Civil Procedure Commons^™

Flores V. Southern Peru Copper Corporation: The Second Circuit Fails To Set A Threshold For Corporate Alien Tort Claims Act Liability, Lori Delaney

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The Second and Ninth Circuit Courts have recently heard cases dealing with the application of the Alien Tort Claim Act (ATCA) against private, U.S. based multinational corporations (MNCs), and come to differing conclusions on the standards that should be used in applying this complicated law to suits by foreign nationals against U.S. based MNCs. The issue of private corporate liability under the ATCA was not definitively resolved by the Supreme Court in its recent decision in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain , and thus the Circuits must continue to grapple with the application of the ATCA to U.S. based MNCs.

The Second …

Lawsuit Abandonment Options In Possibly Frivolous Litigation Games, Peter H. Huang

Publications

This paper develops a new theory of possibly frivolous litigation by focusing on a plaintiff's options to unilaterally abandon a lawsuit. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(i) and its various state law counterparts permit, under certain circumstances, a plaintiff to voluntarily dismiss her lawsuit without prejudice. This paper's options approach to litigation, including quite possibly, frivolous litigation is placed in the context of the literature of economic models about litigation in general and frivolous litigation in particular. This paper demonstrates that possibly frivolous lawsuits will be filed and settled when the values of a plaintiff's options to unilaterally abandon litigation …

For Owen M. Fiss: Some Reflections On The Triumph And The Death Of Adjudication, Judith Resnik

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

Destruction Of Documents Before Proceedings Commence: What Is A Court To Do?, Camille Cameron, Jonathan Liberman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The effective performance by courts of their adjudicative role depends on the availability of relevant evidence. In civil proceedings, the discovery process aims to ensure that such evidence is available. If documents that would be relevant evidence in a trial are destroyed, a fair adjudication is made difficult, if not impossible. This is so whether the destruction of documents occurs before or after proceedings commence. This article asks what a trial judge should do in a situation where relevant evidence is unavailable because one of the parties has destroyed documents before the proceedings commenced but anticipating that such proceedings were …

Symposium Introduction: Perspectives On Dispute Resolution In The Twenty-First Century, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Civil Procedure: Time To Stand Back: Unnecessary Gate-Keeping To Oklahoma Courts, Stasha D. Mcbride

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Civil Procedure: Class Certification And The Predominance Requirement Under Oklahoma Section 2023(B)(3), Steven S. Gensler

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Compulsory Party Joinder And Tribal Sovereign Immunity: A Proposal To Modify Federal Courts' Application Of Rule 19 To Cases Involving Absent Tribes As "Necessary" Parties, Nicholas V. Merkley

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fact-Finding In Civil Domestic Violence Cases: Secondary Traumatic Stress And The Need For Compassionate Witness, Ann E. Freedman

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Procedure, Politics, And Power, Stephen B. Burbank

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

The Expiration Of The Civil Justice Reform Act Of 1990, Carl Tobias

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Discoverability Of "Deleted" E-Mail: Time For A Closer Examination , Michael Marron

Seattle University Law Review

This Comment will argue that the discovery rules presently require disclosure of an unacceptable amount of information. Part II of this Comment will outline some of e-mail's advantages over other communications media to help explain the rapid rise in e-mail use. Part III will then explain, in layman's terms, how e-mail actually works and discuss some of the reasons why e-mail archives are often considered as likely to contain “smoking gun” messages—the kind of evidence that can drastically affect the outcome of a case. But what is it about e-mail that can make it such a potent evidentiary weapon? The …

Simplification- A Civil Procedure Perspective, Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Lessons From Abroad: Complexity And Convergence, Linda S. Mullenix

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Jurisdiction, Jurisprudence And Legal Change: Sociological Jurisprudence And The Road To International Shoe, Logan E. Sawyer Iii

Scholarly Works

While scholars espousing ideological explanations have noted the correlation between the intellectual trends of the New Deal and International Shoe, they have not demonstrated the strength of this connection. Some merely assert that ideology caused International Shoe,12 while others point to only very general similarities between International Shoe and the ideology of the age.' 3 This Article attempts to strengthen the ideological explanation by examining closely the intellectual context of International Shoe. That examination reveals that the decision did not result simply from the expansion of interstate business or the inherent weakness of the Pennoyer system. Instead, International Shoe was …

The Utility Of The Ali/Unidroit Project On Principles And Rules Of Transnational Civil Procedure, Janet Walker

Articles & Book Chapters

This article considers the important role that could be played by transnational rules of civil procedure in facilitating transnational litigation and in reducing the incidence of forum shopping.

Teaching First-Year Civil Procedure And Other Introductory Courses By The Problem Method, Stephen J. Shapiro

All Faculty Scholarship

I have been teaching the first-year course in Civil Procedure for twenty years, first for five years at Ohio Northern University, and for the last fifteen years at the University of Baltimore, where I also teach a required second-year course in Evidence. When I first started teaching Civil Procedure, I used a fairly typical case method. I was never very happy with this approach for teaching a course in which one of my major goals was getting the students to learn to read, interpret and apply the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (“Federal Rules”). Gradually, I began to develop sets …

Adrift On The Sea Of Indeterminacy, Michael H. Gottesman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Today's conflicts scholars no doubt consider themselves a diverse bunch, with widely differing views about how law should be chosen in multistate disputes. But from the trenches, most of them look alike. Each waxes eloquent about the search for the perfect solution-the most intellectually and morally satisfying choice of law for each dispute-and each ends the theorizing by embracing some proposition that will prove wholly indeterminate in practice.

Reconciling The Juridical Links Doctrine With The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure And Article Iii, William D. Henderson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Over the past three decades, the juridical link and concerted action exceptions have evolved from dicta in the Ninth Circuit's decision in La Mar to an amorphous and undertheorized body of case law that has dangerously merged procedural and jurisdictional issues. Drawing on the principles of class action jurisprudence set forth by the Supreme Court in Amchem and Ortiz, lower courts should consider the issues of class certification and Rule 20(a) joinder before turning to the issue of standing under Article III. Under this approach, courts would not be able to reconcile much of the juridical links case law with …

Witnessing The Process: Reflections On Civil Procedure, Power, Pedagogy, And Praxis, Deseriee A. Kennedy

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Law And Ethics Of Civil Depositions , A. Darby Dickerson

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Contracting Access To The Courts: Myth Or Reality? Bane Or Boon?, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Many scholars of the dispute resolution system perceive a sea change in attitudes toward adjudication that took place in the mid-1970s. Among the events of the time included the Pound Conference, which put the Chief Justice of the United States and the national judicial establishment on record in favor of at least some refinement, if not restriction, on access to courts. In addition, Chief Justice Burger, the driving force behind the Pound Conference, also used his bully pulpit as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to promote ADR, particularly court-annexed arbitration. The availability of judicial adjuncts such as court-annexed arbitration …

The Cult Of Finality: Rethinking Collateral Estoppel In The Postmodern Age, Laura Gaston Dooley

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

What's Wrong With This Picture?: Rule Interpleader, The Anti-Injunction Act, In Personam Jurisdiction, And M.C. Escher, Donald L. Doernberg

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The effectiveness of interpleader depends upon the availability of injunctions against other proceedings. There is no congressional authorization of such injunctions for rule interpleader cases. If interpleader were an in rem action, one of the other exceptions to the Anti-Injunction Act might save the day, but the Supreme Court has apparently foreclosed that option. This article examines that three-sided conflict. Part II discusses the problem in greater depth, focusing first on how interpleader functions and why it depends on being “the only game in town.” Part II next addresses the background and interpretation of the Anti-Injunction Act, exploring particularly the …

Civil Procedure: The Last Ten Years, Jay Tidmarsh

Journal Articles

In my view, the story of the last ten years in civil procedure is the slow but inexorable creep of ideas and solutions developed for complex cases into routine cases, and the continued effort of litigators and judges in complex cases to develop ideas and solutions that push the procedural envelope still farther out-thus setting the agenda for the next generation of procedural reform.

I do not want to overstate my claim. The procedures for a lawsuit are still basically the same: a short pleading stage followed by a lengthy discovery stage followed by a culminating event of trial. But …

The Cult Of Finality: Rethinking Collateral Estoppel In The Postmodern Age, Laura Dooley

Scholarly Works

What is a fact, and who gets to say what a fact is? These questions lurk beneath and animate the doctrine of collateral estoppel, or (as we modem types say) issue preclusion, in the law of civil procedure. But neither courts nor scholars have faced these basic questions head-on in considering the efficacy of a doctrine that literally exports findings of fact from one case to other unrelated cases. Instead, discussions about collateral estoppel have focused on the "fairness" of applying the doctrine, particularly in terms of the party to be bound by the predetermined fact and whether it had …

Practicing Public Interest Law In A Private Public Interest Law Firm: The Ideal Setting To Challenge The Power, Debra S. Katz, Lynne Bernabei

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Personal Reflections Of A Life In Public Interest Law: From The Civil Rights Division Of The United States Department Of Justice To Appalred, John M. Rosenberg

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Righting The Law: Seeking A Humane Voice, John A. Powell

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Pretrial Case Management Under The Amended Rules: Too Many Words For A Good Idea, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.