Law Commons^™

Appraising Problems, Not Stuff, Chad J. Pomeroy

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

The Importance Of Doctor Liability In Medical Malpractice Law: China Versus The United States, Vincent R. Johnson

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Medical malpractice law in China does not work. Disappointed patients and their families, or the gangs they hire, frequently resort to physical violence, beating up doctors and disrupting hospital activities in order to extort settlements. This happens because Chinese law has failed to provide viable remedies to many victims of medical malpractice.

This dysfunctional situation (medical chaos or yinao) has persisted for more than two decades. Today, parents in China discourage their children from attending medical school because practicing medicine is too dangerous.

Reforming Chinese medical malpractice law will be difficult. Many factors contribute to the public’s lack of confidence …

Venezuela Undermines Gold Miner Crystallex's Attempts To Recover On Its Icsid Award, Sam Wesson

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Recalibrating Cy Pres Settlements To Restore The Equilibrium, Michael J. Slobom

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Class action settlement funds become “non-distributable” when class members fail to claim their share of the settlement or the cost of distribution exceeds the value of individual claims. Before 1974, parties had two options for disposing of non-distributable funds: escheatment to the state or reversion to the defendant. Both options undermine unique objectives of the class action—namely, compensating small individual harms and deterring misconduct.

To balance the undermining effects of escheatment and reversion, courts incorporated the charitable trust doctrine of cy pres into the class action settlements context. Cy pres distributions direct non-distributable settlement funds to charities whose work aligns …

The Circular Logic Of Actavis, Joshua B. Fischman

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Saving Charitable Settlements, Christine P. Bartholomew

Fordham Law Review

This Article defies the conventional wisdom that all charitable distributions from a class action settlement fund are types of cy pres. Instead, it proposes a radical delineation between “cy pres remainders” (meaning settlement funds left over after individual monetary distributions) and “charitable settlements” (meaning money initially distributed to charities as part of class action settlements). While both have cy pres roots, these two settlement structures have been conflated, jeopardizing the potential utility of charitable settlements. After articulating more precise nomenclature for these distinct distribution methods, this Article justifies why we must preserve charitable settlements. This defense is particularly …

Cy Pres In Class Action Settlements, Rhonda Wasserman

Articles

Monies reserved to settle class action lawsuits often go unclaimed because absent class members cannot be identified or notified or because the paperwork required is too onerous. Rather than allow the unclaimed funds to revert to the defendant or escheat to the state, courts are experimenting with cy pres distributions – they award the funds to charities whose work ostensibly serves the interests of the class “as nearly as possible.”

Although laudable in theory, cy pres distributions raise a host of problems in practice. They often stray far from the “next best use,” sometimes benefitting the defendant more than the …

Future Claimants And The Quest For Global Peace, Rhonda Wasserman

Articles

n the mass tort context, the defendant typically seeks to resolve all of the claims against it in one fell swoop. But the defendant’s interest in global peace is often unattainable in cases involving future claimants – those individuals who have already been exposed to a toxic material or defective product, but whose injuries have not yet manifested sufficiently to support a claim or motivate them to pursue it. The class action vehicle cannot be used because it is impossible to provide reasonable notice and adequate representation to future claimants. Likewise, non-class aggregate settlements cannot be deployed because future claimants …

Mandatory Class Action Lawsuits As A Restructuring Technique, Bryant B. Edwards, Jeffrey A. Herbst, Selina K. Hewitt

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Collaborative Family Law, Pauline H. Tesler

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Collaborative Law appears to meet significant needs both among family law clients and among the lawyers who assist them through divorce. As will be discussed more fully below, clients appear to want the advantages of a contained, settlement-oriented, creative, private, respectful process without sacrificing the benefits of having a committed legal advocate at their sides. For that reason Collaborative Law appeals to clients who may hesitate to commit to a dispute resolution process facilitated solely by a neutral mediator. And, while many family lawyers suffer considerable professional angst as a consequence of their awareness that family law courts are neither …

The Mediated Settlement: Is It Always Just About The Money? Rarely!, Steven L. Schwartz

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Since our legal system of dispute resolution tends to remedy wrongs only by payment of money, most settlements will eventually involve negotiations over the amount to be paid and received. Yet, in both the theory and actual practice of mediation that has lead this writer to conclude that it is never just about the money. Effective lawyer representation of clients in mediation requires a different kind of investigation and preparation than lawyers may be accustomed to conducting. Similarly, an effective mediator must be adept in identifying the clues that reveal the "below the water line" interests at work and which …

Immunizing Arbitrators From Claims For Equitable Relief, Michael D. Moberly

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

The article begins with a summary of the historical origins of the judicial and arbitral immunity doctrines. Next, the article discusses the courts' refusal to extend judicial immunity to claims for declaratory, injunctive, or other equitable relief, except perhaps in the case of federal judges. The article then explores the propriety of recognizing a similar limitation in cases construing the arbitral immunity doctrine. The article ultimately concludes that (1) arbitrators should be immune from claims for equitable relief as a matter of policy, and (2) in jurisdictions where that result is currently precluded by existing precedent, a comparable result can …

Specious Claims And Global Settlements, S. Todd Brown

Journal Articles

Few problems are more disruptive to the efficient negotiation and operation of comprehensive mass tort settlements than oversubscription, which, at times, appears to be fueled primarily by specious claims. In settlements with opt out rights, a flood of claims can generate a market for lemons, with the weakest claims submitted to the settlement and the strongest opting out and seeking recovery at trial or in private settlement. In binding settlements, they may result in a commons problem, requiring dramatic reductions in payment that effectively transfer recoveries from those with intrinsically strong claims to those with weak claims.

This Article evaluates …

Orphan Works And The Google Book Search Settlement: An International Perspective, Bernard Lang

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Google Book Settlement And The Fair Use Counterfactual, Matthew Sag

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

D Is For Digitize: An Introduction, James Grimmelmann

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

H Is For Harmonization: The Google Book Search Settlement And Orphan Works Legislation In The European Union, Katharina De La Durantaye

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Continued Doj Oversight Of The Google Book Search Settlement: Defending Our Public Values And Protecting Competition, Christopher A. Suarez

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rough Justice, Alexandra Lahav

Alexandra D. Lahav

This Essay offers a new justification for rough justice. Rough justice, as I use the term here, is the attempt to resolve large numbers of cases by using statistical methods to give plaintiffs a justifiable amount of recovery. It replaces the trial, which most consider the ideal process for assigning value to cases. Ordinarily rough justice is justified on utilitarian grounds. But rough justice is not only efficient, it is also fair. In fact, even though individual litigation is often held out as the sine qua non of process, rough justice does a better job at obtaining fair results for …

Preclusion In Class Action Litigation, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

"Despite the intense focus that courts and commentators have trained upon class litigation for the last twenty-five years, a central feature of the class-action lawsuit has received no sustained attention: the preclusive effect that a judgment in a class action should have upon the other, non-class claims of absentees. The omission is a serious one. If claim and issue preclusion were to operate in their normal mode when a claim is certified for class treatment, absentees would sometimes face a serious threat of having their high-value individual claims compromised. Such a threat, in turn, can create ex ante conflicts of …

Insurer Or Policyholder Control Of The Defense And The Duty To Fund Settlements, James M. Fischer

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Transforming Punishment Into Compensation: In The Shadow Of Punitive Damages, Tom Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Economic Treatment Of Automobile Injuries, Alfred F. Conard

Michigan Law Review

The automobile has changed more than Americans' ways of transportation. It has changed their ways of housing, of working and playing, of eating, living, and loving. It has also added to their ways of suffering and dying.

The suffering and dying have called forth two kinds of treatment. The better recognized kind is medical treatment, which staves off death and minimizes pain and disability among the living. The less recognized kind of treatment is economic-the restoration to the injury victim or to his dependents of some part of the economic wellbeing that has been snatched away from them by loss …