Law Commons^™

Perceptions Of Justice In Multidistrict Litigation: Voices From The Crowd, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Margaret S. Williams

Scholarly Works

With all eyes on criminal justice reform, multidistrict litigation (MDL) has quietly reshaped civil justice, undermining fundamental tenets of due process, procedural justice, attorney ethics, and tort law along the way. In 2020, the MDL caseload tripled that of the federal criminal caseload, one out of every two cases filed in federal civil court was an MDL case, and 97% of those were products liability like opioids, talc, and Roundup.

Ordinarily, civil procedure puts tort plaintiffs in the driver’s seat, allowing them to choose who and where to sue, and what claims to bring. Procedural justice tells courts to ensure …

Some Objections To Strict Liability For Constitutional Torts, Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

Qualified immunity protects officials from damages for constitutional violations unless they have violated "clearly established" rights. Local governments enjoy no immunity, but they may not be sued on a vicarious liability theory for constitutional violations committed by their employees. Critics of the current regime would overturn these rules in order to vindicate constitutional rights and deter violations.

This Article argues that across-the-board abolition of these limits on liability would be unwise as the costs would outweigh the benefits. In some contexts, however, exceptions may be justified. Much of the recent controversy surrounding qualified immunity involves suits in which police officers …

Judicial Adjuncts In Multidistrict Litigation, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Margaret S. Williams

Scholarly Works

Peeking under the tent of our nation's largest and often most impactful cases reveals that judges often act like ringmasters: They delegate their authority to a wide array of magistrate judges, special masters, and settlement administrators. Some, like the American Bar Association, see this as a plus that promotes efficiency and cost savings. Critics, however, contend that delegating judicial power especially to private citizens, removes adjudication from public scrutiny, injects thorny ethical questions about ex parte communications, and risks cronyism and high costs. By constructing an original dataset of ninety-two multidistrict products liability proceedings centralized over fourteen years, we introduce …

Nudges And Norms In Multidistrict Litigation: A Response To Engstrom, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

On paper, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure apply equally to billion-dollar opioid allegations and small-stakes claims for $75,000.01. In practice, however, judges and attorneys in high-stakes multidistrict proceedings like those over opioids have invented a smattering of procedures that you’ll never find indexed in the Federal Rules: plaintiff fact sheets, short form complaints, science days, bellwether trials, census orders, inactive dockets, and Lone Pine orders to name but a few. In a world where settlement is the prevailing currency, norms take root. But as norms blossom, the stabilizing features of the federal rules—balance, predictability, and structural protections—can wither. As …

Healthism In Tort Law, Elizabeth Weeks

Scholarly Works

This article draws on the author's recently published book, Healthism: Health Status Discrimination and the Law (with Jessica L. Roberts) (Cambridge University Press 2018), examining tort law doctrine and policy for examples of differential treatment of health status or behaviors. Just as scholars previously have drawn attention to discrimination based on race, sex, age, and other protected categories in tort law, the article urges similar examination of tort law's potential to discriminate against the unhealthy. The article discusses the potential for healthism in the reasonably prudent person standard of care, contributory negligence, assumption of the risk, noneconomic damages caps, impaired …

Wrongful Convictions, Constitutional Remedies, And Nelson V. Colorado, Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

This article examines the U.S. Supreme Court’s Nelson v. Colorado opinion, in which the Court addressed the novel issue of remedies for persons wrongly convicted of crimes. Governments routinely deprive criminal defendants of both liberty and property upon conviction, and do so before giving them a chance to appeal their convictions and sentences. When a conviction is overturned, the state typically refunds fines and most other monetary exactions but seldom compensates for the loss of liberty. In Nelson, the Supreme Court addressed an unusual case in which the state did not return the money and that refusal was approved (purportedly …

Qualified Immunity After Ziglar V. Abbasi: The Case For A Categorical Approach, Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

Qualified immunity protects officers from liability for damages unless they have violated clearly established rights, on the ground that it would be unfair and counterproductive to impose liability without notice of wrongdoing. In recent years, however, the Supreme Court has increasingly applied the doctrine to cases in which it serves little or no legitimate purpose. In Ziglar v. Abbasi, for example, the rights were clearly established but the Court held that the officers were immune due to lack of clarity on other issues in the case. Because holdings like Ziglar undermine the vindication of constitutional rights and the deterrence of …

Taxing Litigation: Federal Tax Concerns Of Personal Injury Plaintiffs And Their Lawyers, Gregg Polsky

Scholarly Works

This Article addresses the federal tax concerns ofpersonal injury plaintiffs and the lawyers who represent them, typically on a contingencyfee basis. It explains when plaintiffs' recoveries are taxable for income and employment tax purposes and whether and how those recoveries are required to be reported by defendants to the IRS. It also discusses whether attorney's fees and costs are deductible by plaintiffs.

In addition to these tax planning and compliance issues, the Article also considers when tax evidence might be admissible. Plaintiffs and defendants often try to introduce tax evidence in an effort to increase or decrease, respectively, the amount …

Taxing Punitive Damages, Gregg D. Polsky, Dan Markel

Scholarly Works

There is a curious anomaly in the law of punitive damages. Jurors assess punitive damages in the amount that they believe will best “punish” the defendant. But, in fact, defendants are not always punished to the degree that the jury intends. Under the Internal Revenue Code, punitive damages paid by business defendants are tax deductible and, as a result, these defendants often pay (in real dollars) far less than the jury believes they deserve to pay.

To solve this problem of under-punishment, many scholars and policymakers, including President Obama, have proposed making punitive damages nondeductible in all cases. In our …

Cafa's Impact On Litigation As A Public Good, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

Class actions regulate when government fails. Perhaps this use as an ex post remedy when ex ante regulation founders explains the fervor and rhetoric surrounding Rule 23's political life. In truth, the class action does more than aggregate; it augments government policing and generates external societal benefits. These societal benefits - externalities - are the spillover effects from facilitating small claims litigation. In federalizing class actions through the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA), Congress, in some ways, impeded class action practice, thereby negating its positive externalities and inhibiting backdoor regulation. This Article critically considers those effects on the common good. …

Judging Plaintiffs, Jason M. Solomon

Scholarly Works

With its powerful account of the normative principles embodied in the structure and practice of the law of torts, corrective justice is considered the leading moral theory of tort law. It has a significant advantage over instrumental and other moral theories in that it is more consistent with what judges say when they analyze tort law concepts. And with criticism of instrumental accounts, like law and economics, on a number of fronts, it is the leading descriptive theory of tort law.

In this Article, I take up a question that has never been answered adequately by corrective-justice or other moral …

Taxing Emotional Distress Recoveries: Does Murphy Show The Way?, Kaushal P. Mahaseth

LLM Theses and Essays

The taxability of recoveries of damages on account of emotional distress remains a complicated issue under the American federal income tax law. Recent developments due to a controversial decision by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals have further added fuel to this debate. Even if one were to argue the justifications of exempting such recoveries from income taxation, courts do not appear to be the very appropriate kind of forum. Congress can, and in fact does tax such recoveries and the constitutional basis of such power can hardly be doubted. As a result, appropriate changes in the statute only can …

Beyond Compensation: Using Torts To Promote Public Health, Elizabeth Weeks Leonard

Scholarly Works

Personal injury litigation, or tort law, traditionally, has been viewed as antithetical to the goals of public health. The focus on individual compensation for injuries resulting from accidents, products, and international wrongdoing arguably does not serve the "greater good" or communitarian objectives of public health. This Article, originally presented on a January 2006 AALS Panel on Teaching Public Health In Law School, takes issue with the traditional view and will demonstrate ways that personal injury litigation and public health objectives may be complimentary and mutually reinforcing. Some areas of tort law, such as mass torts against tobacco companies, toxic polluters, …

Revisiting The Taxation Of Punitive Damages, Gregg D. Polsky, Dan Markel

Scholarly Works

In our recent article, Taxing Punitive Damages, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1421879, we argued (1) that plaintiffs in punitive damages cases should be allowed to introduce to the jury evidence regarding the deductibility of those damages by defendants, and (2) that this jury tax-awareness approach is better than the Obama Administration’s suggested alternative of disallowing those deductions.

To our delight, Professor Larry Zelenak and Paul Mogin have each provided published comments to our piece on Virginia Law Review's In Brief companion website. Professor Zelenak’s thoughtful response focuses on our prescriptive claim that jury tax-awareness is better than nondeductibility, while Mr. Mogin disputes …

Intervention In Public Law Litigation: The Environmental Paradigm, Peter A. Appel

Scholarly Works

Litigation which Chayes labeled “public law litigation” grew especially quickly in the decade immediately before Chayes wrote his article. This growth was due, in no small part, to the 1966 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. These amendments introduced a more transactional approach to litigation and made the rules concerning party structure more flexible. In particular, the amendments modified Rule 19, which governs joinder of nonparties by the parties to the suit; Rule 23, which governs class action lawsuits; and Rule 24, which governs intervention by nonparties into ongoing litigation. Using the jurisprudence that has developed concerning intervention …

Suing States For Money: Constitutional Remedies After Alden And Florida Prepaid, Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

On June 23, 1999, the Supreme Court handed down three noteworthy decisions bearing on the law of constitutional remedies. Alden v. Maine struck down an attempt by Congress, acting under its Article I powers, to subject states to suits in state court on federal statutory grounds. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board v. College Savings Bank curbed Congress' power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to authorize suits against state governments on constitutional grounds, reasoning that a case cannot be made for the federal cause of action unless state law remedies are inadequate. A companion case, College Savings Bank …

Why Constitutional Torts Deserve A Book Of Their Own, Michael Wells, Thomas A. Eaton, Sheldon H. Nahmod

Scholarly Works

Over thirty years ago, Marshall Shapo coined the term "constitutional tort" to denote a suit brought against an official, charging a constitutional violation and seeking damages. In the years since Shapo's pathbreaking article, the number of such suits has grown exponentially. The suits have generated a host of new substantive and remedial issues, yet conventional casebooks on constitutional law and federal courts give little attention to the area. That Professor Shapiro had four books to include in his review of "Civil Rights" casebooks in the Seattle University Law Review is some indication of a demand for teaching materials currently unmet …

Punitive Damages In Ancient Roman And Contemporary American Tort Law, Esther Julia Sonntag

LLM Theses and Essays

Both ancient Roman and contemporary American tort law recognize a type of damages that, instead of compensating the plaintiff for harm suffered, punishes the wrongdoer. In American law, courts can award two distinct amounts of money: compensatory damages for the plaintiff’s loss, and punitive damages as punishment and deterrence. Ancient Roman law had more extreme forms of remedies. In both legal systems there has been a trend to restrict punitive damages over time. The United States made efforts in the 1980s to place caps on punitive damages, which were referred to as “relics of the past,” and enhance requirements for …

Job Security: Protecting At-Will Employees With Good Cause Legislation, Mayumi Yokoyama

LLM Theses and Essays

Recent decades have witnessed significant developments in employment termination law in the United States. In particular, the long-standing “at-will” doctrine, under which employers can fire employees for good, bad, or no reason at all, has experienced great erosion and wide variations in law from state to state. There has been a movement of statutory and common law restrictions limiting an employer’s freedom to terminate at will, which reflects the increasing consciousness of job security by society and workers. This paper analyzes the problem of job security by tracing the origin of the at-will doctrine to 19th century principles favoring economic …

Governmental Inaction As A Constitutional Tort: Deshaney And Its Aftermath, Thomas A. Eaton, Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services is the Supreme Court's first major effort to define the scope of state and local governments' affirmative obligations under the fourteenth amendment. The Court rejected liability against a county welfare agency and a caseworker for failing to prevent a father from severely beating his four-year-old son. The Court intimated that constitutional affirmative duties exist only where the plaintiff is in the state's custody. Scholarly commentary reads the case as announcing a sweeping prohibition against the imposition of affirmative duties in other contexts. Professors Eaton and Wells demonstrate that the DeShaney opinion is …

Protection Of Shipowners’ Liability Under United States Law And Marine Insurance Practice, Izak Stephanus Fourie

LLM Theses and Essays

Shipowners are exposed to a variety of risks that are, to a large extent, unique to maritime business. Because of factors like the recent increase in the size and value of ships, increase in marine traffic, enactment of legislation imposing new liabilities, and the tendency of courts to make huge awards to personal injury and death claims, shipowners are exposed to potential losses or claims worth millions of dollars in the event of disaster. These heavy risks led to the establishment of the marine insurance industry, as well as the enactment of legislation that limits shipowners’ liability. This legislation was …

Nineteenth Century Anti-Entrepreneurial Nuisance Injunctions--Avoiding The Chancellor, Paul M. Kurtz

Scholarly Works

This Article will explain how the 19th-century entrepreneur, faced with a hostile rule of strict liability for interference with the use and enjoyment of property, avoided the heavy hand of the chancellor's injunction. Although the term "entrepreneur" describes a diverse group of businessmen--from the mill owner to the early 19th century to the slaughterhouse operator of later in the century--the denominator common to all nuisance action in this period was a developmental use of real property that interfered with the use of neighboring property. An examination of the responses of courts to private nuisance suits between an individual property owner …