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Scott Dodson

2012

Civil Procedure

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Law

Rethinking Extraordinary Circumstances, Scott Dodson Dec 2011

Rethinking Extraordinary Circumstances, Scott Dodson

Scott Dodson

This short essay seeks to rationalize the "extraordinary circumstances" doctrine of Rue 60(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The usual rule is that a movant for Rule 60(b)(6) relief must show extraordinary circumstances for that relief. Under the Ackermann rule (so named after the Supreme Court decision that spawned it), courts have held that any extraordinary circumstances cannot have been caused by the movant's own litigation conduct. I argue that the Ackermann rule, at its broadest, would be unjust to those litigants most in need of Rule 60(b)(6) relief and would overserve finality interests. I propose, instead, that …

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Structuring Jurisdictional Rules And Standards, Scott Dodson, Elizabeth Mccuskey Dec 2011

Structuring Jurisdictional Rules And Standards, Scott Dodson, Elizabeth Mccuskey

Scott Dodson

This essay, for Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc, critically assesses Jonathan Remy Nash’s article, "On the Efficient Deployment of Rules and Standards to Define Federal Jurisdiction," which proposes to use rules to demarcate jurisdictional boundaries at the front end while "migrating" standards into a discretionary abstention phase at the back end. While we believe Nash's cause is worthy, and while we applaud his creativity, we think his proposal suffers from ambiguous definitions of “rules” and “standards” and assumes that clear and simple “rules” are actually attainable in jurisdictional doctrine. We also show that Nash's proposal works only with a broad …

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Presuit Discovery In A Comparative Context, Scott Dodson Dec 2011

Presuit Discovery In A Comparative Context, Scott Dodson

Scott Dodson

In civil litigation around the globe, the usual process is that investigative discovery is allowed (if at all) only after the plaintiff files an initial pleading. Recently, however, a growing number of jurisdictions have adopted general mechanisms for presuit investigative discovery. This paper explores these mechanisms and probes their nature and importance. It first finds that presuit investigative discovery is surprisingly prevalent among common-law systems, despite the usual order of pleading and discovery. The paper then argues that presuit investigative discovery can provide a useful tool for enabling plaintiffs to file a sufficient complaint in fact-pleading jurisdictions. Finally, the paper …

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A New Look At Dismissal Rates In Federal Civil Cases, Scott Dodson Dec 2011

A New Look At Dismissal Rates In Federal Civil Cases, Scott Dodson

Scott Dodson

In the wake of Twombly and Iqbal, a number of studies have been conducted to determine their effects on dismissal practice in federal civil cases. However, because of coding and collection difficulties, those studies have tended to code whole cases rather than claims--leading to the ambiguous coding category of “mixed” dismissals and to problems in characterizing the nature of the dispute--and have failed to distinguish between legal sufficiency and factual sufficiency, potentially masking important detail about the effects of the pleadings changes.

This paper begins to fill in that detail. I compiled an original dataset of district court opinions and …

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