Civil Law Commons^™

"Market Shift Liability" For Generic Drugs: Market Share Theory's Eccentric New Cousin, Lars Noah

UF Law Faculty Publications

Market share liability, which permits allocating proportional responsibility to each tortious member of an industry when victims cannot identify the exact source of their injurious exposure, enjoyed its judicial heyday in the 1980s. It originated in the peculiar setting of litigation over a distinctive cancer that developed decades after in utero exposure to the drug diethylstilbestrol (“DES”), which a few hundred companies had produced and sold for the prevention of miscarriages before federal regulators withdrew it from the marketplace. Although judges have occasionally attempted novel extensions of this theory to other products, and academic commentators remain fascinated by its use, …

Toxic Torts Are In Your Blood: An Examination Of Pfas And Tort Liability, Aiden M. Holden

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Abstract

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), are a group of chemicals widely manufactured for industrial and commercial applications in the past decade due to their remarkable stability. Despite the “useful” nature of PFAS in various applications, they represent one of the most profound environmental and public health crises of the modern era. The chemical stability of PFAS has made them almost completely resistant to natural degradation, earning them the moniker “forever chemicals.” PFAS forever haunt our plant, contaminating the soil, water, and the blood of approximately 95% of the United States population. As the scale of corporate malfeasance by chemical …

Texas S.B. 8 V. Rights: Restoring Judicial Power With The State Action Remedy, Kobi J. Grossman

Undergraduate Honors Theses

While the constitutional right to an abortion was the law of the land in the U.S., Texas sought to restrict that right in line with their political agenda by passing S.B. 8 (2021), referred to as the “Texas Heartbeat Act”. This statute made access to abortions illegal past six weeks, or once a heartbeat is detected. The enforcement structure created in the law did not look to the state to exercise its role as the executor of the public good, but rather, to private citizens in creating a right of action for individuals to sue anyone who “aids or abets” …

Duty, Foreseeability, And The Negligent Infliction Of Mental Distress, Mark A. Beede

Maine Law Review

Under early common law if the act of a person gave rise to an action at law, he would be liable for resulting damages regardless of fault. A person acted at his peril. The limitation on liability, if any, lay not with a concept of duty but with a medieval sort of proximate cause. “There is little trace of any notion of. . . an obligation to any one individual, as essential to the tort. The defendant's obligation to behave properly apparently was owed to all the world.” With the merging of the common law actions of trespass and trespass …

Comparative Negligence In Jackson V. Frederick's Motor Inn: What Is Compared?, Nancy Lynn Diesel

Maine Law Review

Before 1965, the defense of contributory negligence was an absolute bar to a plaintiff's recovery in tort actions in Maine. Under the contributory negligence principle, any degree of fault attributable to the plaintiff defeated his or her claim; the fault of the plaintiff and of the defendant was not compared. In 1965, the Maine Legislature enacted the Comparative Negligence Act in order to eliminate the harshness and inequities of the contributory negligence doctrine. The Act also served to stop juries from using compromise verdicts to reach a fair result. Under the Act, a plaintiff's fault is compared with that of …

Affirmative Judicial Case Management: A Viable Solution To The Toxic Product Litigation Crisis, Patrick Francis Harrigan

Maine Law Review

With increasing frequency, federal courts throughout the nation have confronted a multiplicity of "toxic tort" claims, claims for relief arising from chronic and latent illnesses or diseases allegedly caused by toxic substances. Toxic substances are substances whose manufacture, processing, distribution, use, or disposal presents or will present an unreasonable risk of injury to a person's health or to the environment. Because many of these unreasonable health risks are caused by consumer and industrial products, many toxic tort claims are actually "toxic product" claims. Examples of toxic product claims include those arising from the use, exposure to, or consumption of chemicals …

Perceptions Of Justice In Multidistrict Litigation: Voices From The Crowd, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Margaret S. Williams

Scholarly Works

With all eyes on criminal justice reform, multidistrict litigation (MDL) has quietly reshaped civil justice, undermining fundamental tenets of due process, procedural justice, attorney ethics, and tort law along the way. In 2020, the MDL caseload tripled that of the federal criminal caseload, one out of every two cases filed in federal civil court was an MDL case, and 97% of those were products liability like opioids, talc, and Roundup.

Ordinarily, civil procedure puts tort plaintiffs in the driver’s seat, allowing them to choose who and where to sue, and what claims to bring. Procedural justice tells courts to ensure …

Civil Liability Claims Arising From Torts In The English Law:, Younis Salah Eddin Ali

UAEU Law Journal

The claims to civil liability in tort are considered as legal defensive methods aimed at negating or attenuating the civil liability of the defendant, if he succeeds in raising them within the action in liability in tort. It is worth-bearing in mind that these claims originated within the law of tort, which is regarded as a customary unwritten law, based upon judicial precedents issued by English courts, it is also worth-mentioning that these claims are classified in the English law into two types: the first are absent-element defenses. The second are affirmative defenses. Whereas both the Iraqi civil law, No.40of …

Choice Of Law And The Preponderantly Multistate Rule: The Example Of Successor Corporation Products Liability, Diana Sclar

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Most state rules of substantive law, whether legislative or judicial, ordinarily adjust rights and obligations among local parties with respect to local events. Conventional choice of law methodologies for adjudicating disputes with multistate connections all start from an explicit or implicit assumption of a choice between such locally oriented substantive rules. This article reveals, for the first time, that some state rules of substantive law ordinarily adjust rights and obligations with respect to parties and events connected to more than one state and only occasionally apply to wholly local matters. For these rules I use the term “nominally domestic rules …

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 …

One Rule To Compensate Them All, Noam Sher

West Virginia Law Review

The article claims that there is a unique compensation criterion that should be applied in all civil wrongs, inter alia, in tort, intellectual property and property law. Where an individual wrongfully infringes the right of another, the taker should be obliged to repay the victim her damages plus half the additional attributed net profits derived from the taking. This article names this criterion the Golden Rule. The suggested criterion contains three main components. First, for example, a firm increased manufacturing with profits of $1,000, acted wrongfully, and, as a result, someone suffered damages of $600-the taker should pay the victim …

Keep Suing All The Lawyers: Recent Developments In Claims Against Lawyers For Aiding & Abetting A Client’S Breach Of Fiduciary Duty, Katerina P. Lewinbuk

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Lawyers have increasingly become subject to liability under various legal theories, ranging from traditional legal malpractice or negligence liability claims to various third-party actions. Most recently, state and federal courts across the country have recognized attorney liability for aiding and abetting a client’s breach of fiduciary duty. This Article will address the current status of the cause of action for a lawyer’s aiding and abetting her client’s breach of fiduciary duty, explain the commonalities and distinguish nuances as outlined by particular states, examine recent decisions by federal courts that have recognized the cause of action, and culminate in its conclusion …

Opioid Addiction Litigation And The Wrongful Conduct Rule, Samuel Fresher

University of Colorado Law Review

The United States is facing an opioid addiction crisis. Can our civil courts help? This Comment explores obstacles to recovery for plaintiffs in tort suits against health care institutions and practitioners in opioid addiction litigation. It argues that defenses based on plaintiffs' wrongful conduct, which deny plaintiffs access to civil remedies due to their immoral or illegal conduct, should be eliminated or avoided in suits arising out of addiction. This Comment concludes that comparative fault principles adequately protect the interests of plaintiffs and defendants in drug addiction suits and advance important public policy goals. Finally, this Comment suggests that irrespective …

Rish V. Simao, 132 Nev. Adv. Op. 17 (Mar. 17, 2016), Heather Caliguire

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Nevada Supreme Court held that the District Court wrongly excluded evidence of low-impact defense when it required a biomechanical expert testify about the nature of the accident, erroneously interpreting Hallmark v. Eldgridge Instead, Hallmark requires sufficient foundation for admission of testimony and evidence, specifically excluding a biomechanical expert’s testimony under NRS 50.275. The Court additionally held that the District Court erred when it ultimately struck the defendant’s answer for violations of the pretrial order precluding defendant from raising a minor or low impact defense.

Nevada Dep’T Of Trans. V. Eighth Judicial Dist. Ct., 132 Nev. Adv. Op. 10 (Feb. 25, 2016), F. Shane Jackson

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court considered a petition for a writ of mandamus challenging a district court order denying a motion to dismiss. Petitioner Nevada Department of Transportation (“NDOT”) sought dismissal of a professional negligence claim filed against it on grounds that the complaint was not accompanied by an attorney affidavit and expert report as required by NRS 11.258, and when the court denied NDOT’s motion, it filed the instant petition. The Court denied the petition, holding that NDOT is not a design professional under NRS 11.2565(1)(a), and therefore the requirements of NRS 11.258 are inapplicable to NDOT since the action would not …

Newsroom: Logan On Drone Law, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Cocktails On Campus: Are Libations A Liability?, Susan S. Bendlin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Qualified Immunity For “Private” § 1983 Defendants After Filarsky V. Delia, Andrew W. Weis

Georgia State University Law Review

In 2012, the Supreme Court addressed private party qualified immunity in the case of Filarsky v. Delia. There, the Court found that both the historical and policy bases for immunity under § 1983 supported extending qualified immunity to outside counsel retained by a municipality. The Court noted that full-time government employees can always seek qualified immunity, so not extending it to individuals employed on some other basis would create “significant line-drawing problems . . . [which could] deprive state actors of the ability to ‘reasonably anticipate when their conduct may give rise to liability . . . .’”

This …

Doomed Steamers And Merged Fires: The Problem Of Preempted Innocent Threats In Torts, Anthony M. Dillof

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Civil Recourse Defended: A Reply To Posner, Calabresi, Rustard, Chamallas, And Robinette, John C. Goldberg, Benjamin Zipursky

Indiana Law Journal

American Association of Law Schools Torts & Compensation Systems Panel

Civil Recourse Theory's Reductionism, Guido Calabresi

Indiana Law Journal

American Association of Law Schools Torts & Compensation Systems Panel

The United States Government As Defendant - One Example Of The Need For A Uniform Liability Regime To Govern Outer Space And Space-Related Activities, Joseph A. Bosco

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Intramilitary Tort Immunity: A Constitutional Justification , Kevin M. Fillo

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Civil Recourse As Social Equality, Jason M. Solomon

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Shadow Of State Secrets, Laura K. Donohue

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The shadow of state secrets casts itself longer than previously acknowledged. Between 2001 and 2009 the government asserted state secrets in more than 100 cases, while in scores more litigants appealed to the doctrine in anticipation of government intervention. Contractor cases ranged from breach of contract, patent disputes, and trade secrets, to fraud and employment termination. Wrongful death, personal injury, and negligence suits kept pace, extending beyond product liability to include infrastructure and services, as well as conduct of war. In excess of fifty telecommunications suits linked to the NSA warrantless wiretapping program emerged 2006-2009, with the government acting, variously, …

Election Of Remedies In The Twenty-First Century: Centra Health, Inc. V. Mullins, L. Steven Emmert

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Legacy Of The 9/11 Fund And The Minnesota I-35w Bridge-Collapse Fund: Creating A Template For Compensating Victims Of Future Mass-Tort Catastrophes, Michael K. Steenson

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this article is to analyze and compare the 9/11 Fund and the Minnesota bridge-collapse compensation scheme for purposes of illustrating the necessary components of any future compensation schemes legislatures consider adopting in cases involving other catastrophes. This article first sets out the primary issues that must be addressed when considering a compensation scheme. It then examines the choices made in the 9/11 Fund and Minnesota’s bridge-collapse compensation scheme. A brief comparison of the two compensation schemes follows to provide the framework for considering the components of future compensation schemes.

News Media’S Impact On Perceptions Of The Civil Justice System, Hugh M. Robert

ExpressO

With cases in the news like the McDonalds case, it has left the public with a very distorted view of the civil justice system. Information about the civil litigation system is critical because citizens report that the news media is their primary source of information about the court system, an even more important source than contact with the courts themselves. With the general public relying primarily on the news media as their source of information, it is necessary to examine what is being reported and the frequency of covering both sides to the story, the true story.

The Price-Anderson Public Liability Action And Strict Liability, Donald E. Jose, Michael A. Garza

ExpressO

Nuclear Power and nuclear weapons plants seem to be an ultrahazardous activity for which strict liability should apply. However, unusual provisions of the Price-Anderson Act serve to shield nuclear power and nuclear weapons plants and associated activities from strict liability unless the federaq agency regulating the activity determins that a special from of strict liability can be applied.

Daubert And The Disappearing Jury Trial, Allan Kanner

ExpressO

Since being decided by the Supreme Court in 1993, Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals has earned its place as one of the most misinterpreted and misapplied decisions in modern history. Meant to liberalize the standards for admissions of proof, the decision has had the opposite effect. The gatekeeper powers given to judges via Daubert, coupled with the internal and external incentives to prevent jury trials, has placed our entire civil justice system at risk.