Law Commons^™

Guidelines And Best Practices For Large And Mass-Tort Mdls (Second Edition), Bolch Judicial Institute

Bolch Judicial Institute Publications

Mass-tort MDLs dominate the federal civil docket, yet they present enormous challenges to transferee judges assigned to manage them. There is little official guidance and no rules specific to the management of mass-tort MDLs, often requiring the transferee judge to develop procedures out of whole cloth.

Beginning in 2013, the Bolch Judicial Institute (then the Center for Judicial Studies) sought to address this issue through a series of annual bench-bar conferences. From these conferences came the Guidelines and Best Practices for Large and Mass-Tort MDLs document — now in its Second Edition — which is designed to help judges and …

Medical Malpractice Mediation: Benefits Gained, Opportunities Lost , Carol B. Liebman

Law and Contemporary Problems

Liebman reviews two recent studies evaluating the use of interest-based mediation to resolve medical malpractice claims. The first studied cases brought against the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, and the second, Mediating Suits against Hospitals, studied cases brought against private New York City hospitals. How non-participation of physicians in mediations diminishes opportunities to achieve noneconomic goals that plaintiffs desire is analyzed.

Rationalizing Noneconomic Damages: A Health-Utilities Approach, David M. Studdert, Allen Kachalia, Joshua A. Salomon, Michelle M. Mello

Law and Contemporary Problems

Studdert et al examine why making compensation of noneconomic damages in personal-injury litigation more rational and predictable is socially valuable. Noneconomic-damages schedules as an alternative to caps are discussed, several potential approaches to construction of schedules are reviewed, and the use of a health-utilities approach as the most promising model is argued. An empirical analysis that combines health-utilities data created in a previous study with original empirical work is used to demonstrate how key steps in construction of a health-utilities-based schedule for noneconomic damages might proceed.

Most Claims Settle: Implications For Alternative Dispute Resolution From A Profile Of Medical-Malpractice Claims In Florida , Mirya Holman, Neil Vidmar, Paul Lee

Law and Contemporary Problems

Holman et al draw attention to the frequent and complicated evidentiary problems in medical malpractice claims and the procedural mechanisms provided by statutes, court rules, and case law that are already in place to facilitate claim resolution. While proposed alternative dispute resolution (ADR) procedures might well provide better resolutions to medical malpractice claims, they must take into consideration both the unique characteristics of medical malpractice disputes and existing mechanisms for resolving these disputes. The profile of the settlements of Florida medical-malpractice claims provides a structure with which any proposals for ADR must contend.

Stealing Sunshine, Ronen Perry, Dana Weimann-Saks

Law and Contemporary Problems

This study is the first to examine the efficacy of this tactic, both theoretically and empirically, contributing to the growing literature on the impact of various trial-advocacy techniques on decision-makers' perceptions and trial outcomes. Given the primacy of the work, the authors draw on existing literature on a related courtroom technique commonly known as "stealing thunder," which is -- in a sense -- the mirror image of the tactic under scrutiny.

Indemnification And Advancement Through An Agency Lens, Deborah A. Demott

Law and Contemporary Problems

DeMott discusses the doctrines that define entitlements to indemnification. In the corporate context, indemnification is better grounded, as in the Model Business Corporation Act (MBCA), in the necessity of furnishing corporate directors with appropriate protection against personal risk. To be sure, as the MBCA's official comments implicitly acknowledge, the position of officers, especially senior executive officers, does not fit neatly and exclusively into either an "agent" or a "non-agent" category for indemnification purposes.

What Is Probable Cause, And Why Should We Care?: The Costs, Benefits, And Meaning Of Individualized Suspicion, Andrew E. Taslitz

Law and Contemporary Problems

Taslitz defines probable cause as having four components: one quantitative, one qualitative, one temporal, and one moral. He focuses on the last of these components. "Individualized suspicion," the US Supreme Court has suggested, is perhaps the most important of the four components of probable cause. That is a position with which he heartily agree. The other three components each play only a supporting role. But individualized suspicion is the beating heart that gives probable cause its vitality.

Government Dragnets, Christopher Slobogin

Law and Contemporary Problems

Slobogin describes the nature and effects of dragnet actions. They do so primarily through the prism of Supreme Court and lower court cases, but these sections also look at law-enforcement efforts that have yet to lead to litigation and imagine future dragnet efforts as well, with a special emphasis on the role technology can play in motivating dragnets and carrying them out. He then summarizes the Supreme Court's approach to group searches and the most significant alternative proposals for dealing with them.

Can Effective Apology Emerge Through Litigation?, Alphonse A. Gerhardstein

Law and Contemporary Problems

Gerhardstein provides a number of examples in which the factors identified by Roger Conner and Patricia Jordan--ripeness, a window of opportunity, and a symbolic act or gesture--came together to facilitate apology by a public leader. But he doesn't think that the window of opportunity needs to be exogenously determined. Rather, advocates can, through litigation and settlement demands, create that window. He believes that apology by public officials can do more to promote healthy civic society than can mere monetary settlement.

In The Wake Of Ledbetter V. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company: Applying The Discovery Rule To Determine The Start Of The Limitations Period For Pay Discrimination Claims, Nancy Zisk

Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy

"14 These laws include Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,15 Section 1981 of the Civil War Reconstruction statutes,16 the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA),17 the Equal Pay Act (EPA),18 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA).19 While the statutes define different types of discrimination, each addresses discrimination in employment and defines a limitations period in which an employee can bring a claim.20 With Title VII defining the "paradigm," the first step in determining whether a claim is timely under any statute is determining when the discriminatory act takes place.21 To do that, …

Trials And Tribulations: What Happens When Historians Enter The Courtroom, David Rosner

Law and Contemporary Problems

In recent years, historians have been brought into legal cases in unprecedented numbers. As the courts have tried to adjudicate responsibility for environmental and occupational diseases, history has played an increasingly central role in decisions that affect the cases themselves and in social policy regarding risk. In suits over tobacco-related diseases, asbestosis, radiation, and other toxic substances, more historians of technology and science, social history, and public health are being sought to provide testimony aimed at assessing responsibility for damages that have arisen years--sometimes decades--after exposure. Here, Rosner traces the use of historians as experts in litigation.

Science, Law And The Expert Witness, Joseph Sanders

Law and Contemporary Problems

Expert witnessing is a particularly useful place to observe the clash of legal and scientific conventions because it is here that one group of people (scientific experts) who are integrated into one set of conventions are challenged by the expectations of a different set of conventions. Here, Sanders looks at how legal conventions affect the behavior of expert witnesses when they appear in court in both criminal and civil cases. He also reviews differences in scientific and legal conventions as they apply to expert knowledge and discusses two central reasons for these differences: adversarialism and closure.

Jail Strip-Search Cases: Patterns And Participants, Margo Schlanger

Law and Contemporary Problems

Schlanger talks about jail strip-search cases and its participants. Among the interesting features of these cases is that many different kinds of lawyers work on them. Plaintiffs' lawyers include employees of public-interest organizations; large law firm lawyers, often working pro bono, with a cooperating relationship with such a public-interest organization; lawyers with a private prisoners' rights or police-misconduct practice; and lawyers with a more varied or general class-action practice. This is somewhat unusual; the litigation bar has, by all accounts, grown increasingly specialized over the past several generations.

Gender Nonconformity And The Unfulfilled Promise Of Price Waterhouse V. Hopkins, Joel Wm. Friedman

Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy

The Supreme Court has articulated a doctrinal framework that, if construed and applied properly, provides the lower federal courts with the analytical tools necessary to identify and proscribe workplace rules that compel individuals to adhere to appearance, attire, and behavioral norms that operate to reinforce gendered expectations.1 Since the Supreme Court has ruled that penalizing an individual for failing to conform to gendered norms of behavior constitutes a form of sex-based discrimination,2 one would expect that employees would have achieved some measure of success in challenging such policies.

Facial Discrimination: Darlene Jespersen’S Fight Against The Barbie-Fication Of Bartenders, Jennifer C. Pizer

Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy

Lambda Legal took up Darlene Jespersen's case because restrictive, genderbased rules about personal appearance and deportment can pose particular burdens for anyone whose gender identity or expression varies from conventional stereotypes; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender ("LGBT") people are disproportionately burdened by such rules.7 Many LGBT people cannot readily conform to conventional gender stereotypes. 8 For others, simply the process of "coming out" as LGBT or "queer" gives rise to a deep critique of the artificially restrictive gender stereotypes that pervade our modern lives and shape corporate marketing campaigns.

Sexy Dressing Revisited: Does Target Dress Play A Part In Sexual Harassment Cases?, Theresa M. Beiner

Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy

Feminists have been debating what constitutes appropriate female attire since the beginning of the feminist movement in the United States. Since the early 1990s, when Naomi Wolf's book The Beauty Myth was released, feminists, law professors, and popular culture critics have tried to understand women's dress in the present day. In spite of years of criticism of these beliefs, the bias this injects into rape trials, and even with the enactment of rape shield laws, this evidence still sneaks into rape cases. With this in mind, one would expect a similar phenomenon to occur in sexual harassment cases. As the …

The Many Faces Of Darlene Jespersen, Michael Selmi

Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy

Since this symposium and this case are about appearances, it is worth noting that Lambda Legal posted pictures of Darlene Jespersen in her uniform on its website, and those pictures could be seen as presenting a stereotypical image of a middle-aged gay woman.5 There are obviously many reasons the pictures may have been presented-to humanize her, to show the effect of the makeup policy since the pictures appeared to be taken in the context of the personal best policy-but they also convey an image, and were likely intended to do so. An objection to this line of reasoning is likely …

What Do Unions Do About Appearance Codes?, Michael J. Yelnosky

Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy

In contrast, Renee Gaud and Trisha Hart worked as cocktail servers at the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa in Atlantic City, New Jersey.8 Unlike Darlene Jespersen, they were union employees represented by the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, Local 54, and thus were not at-will workers.9 Gaud, Hart, and other employees objected to a new Borgata policy prohibiting cocktail servers and bartenders from gaining more than seven percent of their body weight as determined by a baseline set when the policy was instituted.10 Gaud and Hart challenged the policy in New Jersey state court on the grounds that …

Foreword: Making Makeup Matter, Devon Carbado, Catherine Fisk, Mitu Gulati

Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy

More than a decade ago, Katharine Bartlett, currently Dean of Duke Law School, authored a foundational article on discrimination based on appearance choices.1 The article made a big splash, provocatively raising the question of whether discrimination claims based on dress and appearance standards are cognizable under Title VII, the federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of, among other aspects of identity, race and sex. [...] to a large extent, their reasoning centered on two ideas: (1) that employers have broad latitude to define the professional boundaries of their workplaces and that grooming standards are a reasonable way for …

Revisiting The Legal Link Between Genetics And Crime, Deborah W. Denno

Law and Contemporary Problems

In 1994, convicted murderer Stephen Mobley became a cause celebre when he appealed his death sentence before the Georgia Supreme Court in the case of Mobley v. State. Denno describes the potential implications arising from the high-profile case of Stephen Mobley. He sought to introduce a then-cutting-edge theory that violence could be based on a genetic or neurochemical abnormality as mitigating evidence during capital sentencing.

Testamentary Incorrectness: A Review Essay, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

Reviewing Samuel P. King & Randall W. Roth, Broken Trust: Greed, Mismanagement, & Political Manipulation at America's Largest Charitable Trust (2006)

On The Prospect Of “Daubertizing” Judicial Review Of Risk Assessment, Thomas O. Mcgarity

Law and Contemporary Problems

Lawyers for companies subject to federal health, safety and environmental regulation hope that stringent substantive judicial review will relieve their clients of the burdens of much regulation without the need for troublesome legislative battles they seem unable to win. McGarity argues that assigning a Daubert-like (Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc) gatekeeper role to courts engaged in judicial review of agency risk assessments is a profoundly bad idea.

Hearsay Exceptions: Adjusting The Ratio Of Intuition To Psychological Science, John E. B. Myers, Ingrid Cordon, Simona Ghetti, Gail S. Goodman

Law and Contemporary Problems

Myers explores hearsay exeptions by examining three exceptions: excited utterances, statements for purposes of diagnosis or treatment, and the residual hearsay exception. The focus is child declarants, and these exceptions play key roles in child abuse litigation.

Applying Suggestibility Research To The Real World: The Case Of Repeated Questions, Thomas D. Lyon

Law and Contemporary Problems

One can discern two parallel trends in the law and the psychology of child witnesses. In the law, appellate courts are beginning to stem the once powerful movement to increase the acceptance of children's testimony and the admissibility of children's out-of-court statements. Lyon analyzes particular strands of each trend.

The Maturation And Disintegration Of The Hearsay Exception For Statements For Medical Examination In Child Sexual Abuse Cases, Robert P. Mosteller

Law and Contemporary Problems

Mosteller examines the treatment of children as victims and witnesses in criminal trials, most frequently involving sexual abuse, over the last quarter of the twentieth century, and from that experience, to draw lessons. He also examines what has been learned about the hearsay exception for "statements for purposes of medical diagnosis of treatment."

Assessing Causation In Breast Implant Litigation: The Role Of Science Panels, Laural L. Hooper, Joe S. Cecil, Thomas E. Willging

Law and Contemporary Problems

In two recent cases, federal judges appointed panels of scientific experts to help assess conflicting scientific testimony regarding causation of systemic injuries by silicone gel breast implants. This article will describe the circumstances that gave rise to the appointments, the procedures followed in making the appointments and reporting to the courts, and the reactions of the participants in the proceedings.

Of Cherries, Fudge, And Onions: Science And Its Courtroom Perversion, David W. Peterson, John M. Conley

Law and Contemporary Problems

The thesis of this article is that the Supreme Court decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.'s focus on the scientific method, however rigorously applied, invites certain classes of abuses. There are instances in which evidence can be made to look more scientific by a process that in fact and substance makes is utterly unscientific.

The Battle That Never Was: Congress, The White House, And Agency Litigation Authority, Neal Devins, Michael Herz

Law and Contemporary Problems

Department of Justice control of government litigation is discussed.

Private Litigation And The Deterrence Of Corporate Misconduct, James D. Cox

Law and Contemporary Problems

Cox discusses the linkage between private litigation and the deterrence of corporate misconduct.

Deterrence Of Corporate Fraud Through Securities Litigation: The Role Of Institutional Investors, Keith L. Johnson

Law and Contemporary Problems

Johnson suggests that institutions are uniquely positioned to enhance the deterrence function of securities litigation without undermining the compensation goal.