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The Role Of The Judge In Non-Class Settlement, Howard M. Erichson
The Role Of The Judge In Non-Class Settlement, Howard M. Erichson
Faculty Scholarship
This commentary argues that judges lack the authority, as a general matter, to approve or reject non-class settlements. While judges overseeing mass litigation can set the stage for settlement by instituting phased discovery, scheduling bellwether trials, and other methods, they should respect the line between facilitation of settlement and control over settlement terms. The paper was presented in response to Judge Alvin Hellerstein’s and his special masters' account of their handling of the September 11 clean-up litigation.
Doing Good, Doing Well Symposium, Howard M. Erichson
Doing Good, Doing Well Symposium, Howard M. Erichson
Faculty Scholarship
Rather than focusing on the differences between tort lawyers and activists as they ally with each other, this Article focuses on the motivations and explanations of the tort lawyers themselves. Positioned at the intersection of big-money practice and social change litigation, mass torts provide a useful study in multiple motivations. While financial incentives for plaintiffs' lawyers explain much of what happens in mass torts, policy objectives come into play as well, at least in the lawyers' rhetoric. Despite the obvious difficulty distinguishing reasons from rhetoric and rationalization, it is worth exploring the significance of mixed motives for lawyers who are …
Class Wars: The Dilemma Of The Mass Tort Class Action, John C. Coffee Jr.
Class Wars: The Dilemma Of The Mass Tort Class Action, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
Legal change – like organic evolution – can occur at varying paces. Long periods of gradual evolution are sometimes punctuated by brief moments of rapid, irregular change. Recent developments in class action practice bear witness to this phenomenon: during the 1990s, evolution has given way to mutation. At least with respect to mass torts, the development of the class action had been slow and halting. Well into the 1980s, federal courts uniformly resisted attempts to certify such mass tort class actions, largely out of concern that the interests of the individual litigant would be submerged within any large-scale proceeding. By …
Corruption Of The Class Action: The New Technology Of Collusion, John C. Coffee Jr.
Corruption Of The Class Action: The New Technology Of Collusion, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
Professor Coffee's article, an oral version of which was given at the Cornell Mass Torts conference, is appearing in the Columbia Law Review. However, because commentators in this volume have responded to it, he has authorized the following summary of his views.
The Regulation Of Entrepreneurial Litigation: Balancing Fairness And Efficiency In The Large Class Action, John C. Coffee Jr.
The Regulation Of Entrepreneurial Litigation: Balancing Fairness And Efficiency In The Large Class Action, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
Just as war is too important to be left to generals, civil procedure – with apologies to Clemenceau – is too important to be left to proceduralists. Although it would be a serious overstatement to claim that all civil procedure scholars are confined by a tunnel vision focused only on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, they have as a group been reluctant to engage explicitly in incentive-based reasoning and seem particularly hesitant to reexamine what they must know to be a noble myth: namely, that the client can and should control all litigation decisions. Within an important and expanding …