Civil Procedure Commons^™

The Death Of The American Trial, Robert P. Burns

Faculty Working Papers

This short essay is a summary of my assessment of the meaning of the "vanishing trial" phenomenon. It addresses the obvious question: "So what?" It first briefly reviews the evidence of the trial's decline. It then sets out the steps necessary to understand the political and social signficance of our vastly reducing the trial's importance among our modes of social ordering. The essay serves as the Introduction to a book, The Death of the American Trial, soon to be published by the University of Chicago Press.

Proving Lost Profits Under Daubert: Five Questions Every Court Should Ask Before Admitting Expert Testimony, Robert M. Lloyd

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Florida's Request For Admission Rule: 150 Years On The Road To Inconsistency, Ineffectiveness And Appellate Nullification, Mitchell J. Frank

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Daubert & Danger: The "Fit" Of Expert Predictions In Civil Commitments, Alex Scherr

Scholarly Works

The opinions of experts in prediction in civil commitment hearings should help the courts, but over thirty years of commentary, judicial opinion, and scientific review argue that predictions of danger lack scientific rigor. The United States Supreme Court has commented regularly on the uncertainty of predictive science. The American Psychiatric Association has argued to the Court that "[t]he professional literature uniformly establishes that such predictions are fundamentally of very low reliability." Scientific studies indicate that some predictions do little better than chance or lay speculation, and even the best predictions leave substantial room for error about individual cases. The sharpest …

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 …

"Business On Trial: The True Story." Review Of Business On Trial: The Civil Jury And Corporate Responsibility, Richard O. Lempert

Reviews

Jury trials are very much an affair of stories. Lawyers tell stories to juries. Evidence is more convincing when presented in story order. Jurors use stories to make sense of evidence. And litigants, particularly losing litigants, tell stories about juries. One of the favorite stories of losing business litigants, second only to the irrational jury story, is the Robin Hood story. Juries love to play Robin Hood, to steal from the rich (businesses and insurance companies) and to give to the poor (individual litigants, especially individual tort litigants). The storytellers see no mystery here. Jurors are "little guys," like the …

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 …

Recent Case Developments, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Recent case developments in Insurance Law in the years 1999 and 2000.

Confidentiality, Privilege And Rule 408: The Protection Of Mediation Proceedings In Federal Court, Charles W. Ehrhardt

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Attorney-Client Privilege When The Client Is A Public Official: Litigating The Opening Act Of The Impeachment Drama, Timothy K. Armstrong

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

The divided panel decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in /n re Lindsey, 158 F.3d 1263 (D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 119 S. Ct. 466 (1998), represented a dramatic shift in that court's thinking on the question whether the attorney-client privilege protects what a government official says to his agency's counsel in confidence. Although the court of appeals in at least four previous decisions had held that a government agency client holds the same privilege any other client would under like circumstances to communicate with counsel in private, the Lindsey court took a quite different view.

Still Adjusting To Markman: A Prescription For The Timing Of Claim Construction Hearings, William F. Lee, Anita K. Krug

Articles

This Article argues that, in most cases, there is an optimal time for holding the Markman hearing.

Part II provides a short summary of both the Federal Circuit's holding in Markman and the rationale behind the Supreme Court's affirmance of that holding. It then delves into the predictable effects of Markman, as well as into the maze of questions that the decision has engendered and the ways in which the district courts have answered those questions.

Part III discusses the issue of the timing of claim construction hearings, presenting at the outset the possible alternatives. It argues that holding …

The Hague Evidence Convention: The Need For Guidance On Procedures And Resolution Of Conflicts In Transnational Discovery, John C. Plaster

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

As international commercial disputes become more common, United States courts increasingly face difficult issues involved in transnational discovery. Two frequently encountered issues are choosing whether to use the discovery procedures of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure or the Hague Evidence Convention and whether to enforce a discovery order when the order conflicts with a law of the state in which discovery is to occur. Although the Supreme Court has addressed both of these issues, it has left lower courts considerable discretion to deal with these issues case by case. Lower courts, therefore, have not been uniform in their approaches …

In Re Schildt, 90-Ca-119, 90-Ap-06 (Blkft. Tr. Ct. App., Apr. 3, 1990), Blackfeet Appellate Court

Court Decisions

The Blackfeet Tribal Court of Appeals remanded the case to the trial court for a full hearing because the appellant was not allowed to enter evidence or present witnesses substantiating his claims, in violation of his right to due process.

The Noseworthy Doctrine: A Threepart Rule For Its Application, Steven D. Jannace

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Allen V. The United States Of America: The “Substantial” Connection Between Nuclear Fallout And Cancer, Daniel Swartzman, Tom Christoffel

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Discovery In Kentucky: An Overview, Richard H. Underwood

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Discovery Of Government Attorney Work Product Under The Foia, Richard Allen Vance

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Administrative Law - Internal Revenue Service (Irs) Summons Enforcement - When An Irs Investigation Has Been Coordinated By A Justice Department Strike Force, The District Court Must Determine That Each Summons Issued Was Not Used For An Improper Criminal Investigation Purpose, Angela Baker

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

State Medical Malpractice Screening Panels In Federal Diversity Actions, Vincent C. Alexander

Faculty Publications

During the early 1970's, a medical malpractice crisis was perceived in the United States. An increasing number of costly and time-consuming lawsuits alleging medical malpractice against doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers caused malpractice insurers to raise premiums substantially, which in turn threatened to curtail the availability of adequate health care at reasonable cost. State legislatures responded to the crisis with a variety of substantive and procedural measures intended to reduce the number of litigated claims and the size of jury awards. One of the principal steps taken in a majority of states was the creation of extrajudicial panels …

Privileged Communications: A Proposal For Reform, Leslie Katz

Dalhousie Law Journal

The privileged communications rules may prevent a party to litigation from bringing into evidence matters he wishes to bring. His inability to do so may lead to a result less favourable to him than that which he would have obtained had a claim of privilege not barred his way. This different result may not only put him in a worse position than he would otherwise have been in, but may have harmful consequences for others as well, consequences which may be too subtle even to detect at the time the privilege is exercised. How likely is it that the privileged …

Recent Developments, Various Editors

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Comments On Recent Cases, Charles W. Ehrhardt

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Abstracts Of Recent Cases, Charles Henry Rudolph Jr.

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Abstracts Of Recent Cases, James Kilgore Edmundson Jr.

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Civil Investigative Demand: New Fact-Finding Powers For The Antitrust Division, Richard L. Perry, William Simon

Michigan Law Review

The complexity, scope and length of modem antitrust litigation bring to prominence the procedures by which evidence - particularly documentary evidence - is discovered and placed before the courts and administrative agencies. Fact-finding mechanisms now available for ferreting out and prosecuting violations make up an imposing array. These include the grand jury subpoena, the discovery provisions of the Federal Rules of Civil and Criminal Procedure and the subpoena and visitorial powers of certain administrative agencies. The "civil investigative demand," a precomplaint compulsory process, is a new weapon proposed to be added to this arsenal. Few dispute the desirability of new …

Abstracts Of Recent Cases, G. H. A.

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Abstracts Of Recent Cases, T. E. P.

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Procedure And Evidence, Edmund M. Morgan

Vanderbilt Law Review

Demurrer: The Tennessee cases reiterate the orthodox proposition that a demurrer admits the facts alleged or averred in the pleading to which it is interposed.' It is perhaps unnecessary to note that this proposition is true only when the problem concerns the sufficiency of the allegations or averments in the pleading. In truth, the demurrer is merely a default as to the facts and a tender of issue on the law. If the demurrer is overruled and the action is for unliquidated damages, the plaintiff's averment as to the amount of the damages is not taken as true; he must …

The Scope Of Summary Judgment Under The Federal Rules, Henry N. Williams

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provide that, under appropriate circumstances, either the plaintiff or the defendant may seek and obtain a summary judgment.' The detailed requirements of Rule 56 have been discussed elsewhere, and they will not be discussed herein other than as they aid in delineating the area covered by summary judgments. In determining the scope of Rule 56, the purpose of the rules as a whole must be considered as well as the effect of the discovery procedures of the rules. In addition the summary judgment rule must be explicitly distinguished from a motion for judgment on …

Federal Appellate Procedure--Certiorari--Consideration Of Constitutional Objections Not Preserved On The Record, W. E. C.

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.