Civil Procedure Commons^™

A New Guard At The Courthouse Door: Corporate Personal Jurisdiction In Complex Litigation After The Supreme Court’S Decision Quartet, David W. Ichel

Faculty Scholarship

In a quartet of recent decisions, the Supreme Court substantially reshaped the analysis of due process limits for a state's exercise of personal jurisdiction over corporations for the first time since its groundbreaking 1945 decision in International Shoe Co. v. Washington. The Court's decision quartet recasts the International Shoe continuum of corporate contacts for which it would be "reasonable" for the state to exercise jurisdiction based on "traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice" into a more rigid bright-line dichotomy between "general" and "specific" jurisdiction: for a state to exercise general (or all-purpose) jurisdiction over any suit, regardless of …

The Case For Restricting Diversity Jurisdiction: The Undeveloped Arguments, From The Race To The Bottom To The Substitution Effect, David Crump

Maine Law Review

Diversity jurisdiction is an idea whose time has come--and gone. In its present form, it serves its alleged purpose so inconsistently that its benefits are minimal, if they exist at all. And the costs that it imposes are significant. The traditional arguments for and against diversity are well known, but the traditional arguments against it actually understate its disadvantages. Therefore, the purpose of this Article is to construct the arguments against diversity that traditional scholarship has left underdeveloped. These include the proposition that today, in the twenty-first century, there are more reasons than ever to authorize diversity jurisdiction more selectively. …

Effecting A Culture Shift—An Empirical Review Of Ontario’S Summary Judgment Reforms, Brooke Mackenzie

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Lawyers and policymakers in Canada frequently discuss the need for reforms to increase access to civil justice, but concrete efforts to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of our justice system are few and far between. Unfortunately, even when reforms are implemented, measures are rarely put in place to assess whether the reforms were effective. Ontario’s Civil Justice Reform Project inspired a package of amendments to Rules of Civil Procedure in 2010 but, aside from anecdotal reports, little is known about whether they achieved their desired effects. This paper presents an empirical analysis of all reported summary judgment decisions in Ontario …

Emerging From Daimler's Shadow: Registration Statutes As A Means To General Jurisdiction Over Foreign Corporations, Nicholas D'Angelo

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Note argues for the increased exercise of general jurisdiction based on registration statutes. Carefully drafted state statutes, explicitly stating that corporations registering to do business in a state thereby consent to general jurisdiction, not only solve the consequences of Daimler, but also fully comport with traditional values of fairness.

Part I outlines the jurisprudential history related to general jurisdiction. Section A begins with the concept of territoriality introduced in Pennoyer and the minimum contacts analysis in International Shoe, then discusses the modern doctrine in Perkins, Helicopteros, and Goodyear, culminating with Daimler. Section …

What Do I Have To Do To Get Paid Around Here?: Rule 26(B)(4)(E)(I) And The Qualms Regarding Expert Deposition Preparation Time, Brett Lawrence

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

O'Neal V. Hudson, 133 Nev. Adv. Op. 29 (June 1, 2017), Kristopher Kalkowski

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

If a party timely sends a motion for new trial directly to the presiding judge in an email, then that motion is properly filed and will toll the time available to file a notice of appeal so long as: (1) the presiding judge allows the motion to be filed with that judge; and, (2) the presiding judge accepts the motion within the required time-period.

The Virtue Of Process: Finding The Legitimacy Of Judicial Fact-Finding In Personal Injury Litigation, Nayha Acharya

PhD Dissertations

This thesis is an inquiry into the legitimacy of judicial fact-finding in civil litigation. Judges make authoritative factual findings in conditions of uncertainty and the decision-making process cannot, and does not, guarantee the accuracy of those outcomes. Given the inevitable risk of error, on what basis is the authority of judicial fact-finding legitimate? This project provides a framework of procedural legitimacy that bridges two unavoidable aspects of adjudication: factual indeterminacy and the need for justifiably authoritative dispute resolution. This work draws of the legal theories of Lon Fuller and Jurgen Habermas to substantiate the notion of procedural legitimacy in the …

The Brazilian Appellate Procedure Through Common Law Lenses: How American Standards Of Review May Help Improve Brazilian Civil Procedure, Cesar Zucatti Pritsch

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

In this article, I discuss a flaw in Brazilian civil procedure observed in my practice as a Federal Labor Judge in Brazil, an issue that may be addressed by limiting appellate review in a similar fashion as the American courts do, using standards of appellate review. In Brazil, appellate courts tend to ignore the lower court’s decisions, replacing them for the ruling they would have made had they been the original decision makers. A simple disagreement with the lower court’s findings of fact or discretionary rulings, no matter how reasonable, is sufficient grounds for reversal. The lack of standards of …

Measuring A Civil-Discovery Sanction For Failure To Turn Over Requested Material: Goodyear Tire V. Haeger (15-1406), Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

A sanction that is unrelated to misconduct is criminal and requires criminal instead of civil procedure. In a product liability lawsuit, the respondent, Goodyear, failed to turn over important tests before the parties settled. The petitioners, the Haegers—a couple who alleged Goodyear’s tires caused injuries—sought approval of a sanction based on their attorney fees. Complex and technical civil procedural rules and statutes, contempt, and the court’s inherent power will govern the Supreme Court’s decision. The issue before the Court is the specificity of the causal link between Goodyear’s misconduct and the amount of the civil sanction.

The Courts And The People In A Democratic System: Against Federal Court Exceptionalism, Simona Grossi

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

This Essay covers the authors reflections on the role of procedure in our democratic system.

Delusive Exactness In California: Redefining The Claim, Kami Laberge

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

My view of primary right may differ from yours, and we have no common ground, only the statement of our opposing views.

Labor And The Origins Of Civil Procedure, Luke P. Norris

Law Faculty Publications

A series of changes within civil procedure over the past few decades—including the rise of private arbitration, the accompanying decline of public adjudication, and the erection of barriers to class actions—have diminished the economic power of workers, consumers, and diffuse economic actors. This Article demonstrates that avoiding these economic consequences was a central goal of those who crafted American federal civil procedure in the first place. Driven to action by the procedural issues involved in labor injunction cases, leading procedural reformers behind the modern regime strove to make American federal civil procedure sensitive to questions of political economy and designed …

Are We Insane? The Quest For Proportionality In The Discovery Rules Of The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure, Paul W. Grimm

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Telling Stories In The Supreme Court: Voices Briefs And The Role Of Democracy In Constitutional Deliberation, Linda H. Edwards

Scholarly Works

On January 4, 2016, over 112 women lawyers, law professors, and former judges told the world that they had had an abortion. In a daring amicus brief that captured national media attention, the women “came out” to their clients; to the lawyers with or against whom they practice; to the judges before whom they appear; and to the Justices of the Supreme Court.

The past three years have seen an explosion of such “voices briefs,” 16 in Obergefell and 17 in Whole Woman’s Health. The briefs can be powerful, but their use is controversial. They tell the stories of non-parties—strangers …

The Impact Of Wal-Mart V. Dukes On Employment Discrimination Class Actions Five Years Out: A Forecast That Suggests More Of A Wave Than A Tsunami, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

No abstract provided.

Opening A Can Of Worms And Viruses: The Impact Of E-Service On E-Mail Users Everywhere, Jeffrey Wolber

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Class Actions, Civil Rights, And The National Injunction, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

This essay is a response to Professor Samuel Bray’s article proposing a blanket prohibition against injunctions that enjoin a defendant’s conduct with respect to nonparties. He argues that national injunctions are illegitimate under Article III and traditional equity and result in a number of difficulties.

This Response argues, from a normative lens, that Bray’s proposed ban on national injunctions should be rejected. Such a bright-line rule against national injunctions is too blunt an instrument to address the complexity of our tripartite system of government, our pluralistic society and our democracy. Although national injunctions may be imperfect and crude forms of …

Just And Speedy: On Civil Discovery Sanctions For Luddite Lawyers, Michael Murphy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Professor Stephen E. Sachs As Amicus Curiae, Bnsf Railway Co. V. Tyrrell, Stephen E. Sachs

Faculty Scholarship

[This brief was filed in support of the petitioner in No. 16-405 (U.S., cert. granted Jan. 13, 2017).]

BNSF Railway Co. should win this case, but on statutory grounds alone. BNSF makes three arguments:

1) That Daimler AG v. Bauman forbids Montana’s exercise of general personal jurisdiction here;

2) That Congress has not sought to license the state’s exercise of jurisdiction; and

3) That such a license would be void under the Fourteenth Amendment.

BNSF’s first two arguments are fully persuasive and decide the case. As a result, the Court should decline to reach the third argument. Not only is …

Human-Centered Civil Justice Design, Victor D. Quintanilla

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article introduces a novel approach to improving the civil justice system, referred to as human-centered civil justice design. The approach synthesizes insights and practices from two interdisciplinary strands: human-centered design thinking and dispute system design. The approach is rooted in human experiences with the processes, systems, people, and environments that members of the public encounter when navigating the civil justice system and how these experiences interact with the entangled web of hardships and legal adversities they face in the everyday.

Human-centered civil justice designers empathize with the intended beneficiaries and stakeholders of the civil justice system, seeking to deeply …

Fiat Lux: Tracing A Standard Of Review For Class-Certification Orders, Curtis E.A. Karnow

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

The Failed Superiority Experiment, Christine P. Bartholomew

Journal Articles

Federal law requires a class action be “superior to alternative methods for fairly and efficiently adjudicating the controversy.” This superiority requirement has gone unstudied, despite existing for half a century. This Article undertakes a comprehensive review of the superiority case law. It reveals a jurisprudence riddled with inconsistency as courts adopt diametrically opposed interpretations of the requirement. Originally crafted to encourage predictable, consistent class action decisions, superiority has mutated over the years into a dangerous wild card—subjectively used to stymie aggregate litigation. The solution is not adding a new requirement to the already onerous rules for class certification. Instead, judges …

Davidson V. Davidson, 132 Nev. Adv. Op. 71 (Sept. 29, 2016), Hunter Davidson

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined that: (1) the six-year statute of limitations in NRS 11.190(1)(a) applies to claims for enforcement of a property distribution provision in a divorce decree; and (2) the statute of limitations period in an action on a divorce decree commences “from the last transaction or the last item charged or last credit given.”

Exploring Federal Diversity Jurisdiction: Testimony In Front Of The House Of Representatives Committee On The Judiciary, Subcommittee On The Constitution And Civil Justice, Ronald Weich

All Faculty Scholarship

Good morning Chairman Franks, Ranking Member Cohen and members of the Subcommittee. My name is Ronald Weich and I am the dean of the University of Baltimore School of Law. Thank you for the opportunity to testify at this hearing entitled “Exploring Federal Diversity Jurisdiction.”

The subject of today’s hearing is technical, complex, little-understood by the general public, and yet fundamental to the administration of justice in this country. Federal diversity jurisdiction touches on profound questions of federalism, state sovereignty and the proper functioning of the federal courts.

Texas: Impact Of The Expedited Action Rules On The Texas County Courts At Law, Paula Hannaford-Agor, Scott Graves

Faculty Publications

Amendments to the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure were enacted by the Texas Supreme Court in response to legislative policy initiatives intended to reduce expense and delay of civil litigation while maintaining fairness to litigants. The 2013 amendments provided specific procedural rules for dismissals for baseless actions, and an expedited process and limitation on discovery for cases in which claimants seek monetary relief of $100,000 or less (expedited actions).

The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) undertook this evaluation in cooperation with the Texas Office of Court Administration (OCA) to assess the impact of the expedited Actions Rules. The intent …

Neither Strict Nor Nuanced: The Balanced Standard For False Claims Act Pleading In The Eleventh Circuit, C. Caitlin Giles

University of Miami Law Review

False Claims Act litigation is more hotly contested than ever before. One such controversial issue plaguing federal courts is the proper application of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b) to actions arising under the False Claims Act. The explosion of litigation under the FCA caused a circuit split to emerge on the correct standard to use when applying Rule 9(b)’s heightened pleading requirement for more particularity. Specifically, courts are split on the level of specificity required to prove that a false claim was submitted to the government. Some apply a “strict” interpretation and require pleadings to include representative samples of …

Learning Intentionally And The Metacognitive Task, Patti Alleva, Jennifer A. Gundlach

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

This article serves both to frame The Pedagogy of Procedure symposium it introduces and to itself explore the importance of metacognition and learning about learning to legal education and lawyering. The authors begin by suggesting why Civil Procedure doctrine is so challenging to teach and learn, noting how the symposium pieces help to tackle those challenges. They then join the growing number of law professors who advocate that learning how to learn deserves greater attention in the law school curriculum, suggesting that law schools should do more to demonstrate respect for the process of learning as an end in itself. …

The Preliminary Injunction Standard In Diversity: A Typical Unguided Erie Choice, David E. Shipley

Scholarly Works

The standard for granting preliminary injunctions in some states is not the same as the preliminary injunction standard that is followed in the federal district courts in the federal circuit where the state is located. For example, the interlocutory injunction standard in Georgia’s superior courts is not as demanding as the preliminary injunction standard in Georgia’s federal courts. Although state and federal courts in Georgia consider four similar factors in deciding whether to grant or deny provisional injunctive relief, a balancing or sliding scale approach can be used in Georgia’s courts; the moving party need not prove all four of …

Pleading Actual Malice In Defamation Actions After Twiqbal: A Circuit Survey, Judy M. Cornett

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Voting Rights Act And The "New And Improved" Intent Test: Old Wine In New Bottles, Randolph M. Scott-Mclaughlin

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.