Civil Procedure Commons^™

Relation Back Of Amendments Adding Plaintiffs Under Rule 15(C), Michelle L. Nabors

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Due Process And The Future Of Class Actions, Alexandra Lahav

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Solving A Pleading Plague: Why Federal Courts Should Strike Insufficient Affirmative Defenses Under The Twombly-Iqbal Plausibility Standard, Nathan A. Leber

Cleveland State Law Review

The plausibility standard is the remedy to the rampant pleading of meritless affirmative defenses in federal courts. Set forth in Bell Atlantic Corp v. Twombly, and later clarified in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the plausibility standard requires pleadings to contain sufficient factual allegations that give rise to a plausible claim for relief. In both Twombly and Iqbal, the Supreme Court used the plausibility approach to dismiss factually-deficient complaints. Applying the plausibility test to insufficient affirmative defenses produces the same result. The central proposition of this Note is that federal courts should analyze affirmative defenses under the Twombly-Iqbal plausibility standard. In order …

Civil Procedure—Property Improvement Claims—A History And Recommendation For Arkansas's Lone True Statute Of Repose, Luke K. Burton

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

Determining the proper defendant for construction defects is largely dependent on the timing of the defect. Particularly, the sooner the defect develops after completion, the more likely that someone involved in the construction process is responsible. However, as time passes from the completion of construction to the development of a problem, it is more likely that the problems are the result of ordinary wear and tear rather than defective design or construction. Ark. Code Ann. § 16-56-112 (Statute) was enacted to manage these issues of timing and responsibility for construction defects by providing that homeowners may not bring suit against …

Ed Cooper, Rule 56, And Charles E. Clark's Fountain Of Youth, Steven S. Gensler

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Critical Race Empiricism: A New Means To Measure Civil Procedure, Victor D. Quintanilla

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article reflects the second phase in a research line examining the effects of highly subjective pleading rules, specifically, Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009), and was an invited contribution to a symposium, which explored the intersection of empirical legal methods and critical race theory. In this phase, I updated the empirical legal analysis in a prior article, Beyond Common Sense: A Social Psychological Study of Iqbal’s Effect on Claims of Race Discrimination, 17 Michigan Journal of Race and Law 1 (2011), in three ways. First, I lengthened the time horizon from 18 months to 24 months, increasing the …

The Stricter Standard: An Empirical Assessment Of Daubert’S Effect On Civil Defendants, Andrew Jurs, Scott Devito

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The False Claims Act’S First-To-File Bar: How The Particularity Requirement Of Civil Procedure Militates Against Combating Fraud, Joel Deuth

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Where Corporations Are: Why Casual Visits To New York Are Bad For Business, Jeanne L. Schroeder, David G. Carlson

Articles

In this article, we examine the recent case of Hotel 71 Mezz Lender LLC v. Falor (2010), from the New York Court of Appeals. In this case, New York’s highest court held that LLCs are “present” in New York for jurisdictional purposes when the president of the LLC has submitted to New York jurisdiction in an unrelated law suit against him personally, and where the president came to New York for a deposition in that action. This, we claim, was unconstitutional. In addition, the New York Court of Appeals pronounced itself obliged by the United States Constitution to change the …

Introduction

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Summary Judgment In Employment Discrimination Cases: A Judge’S Perspective, Hon. Denny Chin

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Consumer Financial Services Arbitration: What Does The Future Hold After Concepcion?, Alan S. Kaplinsky, Mark J. Levin

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Abrogating The Witness Immunity Rule: How Fast? How Far?, Robert Currie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article examines the current state of the witness immunity rule in Canada (i.e. the rule that individuals, especially experts, are immune from tort actions which might arise from their participation in court proceedings). In light of the UK Supreme Court's modification of the rule in Jones v. Kaney (2011), some proposals are made for restricting the scope of the rule and thus allowing meritorious litigation to proceed in spite of it.

Commentator’S Response To J. Goodwin 'Norms Of Advocacy', Camille Cameron

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Professor Goodwin makes a case for the normative complexity of advocacy. She makes this case in the contexts of courtroom advocacy and advocacy in the public relations industry. I am going to examine that conclusion by reference to one of her two chosen case studies – courtroom advocacy. I am also going to agree with her conclusion that courtroom advocacy is normatively complex, although I will part company with her on a few points.

Goodwin has argued that the activity of arguing in court is normatively structured, in the sense that it is more than just persuasion, it is certainly …

Trial By Preview, Bert I. Huang

Faculty Scholarship

It has been an obsession of modern civil procedure to design ways to reveal more before trial about what will happen during trial. Litigants today, as a matter of course, are made to preview the evidence they will use. This practice is celebrated because standard theory says it should induce the parties to settle; why incur the expenses of trial, if everyone knows what will happen? Rarely noted, however, is one complication: The impact of previewing the evidence is intertwined with how well the parties know their future audience-that is, the judge or the jury who will be the finder …

A Community Of Procedure Scholars: Teaching Procedure And The Legal Academy, Elizabeth Thornburg, Erik S. Knutsen, Carla Crifo', Camille Cameron

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article asks whether the way in which procedure is taught has an impact on the extent and accomplishments of a scholarly community of proceduralists. Not surprisingly, we find a strong correlation between the placement of procedure as a required course in an academic context and the resulting body of scholars and scholarship. Those countries in which more civil procedure is taught as part of a university degree — and in which procedure is recognized as a legitimate academic subject — have larger scholarly communities, a larger and broader corpus of works analyzing procedural issues, and a richer web of …

When Bad Guys Are Wearing White Hats, Catherine A. Rogers

Faculty Scholarship

Allegations of ethical misconduct by lawyers have all but completely overshadowed the substantive claims in the Chevron case. While both sides have been accused of flagrant wrongdoing, the charges against plaintiffs’ counsel appear to have captured more headlines and garnered more attention. The primary reason why the focus seems lopsided is that plaintiffs’ counsel were presumed to be the ones wearing white hats in this epic drama. This essay postulates that this seeming irony is not simply an example of personal ethical lapse, but in part tied to larger reasons why ethical violations are an occupational hazard for plaintiffs’ counsel …

The Influence Of Systems Analysis On Criminal Law And Procedure: A Critique Of A Style Of Judicial Decision-Making, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

This draft analyzes the birth and emergence of the idea of the “criminal justice system” in the 1960s and the fundamentally transformative effect that the idea of a “system” has had in the area of criminal law and criminal procedure. The manuscript develops a critique of the systems analytic approach to legal and policy decision making. It then discusses how that critique relates to the broader area of public policy and contemporary cost-benefit analysis.

The draft identifies what it calls “the systems fallacy” or the central problem with approaching policy questions from a systems analytic approach: namely, the hidden normative …

The Continuing Gloom About Federal Judicial Rulemaking, Richard D. Freer

Faculty Articles

In 2013, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure turn seventy-five years old. The rulemaking process by which they are promulgated has been a source of gloom for a generation. Like a wayward Hollywood star, the process is in “crisis” and its fans are experiencing “malaise.” This Article addresses the reasons for that gloom and concludes that some level of crisis is inevitable. At the macro level, as Professor Redish has emphasized, judicial rulemaking is a legislative function being performed by an unelected body that is constitutionally empowered only to perform the task of deciding cases and controversies. At the micro …

Courts Should Apply A Relatively More Stringent Pleading Threshold To Class Actions, Matthew B. Lawrence

Faculty Articles

Policymakers from Senator Edward Kennedy to Civil Rules Advisory Committee Reporter Edward Cooper have proposed that class actions be subject to a more stringent pleading threshold than individually-filed suits, yet the question has not been fully explored in legal scholarship. This Article addresses that gap. It shows that courts following the guidance of Bell Atlantic v. Twombly should apply a relatively more stringent pleading threshold to class actions, and a relatively less stringent threshold to individually-filed suits.

This contribution is set forth in two steps. First, this Article explains that, all else being equal, the anticipated systems’ costs and benefits …

Exhuming The “Diversity Explanation” Of The Eleventh Amendment, Thomas D. Rowe Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

This essay, in a symposium honoring the scholarship of Ninth Circuit Judge William A. Fletcher, explores the “diversity explanation” of the Eleventh Amendment that he had advanced in articles while he was a UC-Berkeley law professor. That explanation, contrary to existing Supreme Court doctrine that heavily constitutionalizes state sovereign immunity from suits by private parties and foreign countries, would view the Eleventh Amendment as having solely to do with federal courts’ constitutional jurisdiction and nothing to do with states’ sovereign immunity. The essay notes the cleanness of interpretation provided by the diversity explanation, in contrast with the convoluted nature of …

The Teaching Of Procedure Across Common Law Systems, Erik S. Knusten, Thomas D. Rowe Jr., David Bamford, Shirley Shipman

Faculty Scholarship

What difference does the teaching of procedure make to legal education, legal scholarship, the legal profession, and civil justice reform? This first of four articles on the teaching of procedure canvasses the landscape of current approaches to the teaching of procedure in four legal systems—the United States, Canada, Australia, and England and Wales—surveying the place of procedure in the law school curriculum and in professional training, the kinds of subjects that “procedure” encompasses, and the various ways in which procedure is learned. Little sustained reflection has been carried out as to the import and impact of this longstanding law school …

A Pragmatic Approach To Discovery Reform: How Small Changes Can Make A Big Difference In Civil Discovery, Paul W. Grimm, David S. Yellin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Narrative, Truth, And Trial, Lisa Kern Griffin

Faculty Scholarship

This Article critically evaluates the relationship between constructing narratives and achieving factual accuracy at trials. The story model of adjudication— according to which jurors process testimony by organizing it into competing narratives—has gained wide acceptance in the descriptive work of social scientists and currency in the courtroom, but it has received little close attention from legal theorists. The Article begins with a discussion of the meaning of narrative and its function at trial. It argues that the story model is incomplete, and that “legal truth” emerges from a hybrid of narrative and other means of inquiry. As a result, trials …

Six Degrees Of Separation: From Derivative Suits To Shareholder Class Actions, Ángel Oquendo

Faculty Articles and Papers

Trans-individual litigation has revolutionized modern law. It has radically altered the manner of assertion and adjudication of legal claims. Beyond concerning a large number of people, the underlying suits operate in a unique fashion. In particular, they call for the constant protection of the interests of the parties on whose behalf the plaintiffs purport to speak. Not surprisingly, corporate law has partaken in this phenomenon. For instance, derivative suits allow individuals to sue for a larger collectivity, somewhat along the lines of the citizen suits established over a century later. Of course, they entertain the claims of the corporation, rather …

Symmetry And Class Action Litigation, Alexandra Lahav

Faculty Articles and Papers

In ordinary litigation, parties often have different resources to devote to their lawsuit. This is a problem because the adversarial system is predicated on two (or more) parties, equal and opposite one another, making their best arguments to a neutral judge. The class action is a procedural device that aims to equalize resources between individual plaintiffs and organizational defendants by allowing plaintiffs to pool their claims. Current developments of class action doctrine, however, reinforce in the courtroom the asymmetry that exists between individual plaintiffs and organizational defendants outside the court. This Article explores these trends and the questions they raise. …

A Matter Of National Importance: The Persistent Inefficiency Of Deceptive Advertising Class Actions, Stacey M. Lantagne

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

The Constitutionality Of Government Fees As Applied To The Poor, Henry Rose

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Harmonization Of Procedure: Theory And Practice, Thomas O. Main

Scholarly Works

Review of Kramer & Rhee, Civil Litigation in a Globalizing World (2012).

Understanding The Obstacles To The Recognition And Enforcement Of U.S. Judgments Abroad, Samuel P. Baumgartner

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Questions of recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments have entered center stage. Recent empirical work suggests that there has been a marked increase in the frequency with which U.S. courts are asked to recognize and enforce foreign judgments. The U.S. litigation surrounding a multibillion-dollar Ecuadoran judgment against Chevron indicates that the stakes in some of these cases can be high indeed. This rising importance of questions of judgments recognition has not been lost on lawmakers. In November of 2011, the Subcommittee on Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee held hearings on whether to …