Law Commons^™

Summary Judgment And The Influence Of Federal Rulemaking (Foreword To Symposium: The Future Of Summary Judgment), Bernadette Bollas Genetin

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This essay provides an overview of symposium articles on The Future of Summary Judgment, which were submitted in connection with the Section on Litigation’s program on summary judgment at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. Contributions to the symposium by Professors Edward Brunet, Stephen Burbank, Jeffrey Cooper, Steven Gensler, and Linda Mullenix, explore issues regarding (1) amendments to Federal Rule 56 that are set to take effect on December 1, 2010; (2) emerging safeguards to prevent improvident grant of summary judgment; (3) the potential of summary judgment to impact interrelated aspects of the pretrial process, …

Switzerland, Samuel P. Baumgartner

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Switzerland has the traditional Austro-German representative association procedures. Debate on adoption of other models, given the opportunity of the introduction of a first federal Code of Civil Procedure, reveals considerable cautious conservatism toward reform.

Gerry Spence Was My Third Grade Teacher, Dana Cole

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The author challenges the "trial lawyer is warrior" metaphor and suggests that the "trial lawyer is teacher" metaphor is more useful and productive.

Class Actions And Group Litigation In Switzerland, Samuel P. Baumgartner

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Class actions have gone global. Foreign parties are no longer a rarity in U.S. class litigation, among other developments. In addition to being named as defendants, foreigners increasingly form a significant part of the group of absent class members. U.S. courts have thus begun to consider some novel issues, including whether due process requires foreigners to be treated as an opt-in rather than an opt-out class; whether a judgment or settlement in the suit is capable of being enforced or recognized as res judicata abroad and thus whether class certification is justified in the first place; and whether a foreign …

Gerry Spence's The Smoking Gun As A Teaching Tool, Dana K. Cole

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The Smoking Gun, is the true story of a woman and her teenage son charged in what appeared to be a hopeless murder case. At Mr. Spence’s request, Professor Cole wrote a companion manual for use by law professors interested in using Spence’s book in teaching criminal law, criminal procedure, clinical practicum, ethics, evidence or trial advocacy. The companion manual is a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the book that highlights teachable topics and analyzes some of the skills and techniques described in the book.

The Lawyer Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks: Reconsidering The Contemporaneous Objection Requirement In Depositions, E. Stewart Moritz

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The time has come to eliminate the contemporaneous objection requirement for depositions.

From the original 1938 framing of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (Rules) to the present, no one has recognized that the theory behind the contemporaneous objection rule in depositions, as drawn from pre-Rules equity practice, does not match the function of depositions in our post-Rules system of open discovery. Pre-Rules depositions in the federal courts were exclusively testimony-preservation devices, and never discovery tools. The common law and statutory procedural rules for pre-Rules depositions, including the contemporaneous objection rule, reflected this use . But when the original Federal …