Law Commons^™

Environmental Benefits Of Reoperation, Relicensing, Decommissioning And Recapture, Richard Roos-Collins

Dams: Water and Power in the New West (Summer Conference, June 2-4)

35 pages.

Contains footnotes.

New Demands For Tribal Rights To Federal Water And Power, Jeanne S. Whiteing

Dams: Water and Power in the New West (Summer Conference, June 2-4)

12 pages.

The Theory Of Fee Regulation In Class Action Settlements , Bruce L. Hay

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Why Civil Cases Go To Trial: Strategic Bargaining And The Desire For Vindication, Samuel R. Gross, Kent D. Syverud

Articles

When negotiations break down and a dispute cannot be settled, attorneys commonly blame their adversaries, often questioning their ethics or their judgment. After interviewing many attorneys, we have come to believe much of the criticism is directed at strategic moves in negotiation. But strategic ploys are not the only reason dispute resolution fails. Rather, our research also suggest that a genuine desire for vindication through trial or other formal process may be very significant in some types of cases where bargaining breaks down.

Going To Trial: A Rare Throw Of The Die, Samuel R. Gross, Kent D. Syverud

Articles

If it is true, as we often hear, that we are one of the most litigious societies on earth, it is because of our propensity to sue, not our affinity for trials. Of the hundreds of thousands of civil lawsuits that are filed each year in America, the great majority are settled; of those that are not settled, most are ultimately dismissed by the plaintiffs or by the courts; only a few percent are tried to a jury or a judge. This is no accident. We prefer settlements and have designed a system of civil justice that embodies and expresses …

Turning From Tort To Administration, Richard A. Nagareda

Michigan Law Review

My objective here is to challenge the notion that the recent mass tort settlements - for all their novel qualities in the mass tort area - are truly sui generis in the law. Rather, I contend that the rise of such settlements in tort mirrors the development of public administrative agencies earlier in this century - that, in both instances, powerful new institutions emerged outside preexisting channels of control to wield significant power over human lives and resources. I argue that courts usefully may draw upon familiar doctrines of judicial review in administrative law to form a conceptual framework for …

Post-Settlement Settlements: Agreeing To Make Resolutions Efficient, Robert W. Mendenhalt

Journal of Dispute Resolution

The purpose of this article is to more fully describe the concept of postsettlement settlements, to discuss the assumptions upon which it is based, to critique the concept, and to make proposals that will assist third-party intervenors in achieving advantageous post-settlement settlements. Since the goal of post-settlement settlements is to increase conflicting parties' joint gains, the concept of joint gains must be first addressed.

Don't Try: Civil Jury Verdicts In A System Geared To Settlement, Samuel R. Gross, Kent D. Syverud

Articles

If it is true, as we often hear, that we are one of the most litigious societies on earth, it is because of our propensity to sue, not our affinity for trials. Of the hundreds of thousands of civil lawsuits that are filed each year in America, the great majority are settled; of those that are not settled, most are ultimately dismissed by the plaintiffs or by the courts; only a few percent are tried to a jury or a judge. This is no accident. We prefer settlements and have designed a system of civil justice that embodies and expresses …

Aggregation Settlement And Dismay , Judith Resnik

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Individualized Justice Mass Torts And Settlement Class Actions: An Introduction , Roger C. Cramton

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Market Approach To Tort Reform Via Rule 23, Jonathan R. Macey, Geoffrey P. Miller

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Co-Opting The Class Action , John Leubsdorf

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Deception, Self-Deception, And Myth: Evaluating Long-Term Environmental Settlements, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

Articles

This paper draws upon six famous settlements that are known in various degrees to students of environmental law. Three are a matter of deep history: the 1970 Environmental Defense Fund settlement that led the last manufacturer of DDT in the U.S. to cease discharges into the Los Angeles sewer system and thence into Santa Monica Bay, the Kepone settlement of the mid-70s that followed in the wake of Judge Merhige's initial assessment of a record-breaking criminal fine of $13.24 million, and the Hudson River settlement of the early 1980s in which environmentalists gave up demands for cooling towers on several …

Psychological Barriers To Litigation Settlement: An Experimental Approach, Russell Korobkin, Chris Guthrie

Michigan Law Review

In this article, we seek to substantiate "psychological barriers," as illustrated by the constructs described above, as a third explanation for the failure of legal disputants to settle out of court. Although we are not the first to hypothesize that psychological processes can, in theory, affect legal dispute negotiations, we attempt to give more definition to the otherwise vague contours of the psychological barriers hypothesis by bringing empirical data to bear on the question. To achieve this end, we conducted a series of nine laboratory experiments - involving nearly 450 subjects - designed to isolate the effects of the three …

Time For A Change: A Re-Examination Of The Settlement Policies Of The Securities And Exchange Commission , Anne C. Flannery

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Resolving Native American Land Claims And The Eleventh Amendment: Changing The Balance Of Power, Katharine F. Nelson

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Solving The Judgment-Proof Problem, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

A tortfeasor who cannot fully pay for the harms that it causes is said to be "judgment proof." Commentators have long recognized that the existence of judgment-proof tortfeasors seriously undermines the deterrence and insurance goals of tort law. The deterrence goal is undermined because, irrespective of the liability rule, judgment-proof tortfeasors will not fully internalize the costs of the accidents they cause. The insurance goal will be undermined to the extent that the judgment-proof tortfeasor will not be able to compensate fully its victims and that first-party insurance markets do not provide an adequate response. Liability insurance can ameliorate these …

Erasing The Law: The Implications Of Settlements Conditioned Upon Vacatur Or Reversal Of Judgments, Michael W. Loudenslager

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Recognition Of Judgments In The European Community: The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Of The Brussels Convention, Robert C. Reuland

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article is directed at two objectives. It will first provide, in Part I, an outline of the history of the Brussels Convention from its inception to the present day. It will examine the growth of the Convention from a vague undertaking of the six original Member States of the EC, through various treaties of accession and the 1988 Lugano Convention with the EFTA, and finally to the text currently in force. Part II will discuss the nature of the Convention and the philosophy behind it. The second purpose of this article is a more pragmatic one: to provide the …

Three Attorney Fee-Shifting Rules And Contingency Fees: Their Impact On Settlement Incentives, Bradley L. Smith

Michigan Law Review

This Note seeks to predict the direction and magnitude of the change in settlement frequency under the three fee-shifting rules: American, British, and the British rule as modified by the PCC. Part I analyzes the proposed rule using the theoretical model of litigation and settlement developed by Hause. Part II examines the impact of fee-shifting when the plaintiff's lawyer receives reimbursement via a contingency fee. Analysis of indemnification in a contingency fee context raises several policy issues which section II.A addresses. Section II.B discusses the terms and assumptions made in adjusting Hause's model to reflect the standard contingency fee arrangement, …

Rethinking The Proportional Reduction Rule In The Settlement Of Multiparty Securities Actions: Judicial Overreaching Or A Neat Solution?, Christine B. Hickman

Santa Clara Law Review

No abstract provided.

Getting To No: A Study Of Settlement Negotiations And The Selection Of Cases For Trial, Samuel R. Gross, Kent D. Syverud

Articles

A trial is a failure. Although we celebrate it as the centerpiece of our system of justice, we know that trial is not only an uncommon method of resolving disputes, but a disfavored one. With some notable exceptions, lawyers, judges, and commentators agree that pretrial settlement is almost always cheaper, faster, and better than trial. Much of our civil procedure is justified by the desire to promote settlement and avoid trial. More important, the nature of our civil process drives parties to settle so as to avoid the costs, delays, and uncertainties of trial, and, in many cases, to agree …

Mini-Trial: Misunderstanding And Miscommunication May Short-Circuit Its Effective Use In Settlements - Lightwave Technologies, Inc. V. Corning Glass Works, The, Annie Billings

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This Casenote will discuss the basic elements and appropriate uses of the mini-trial. It will also compare the mini-trial with other ADR processes and evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of using the mini-trial. Finally, this Casenote will analyze how the parties and their attorneys in the present case wrestled with an alleged agreement to settle their dispute through a mini-trial. Because one of the parties was never fully appraised of how the mini-trial would proceed, the process was aborted and settlement negotiations broke down.

Who Owns Rights: Waiving And Settling Private Rights Of Action, Judith A. Mcmorrow

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Lawyer’S Duty To Report Another Lawyer’S Unethical Violations In The Wake Of Himmel, Ronald D. Rotunda

Law Faculty Articles and Research

No abstract provided.

Quality Of Settlements, The, Marc Galanter

Journal of Dispute Resolution

When I was a law student, some 30 years ago, I don't recall hearing much about settlement. I am sure that my teachers knew there were a lot of settlements, but they were not worthy of much attention. They were part of the realm of practical nuts and bolts detail that lay outside learning about the law; law school was about cases that were adjudicated.

Setback For The Public Policy Of Encouraging Settlements - Bank Of America National Trust & (And) Savings Association V. Hotel Rittenhouse Associates, A, Cynthia A. Deiters

Journal of Dispute Resolution

The advent of the "litigation explosion" has caused the legal community to adopt an alternative dispute-resolving policy of encouraging settlement negotiations. The Federal Rules of Evidence reflect this policy by expressly making evidence of settlement negotiations inadmissible at trial in an attempt to encourage frank discussion during settlement negotiations., In Bank of America National Trust & Savings Association v. Hotel Rittenhouse Associates,3 a majority decision by the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit dealt this policy a crippling blow. The court held that the long-standing common law right of access to judicial records overcame this policy of encouraging settlements.' …

Seminar On Evidence And Trial Practice, Office Of Continuing Legal Education At The University Of Kentucky College Of Law, Robert G. Lawson, William H. Fortune, Thomas L. Osborne, William R. Garmer, Richard H. Underwood, Robert L. Elliott, Peggy E. Purdom, Andre E. Busald, William J. Kathman

Continuing Legal Education Materials

Outlines of speaker presentations offered during a series of one day seminars on evidence and trial practice offered by UK/CLE in late 1987-early 1988.

Bandwagon Is Rolling: Adr Demands And Thrives On Lawyers Creative Thinking, Christine D. Ver Ploeg

Faculty Scholarship

The ADR (alternative dispute resolution) bandwagon is rolling. Clients are becoming disenchanted with traditional litigation, and they're hearing about ADR. ADR has three broad categories: mediation, the mini-trial, and arbitration. Attorneys can provide a real service to clients by being familiar with and developing skills in ADR.

Knowledge By The Jury Of A Settlement Where A Plaintiff Has Settled With One Or More Defendants Who Are Jointly And Severally Liable, Cynthia A. Sharo

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.