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Did Monsanto Pay A Plaintiff To Force Preemption Appeal? Plus: Judges Debate Vices And Virtues Of Virtual Mdl Hearings, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Amanda Bronstad

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Welcome to Critical Mass, Law.com’s weekly briefing for class action and mass tort attorneys. Monsanto insists a “high-low settlement” with a Roundup plaintiff wasn’t designed to manufacture an appellate ruling. The chairwoman of the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, which has continued to hold hearings amid the pandemic, says there is “something missing” in virtual oral arguments. What does President Joe Biden’s recognition of the Armenian genocide mean for lawyers representing descendants of the victims?

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 …

Saturns For Rickshaws: Lessons For Consumer Arbitration And Access To Justice, Peter B. Rutledge

Scholarly Works

Companies are increasingly requiring consumers to agree to arbitrate disputes they may have over the products or services they purchase. Pre-dispute arbitration agreements are controversial especially for consumer disputes, where, it is feared, consumers will not represent themselves and neither will lawyers come forward because of the small stakes involved in individual claims. Dean Rutledge addresses in this chapter whether consumer arbitration processes can be designed to provide greater access to justice for consumers.

Improving Agencies’ Preemption Expertise With Chevmore Codification, Kent H. Barnett

Scholarly Works

After nearly thirty years, the judicially crafted Chevron and Skidmore judicial-review doctrines have found new life as exotic, yet familiar, legislative tools. When Chevron deference applies, courts employ two steps: they consider whether the statutory provision at issue is ambiguous, and, if so, they defer to an administering agency’s reasonable interpretation. Skidmore deference, in contrast, is a less deferential regime in which courts assume interpretative primacy over statutory ambiguities but defer to agency action based on four factors — the agency’s thoroughness, reasoning, consistency, and overall persuasiveness. In the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Congress directed courts …

Banking And The Social Contract, Mehrsa Baradaran

Scholarly Works

This article asserts that there exists today and has always existed an interdependent relationship between banks and the state. I refer to this connection and its mutual benefits and responsibilities as a social contract. When Alexander Hamilton responded to President Washington’s inquiry about the advisability of a national bank, he wrote that “such a Bank is not a mere matter of private property, but a political machine of the greatest importance to the State.” This social contract has existed since the inception of banking in the United States and has been reinforced over time, but it has recently become weakened …

Contract And Choice, Peter B. Rutledge, Christopher R. Drahozal

Scholarly Works

This Article contributes to an ongoing debate, afoot in academic, legal, and policy circles, over the future of consumer arbitration. Utilizing a newly available database of credit card agreements, the Article offers an in-depth examination of dispute resolution practices within the credit card industry. In some respects, the data cast doubt on the conventional wisdom about the pervasiveness of arbitration clauses in consumer contracts and the presence of unfair terms. For example, the vast majority of credit card issuers do not utilize arbitration clauses, and by the end of 201 0, the majority of credit card debt was not subject …

Shareholder Bylaws And The Delaware Corporation, Christopher M. Bruner

Scholarly Works

Much like hostile tender offers in the 1980s and 1990s, shareholder bylaws purporting to limit board authority in key areas of corporate governance are, once again, forcing Delaware's courts to grapple with the fundamental nature of the corporate form.

In this (short) essay written for a roundtable discussion at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools, I discuss CA, Inc. v. AFSCME Employees Pension Plan - the 2008 opinion in which the Delaware Supreme Court began to define the nature and scope of the shareholders' bylaw authority. In CA, Inc. the court held that a proposed …

Lending A Helping Hand?: A Guide To Kentucky’S New Predatory Lending Law, Kent H. Barnett

Scholarly Works

The purpose of this note is to furnish the consumer advocate with an in-depth analysis of Kentucky's new predatory lending law by examining the basic structure of the statute, and its ambiguities, faults, and remedies. Practitioners will understand the impact the law may have on high-cost home loans, the potential traps that await their clients, and the provisions that require amending.

Part I discusses the applicability of the statute. Part II focuses on Kentucky's limitations that dovetail HOEPA requirements for high-cost home loans. Part III discusses provisions of the Kentucky law that require much more than, or in some cases …

Domestic Subsidies Under The Wto Agreement On Subsidies And Countervailing Measures And Their Treatment In Section 771 Of The Tariff Act Of 1930, Cecil Carl-Erich Kramer

LLM Theses and Essays

Governments provide subsidies for a variety of reasons and they are an important tool "to promote important objectives of national policy. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is comprised of industrialized countries, all of which are Members of the OECD Convention also have shown a steady rise in the provision of subsidies. The policy behind the fact that subsidies are addressed in international agreements is that they create a distortion in international trade and that they can quickly and destructively spread from nation to nation. They create a disparity between the actual costs incurred in producing a particular …

The Liability Of The Automobile And Motorcycle Manufacturers And Their Suppliers For Defective Products In The United States Compared To Germany, Daniel Karl Robyn

LLM Theses and Essays

This thesis deals with the lability of automobile and motorcycle manufacturers, as well as their suppliers, in situations where a defective product causes a harmful event. Specifically, it compares the product liability laws of the Federal Republic of Germany to those of the United States of America. Before entering into the details of legal doctrine, the introductory note provides background information on the social and economic aspects of automobile use in those two countries. Next, Chapter I describes the liability regime governing claims against German motor vehicle manufacturers and their suppliers. Chapter II focuses on the comparable law in the …

U.S. Practices In Risk Assessment And Risk Management For Product Safety Under Article 2.2 Of The Agreement On Technical Barriers To Trade, Suckhong Ko

LLM Theses and Essays

Article 2.2 of the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) was applied to the GATT member countries in 1995. This article provides national product safety agencies with requirements for risk assessment and risk management. However, the terms used in the article are broad and open to interpretation. This paper argues that vast discretion and broad terms cannot solve technical barriers effectively; the “minimum requirements” standard within Article 2.2 of the TBT fails to consider those countries whose technology in product safety is inferior to that of developed countries. The United States has some of the strongest product safety measures, …

Refusals To Deal In "Locked-In" Health Care Markets Under Section 2 Of The Sherman Act After Eastman Kodak Co. V. Image Technical Services, James F. Ponsoldt

Scholarly Works

In the Kodak context, several common health care provider practices, previously challenged with varying results under traditional antitrust analysis, may be reexamined to focus upon the effect of refusals to deal in a secondary market with potential competitors in that secondary market. This Article focuses on three such practices: (1) the non-immunized revocation of hospital staff privileges for other than legitimate, quality-of-care motives; (2) the denial of hospital privileges to differentially credentialed, state-licensed providers; and (3) the closure of membership in comprehensive health care plans, such as preferred-provider organizations, combined with a refusal to deal with nonmembers. These practices should …

Choice Of Law Clauses In Consumer Contracts: A Comparative Study Of American And E.E.C. Law, Jean-Marie Henckaerts

LLM Theses and Essays

The selection of the law applicable to a certain relationship may seem to be the sole purpose of choice of law rules. However, it is questionable whether this choice should be made independent from the content of the various laws available. The selection of the most appropriate law cannot disregard the social, economic and political values that form the basis of substantive rules. In modern legal systems, social values such as consumer protection are recognized to a growing extent.

The present work explores the concept of choice of law – namely party autonomy with a focus on consumer contracts in …

The Warranty Of Quality In Sale Of Goods Under The Perspective Of The American And French Law, Renaud Baguenault De Puchesse

LLM Theses and Essays

While the United States’ common law system is characterized by diversity due to each state having its own set of rules, in certain areas there are nationwide legislative attempts of unification and standardization. One such attempt is the adoption of the Uniform Commercial Code which governs the sale of goods law in the United States. The French civil law system generally differs greatly from the American system in that it is primarily based upon statutes and codes. However, the American Uniform Commercial Code and the French Civil Code provide tangible, comparable bases to assess similarities and differences between American and …

From Freedom Of Commercial Speech To Consumer's Freewill: Comparative Advertising As A Watchdog Of Consumer's Interests, France Michel

LLM Theses and Essays

According to the first amendment’s freedom of commercial speech theory, comparative advertising should represent the ultimate in terms of “right to speak” and “right to listen” in the marketplace of goods. Although the first right is severely regulated by government and private bodies in order to insure a greater protection to consumers exercising the second; this goal is not always achieved. Thanks mainly to the FTC’s initiatives and the support of its private pupils, consumer protection has evolved from “caveat emptor” to “caveat vendor.” The practice of comparative advertising might also make its contribution to the expansion of advertising’s Latin …