Law Commons^™

The Proper Role Of After-Acquired Evidence In Employment Discrimination Litigation, Rebecca White, Robert D. Brussack

Scholarly Works

A new defense to employment discrimination claims has gained acceptance in the lower courts. Employers who allegedly have discriminated against their employees because of race, sex or age are winning judgments on the basis of after-acquired evidence of employee misconduct. The evidence is “after-acquired” in the sense that the misconduct was unknown to the employer at the time the alleged discrimination occurred but was acquired later, often through the use of discovery devices in the employee's discrimination action. Lower courts have accepted the proposition that if the employer would have discharged the plaintiff on the basis of the after-acquired evidence, …

The Georgia Jury And Negligence: The View From The Trenches, R. Perry Sentell Jr.

Scholarly Works

This is the third part of a project devoted to analyzing the Georgia negligence jury. The project employed as its original point of departure the extensive Chicago Jury Study of the 1960s, directed by Chicago Law Professor Harry Kalven, Jr. That Study's immortality derives principally from its famous first premise: Meaningful evaluation of the jury system must originate from within the system itself. That premise propelled Professor Kalven through a massive national survey of trial judges. The judges' responses, under Kalven's insightful analysis, yielded an unprecedented profile of the American jury. In foundational fashion, those responses indelibly etched into legal …

Mindlessness And Nondurable Precautions, Paul J. Heald

Scholarly Works

Assuming initially that negligence law does not make the distinction between durable and nondurable precautions, this Article will first explain in economic terms why the failure of courts to take into account the cost of remembering may nonetheless be efficient. A substantial body of research on the phenomenon of mindless decisionmaking ("scripting") suggests that most remembering is automatic--a nonconscious response to frequently encountered patterns of stimuli. Script theory suggests that once the behavioral script is in place, an automatic response operates at a very low cost. If so, the failure of courts to account for the cost of remembering would …

Reassessing The Sophisticated Policyholder Defense In Insurance Coverage Litigation, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Insurance law often is ironically regarded as both consistent and confusing. However, the 1980s saw significant flowering in the development of an insurance coverage interpretation doctrine that, although seriously flawed in its present form, offers the as yet untapped potential of substantial improvement in judicial construction of commercial insurance policies through seemingly inconsistent treatment of insurance coverage disputes.

During the past two decades, in response to the prodding of lawyers representing insurers, courts have increasingly noted that not all insurance policyholders are equal. Some have more money and bargaining clout than others. Some have more sophistication and understanding about the …

Cultural Literacy And The Adversary System: The Enduring Problems Of Distrust, Misunderstanding And Narrow Perspective, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

The meandering road to discovery reform illustrates, among other things, the ineffectiveness of an atomized profession that lacks either sufficient understanding of the adversary system or the resources and forcefulness to address the practical impact of adversarialism. In some ways, lawyers reforming litigation can be characterized as poorer investigators than the sixsome who examined the elephant. The elephant sleuths were guilty of isolation and ignorance. Lawyers and policy makers not only exhibit a lack of information and empathy, but also often show an unwarranted distrust of or contempt for the elements of the profession with which they disagree. Unfortunately, however, …

New Paradigm, Normal Science, Or Crumbling Construct? Trends In Adjudicatory Procedure And Litigation Reform, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

One aspect of a possible new era is the increasing ad hoc activity of various interest groups, including the bench and the organized bar, primarily pursued through official organizations such as the Judicial Conference, the Federal Judicial Center, the American Bar Association (“ABA”), and the American Law Institute. Traditionally, of course, judges and lawyers have lobbied Congress and state legislatures for litigation change, as demonstrated by the saga of the Rules Enabling Act (“Enabling Act” or “Act”). But, the legal profession's more recent “political” activity regarding litigation reform differs from the traditional model in several ways. First, the participation of …