when the claim arises in a “new context.” In Ziglar itself, the Court found the context of the plaintiffs’ claims to be “new” because, in the Court’s view, they challenged “large-scale policy decisions concerning the conditions of confinement imposed on hundreds of prisoners.” Bivens claims for damages caused by unconstitutional policies, the Court suggested, were inappropriate.

This Essay critically examines the Ziglar Court’s newfound hostility to policy-based Bivens claims. We show that an …

The Mdl Revolution And Consumer Legal Funding, Ronen Avraham, Lynn A. Baker, Anthony J. Sebok

Faculty Articles

Third-party consumer legal funding, where financial companies advance money on a nonrecourse basis to assist individual plaintiffs with living expenses, is an increasingly popular and controversial part of American litigation. And consumers with mass tort claims pending in Multi-District Litigations (MDLs) constitute the fastest growing sector of those seeking assistance from this billion-dollar funding industry. Policy makers, mass tort plaintiffs' lawyers, and scholars have increasingly raised concerns about exorbitant interest rates and have called for regulations to protect vulnerable consumers from “predatory lending.” To date, however, the policy debate has largely relied on anecdotes and speculation because flinders have not …

Lech's Mess With The Tenth Circuit: Why Governmental Entities Are Not Exempt From Paying Just Compensation When They Destroy Property Pursuant To Their Police Powers, Emilio R. Longoria

Faculty Articles

On June 29, 2020, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Lech v. Jackson, a Tenth Circuit inverse condemnation case, which held that governmental entities are categorically exempt from paying just compensation when they destroy private property pursuant to their police powers. This denial of certiorari cements a highly controversial circuit court holding into our takings jurisprudence the effects of which will be serious and far reaching. This article dissects the Tenth Circuit's opinion in Lech and explains how and why this holding should be revisited. If it is not, we risk losing the protection that the Fifth Amendment's Just Compensation …

Mdl Drano: Rule 23-Based Solutions To Mass Tort Buildup, Myriam E. Gilles, Gary Friedman

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Counterterrorism 2.0, Deborah Pearlstein

Faculty Articles

Are there any lessons to be gleaned for combatting the rising threat of white nationalist terrorism today from the U.S. response to the attacks of 9/11 twenty years on? This symposium reflection suggests that among the most important lessons may be in avoiding the conceptually defining characteristics of the early U.S. response in 2001. Detainee torture and abuse, the embrace of trial by newly formed military commission, and other misguided policies and practices whose effects are still felt today were set in motion in the first few weeks after the attacks, driven by the instinct to do something, bolstered by …

New Federalism And Civil Rights Enforcement, Alexander A. Reinert, Joanna C. Schwartz, James E. Pfander

Faculty Articles

Calls for change to the infrastructure of civil rights enforcement have grown more insistent in the past several years, attracting support from a wide range of advocates, scholars, and federal, state, and local officials. Much of the attention has focused on federal-level reforms, including proposals to overrule Supreme Court doctrines that stop many civil rights lawsuits in their tracks. But state and local officials share responsibility for the enforcement of civil rights and have underappreciated powers to adopt reforms of their own. This Article evaluates a range of state and local interventions, including the adoption of state law causes of …

The Myth Of Personal Liability: Who Pays When Bivens Claims Succeed, James E. Pfander, Alexander A. Reinert, Joanna C. Schwartz

Faculty Articles

In Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, the Supreme Court held that federal law creates a right to sue federal officials for Fourth Amendment violations. For the last three decades, however, the Court has cited the threat of individual liability and the burden of government indemnification on agency budgets as twin bases for narrowing the right of victims to secure redress under Bivens. In its most recent decisions, Ziglar v. Abbasi and Hernandez v. Mesa, the Court said much to confirm that it now views personal liability less as a feature of the Bivens liability rule than …

Rediscovering The Issue Class In Mass Tort Mdls, Myriam E. Gilles, Gary Friedman

Faculty Articles

For the past twenty-plus years, MDL transferee judges have essentially regarded the class device as unavailable as they struggle to organize masses of tort actions sent their way by the JPML. Even the badges and incidents of class practice, in the form of common-fund-based approaches to attorney compensation and lead-counsel structures for case organization, have come under attack from commentators who insist that mass-tort MDLs should not be treated as “quasi-class actions,” and that Rule 23 does not present a “grab bag” from which MDL judges may pick and choose the most convenient implements. Leading lights of the complex litigation …

Qualified Immunity At Trial, Alexander A. Reinert

Faculty Articles

Qualified immunity doctrine is complex and important, and for many years it was assumed to have an outsize impact on civil rights cases by imposing significant barriers to success for plaintiffs. Recent empirical work has cast that assumption into doubt, at least as to the impact qualified immunity has at pretrial stages of litigation. This Essay adds to this empirical work by evaluating the impact of qualified immunity at trial, a subject that to date has not been empirically tested. The results reported here suggest that juries are rarely asked to answer questions that bear on the qualified immunity defense. …

Socialized Liability In Chinese Tort Law, Chenglin Liu

Faculty Articles

This article explores two unique aspects of the Chinese Tort Liability Law (TLL): (1) Article 24 holds that a party not at fault shall share the loss with the victim in non-strict liability cases under undefined circumstances, and (2) the government often shields a party at fault from liability in mass tort cases by disregarding the TLL entirely. These two aspects may seem contradictory; however, they are both based on the same principle of socialized liability, which is first articulated in this article.

Scholars often claim that Article 24 embodies the principle of equitable liability. This article challenges such claims …

Enhancing Cybersecurity In The Private Sector By Means Of Civil Liability Lawsuits - The Connie Francis Effect, Jeffrey F. Addicott

Faculty Articles

The purpose of this article is to explore the threats posed by cybersecurity breaches, outline the steps taken by the government to address those threats in the private sector economy, and call attention to the ultimate solution, which will most certainly spur private businesses to create a more secure cyber environment for the American people-a Connie Francis-styled cyber civil action lawsuit.

European Legal Development: The Case Of Tort: Comparative Studies In The Development Of The Law Of Tort In Europe, Vol 9, Anthony Sebok

Faculty Articles

This review addresses volumes 7-9 of the series Comparative Studies in the Development of the Law of Torts in Europe, edited by John Bell and David Ibbetson and published by Cambridge University Press.

Uncovering The Silent Victims Of The American Medical Liability System, Joanna Shepherd

Faculty Articles

A frequently overlooked problem with the current medical liability system is the vast number of medical errors that go uncompensated. Although studies indicate that 1% of hospital patients are victims of medical negligence, fewer than 2% of these injured patients file claims. In this Article, I explain that many victims of medical malpractice do not file claims because they are unable to find attorneys willing to take their cases.

I conducted the first national survey of attorneys to explore medical malpractice victims' access to the civil justice system. The results from the survey indicate that the economic reality of litigation …

Asking The First Question: Reframing Bivens After Minneci, Alexander A. Reinert, Lumen N. Mulligan

Faculty Articles

In Minneci v. Pollard, decided in January 2012, the Supreme Court refused to recognize a Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents suit against employees of a privately run federal prison because state tort law provided an alternative remedy, thereby adding a federalism twist to what had been strictly a separation-of-powers debate. In this Article, we show why this new state-law focus is misguided. We first trace the Court’s prior alternative-remedies-to-Bivens holdings, illustrating that this history is one narrowly focused on separation of powers at the federal level. Minneci’s break with this tradition raises several concerns. On a …

Malpractice Liability Related To Foreign Outsourcing Of Legal Services, Vincent R. Johnson, Stephen C. Loomis

Faculty Articles

The outsourcing of client-related tasks to service providers in other countries is likely to generate malpractice claims against American law firms. This Article discusses the wide range of theories under which an outsourcing American law firm may be liable for its own negligence or for the actions of outsourcing providers. These theories include negligence by the outsourcing law firm, vicarious liability for the conduct of firm principals and employees, vicarious liability for the conduct of independent contractors, and vicarious liability for the conduct of business partners.

Tribal Rituals Of The Mdl: A Comment On Williams, Lee, And Borden, Repeat Players In Multidistrict Litigation, Myriam E. Gilles

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Does Qualified Immunity Matter?, Alexander A. Reinert

Faculty Articles

In litigation brought pursuant to Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Fed. Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), most commentators agree that qualified immunity plays a substantial role in limiting plaintiffs' ability to recover compensation. Many find this tradeoff acceptable, in part because of concerns of fairness to government official defendants and in part because courts may still play a central role in announcing the law without worrying over the retroactive effect their decision will have on the personal funds of the defendant official.

This paper considers the different role that qualified immunity may play in …

Legal Positivism As An Idea About Morality, Martin J. Stone

Faculty Articles

I ask what a proper critical target for 'legal positivism' might be. I argue that utilitarian moral theory, and more generally fully directive moral theories, are unacknowledged motivations for legal positivism. Contemporary debate about 'the nature of law' is, historically speaking, much more of a footnote to utilitarianism than has been recognized.

The Rule Of Law And Enforcement Of Chinese Tort Law, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

The majority of the work necessary to advance the Rule of Law in China is yet to be done. This is particularly the case as it relates to deterring accidents and compensating injuries. The Rule of Law is concerned with much more than the substantive terms of legal provisions. As such, China must develop the institutional practices that will bring to fruition the promise of the new Tort Law. In part, this will entail the proper selection, retention, and protection of judges. It will also depend on whether persons have access to the justice system, either through competent counsel or …

Measuring The Success Of Bivens Litigation And Its Consequences For The Individual Liability Model, Alexander A. Reinert

Faculty Articles

In Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U. S. 388 (1971), the Supreme Court held that the Federal Constitution provides a cause of action in damages for violations of the Fourth Amendment by individual federal officers. The so-called "Bivens "cause of action—initially extended to other constitutional provisions and then sharply curtailed over the past two decades—has been a subject of controversy among academics and judges since its creation. The most common criticism of Bivens—one that has been repeated in different venues for thirty years— is that the Court's individual liability model, in …

Class Dismissed: Contemporary Judicial Hostility To Small-Claims Consumer Class Actions, Myriam E. Gilles

Faculty Articles

I start from the view that small-value consumer claims are a primary reason that class actions exist, and that without class actions many - if not most - of the wrongs perpetrated upon small-claims consumers would not be capable of redress. It would then seem to follow that the class action device should be readily available in small-claims consumer cases. And yet, over the past decade, federal district courts have repeatedly declined to certify class actions on grounds that are specific to small-claims consumer cases. Foremost among those grounds is the notion that the federal class action rule carries within …

The Boundary-Line Fuction Of The Economic Loss Rule, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Tort Reform On Tort Case Filings, Patricia W. Moore

Faculty Articles

Does so-called "tort reform" decrease tort case filings? In Texas and other states that have enacted numerous rounds of tort reform, the answer appears to be a resounding "yes," at least as of the year 2000. More recent evidence from Oklahoma supports that conclusion and provides an interesting case study within the tort reform juggernaut.

During at least the past twenty years, tort reformers have achieved substantial legislative successes and, some would argue, public relations victories. Yet their desire for more "reform" seems insatiable, and their legislative agenda rarely sleeps.

Tort reform bills bloom perennially in the Oklahoma legislature, and …