Litigation Commons^™

Governments, Citizens, And Injurious Industries, Hanoch Dagan, James J. White

Articles

In this Article, Professors Hanoch Dagan and James White study the most recent challenge raised by mass torts litigation: the interference of governments with the bilateral relationship between citizens and injurious industries. Using the tobacco settlement as their case study, Dagan and White explore the important benefits and the grave dangers of recognizing governments' entitlement to reimbursement for costs they have incurred in preventing or ameliorating their citizens' injuries. They further demonstrate that the current law can help capture these benefits and guard against the entailing risks, showing how subrogation law can serve as the legal foundation of the governments' …

Alternative Liability In Litigation Malpractice Actions: Eradicating The Last Resort Of Scoundrels, Lawrence W. Kessler

San Diego Law Review

The legal malpractice tort, however, has managed to withstand the winds of legal change. Particularly crucial has been the refusal to apply alternative causation doctrines. The refusal to apply causation doctrines that have been embraced in other areas has significant social effects. As a result, the consumers of legal services receive less protection from the courts than do the consumers of products or medical services.

Recent Case Developments, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

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

The Bad News About Good Faith For Excess Um Carriers, Robert L. Tucker

Akron Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Judge-Made Insurance That Was Not On The Menu: Schmidt V. Smith And The Confluence Of Text, Expectation, And Public Policy In The Realm Of Employment Practices Liability, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

In Schmidt v. Smith, the New Jersey Supreme Court caught more than a few observers by surprise. New Jersey courts have generally issued opinions regarded as pro-claimant and pro-policyholders. But everyone's taste for recompense and coverage has limits. In Schmidt, the court exceeded those limits for many observers by holding that despite what it regarded as clear contract language in an exclusion, an insurer providing Employers’ Liability (“EL”) coverage along with Workers' Compensation (“WC”) insurance for the employer was required to provide coverage in a case of blatant sexual harassment bordering on criminal assault. In doing so, the Schmidt court, …

Recent Case Developments, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Recent case developments in Insurance law in the year 1998-1999.

Deposed Parties: Who Has A Right To Access Depositions In Civil Cases?, Robert L. Tucker

Akron Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Taking Fiction Seriously: The Strange Results Of Public Officials' Individual Liability Under Bivens, Cornelia T. Pillard

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article argues that the Supreme Court's decision to place liability on federal officials in their personal capacity--what Professors Fallon and Meltzer call Bivens's "genius"--is in fact its Achilles' heel. Individual liability under Bivens has become fictional because it is the government, and not the individual personally, that is in fact liable in Bivens cases. The individual liability fiction has ended up helping the federal government more than the Bivens plaintiff in various ways, and has contributed to the low rate of recovery under Bivens.

It may seem odd to attribute the low rate of Bivens recoveries to the individual …

Cigarette Law, Daniel Givelber

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Torts—Dramshop Liability In Arkansas—Illegal Sales Of Liquor To Minors May Expose Alcohol Vendors To Expensive Liability. Shannon V. Wilson, 329 Ark. 143, 947 S.W.2d 349 (1997)., Dustin Blake Mcdaniel

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Handling Claims For Minor And Disabled Plaintiffs: Coordinating All Aspects Of The Case, Oregon Law Institute, Elizabeth Welch, Robert P. Jones, Doug M. Fellows, Elden M. Rosenthal, Donna R. Meyer, Jack Meligan, Jane Paulson, Cynthia L. Barrett, Beth Gafur, Jude Mollgaard, Richard H. Mills, David Rollins

Oregon Law Institute, 1998

Course Materials from the April 10, 1998 Program in Portland

Drainage Law And Liabilities, Oregon Law Institute, Timothy J. Sercombe, Richard M. Botteri, Christina M. Steensgaard, James R. Herald, Marnie Allen, Harvey W. Rogers

Oregon Law Institute, 1998

Course Materials from the March 13, 1998 Program in Portland

Interjurisdictional Preclusion, Howard M. Erichson

Michigan Law Review

Res judicata is hard enough already. Consider it at the interjurisdictional level, and we are asking for headaches. But consider it at that level we must, because litigation trends make interjurisdictional preclusion more important than ever. Lawyers, judges, litigants, and other litigation participants increasingly must contemplate the possibility that a lawsuit will have claim-preclusive or issue-preclusive effect in a subsequent suit in another jurisdiction. With great frequency, multiple lawsuits arise out of single or related transactions or events. Mass tort litigation and complex commercial litigation provide the most emphatic examples, but the phenomenon of multiple related lawsuits extends to every …

Reason And Pollution: Construing The "Absolute" Pollution Exclusion In Context And In Light Of Its Purpose And Party Expectations, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Responding to the flurry of environmental coverage litigation over the application of the “sudden and accidental” pollution exclusion, the insurance industry during the mid-1980s largely adopted new standard pollution exclusion language for commercial general liability (CGL) policies. Since the mid-1980s, the standard form CGL has included the so-called absolute pollution exclusion, which provides that the insurance does not apply to bodily injury or property damage “arising out of the actual, alleged or threatened discharge, dispersal, seepage, migration, release, or escape of pollutants.” A “pollutant” is defined as “any solid, liquid, gaseous or thermal irritant or contaminant, including smoke, vapor, soot, …

Recent Case Developments, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Recent case developments in Insurance Law in years 1998 and 1999.

Recent Case Developments, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Recent case developments in Insurance law in the year 1998.

Class Action Litigation In China, Benjamin L. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

Class struggle has moved to China's courtrooms. Since the passage of China's 1991 Civil Procedure Law (CPL), which explicitly permits class action litigation, multiplaintiff groups have brought suits seeking compensation for harm caused by pollution, false advertising, contract violations, and securities law violations. Although administrative bodies continue to resolve most disputes in China, the increasing prevalence of class actions is one aspect of an explosion in civil litigation over the past decade. Class action litigation has the potential to alter the role courts play in adjudicating disputes, increase access to the courts, and facilitate the independence of the legal profession. …

Industrial Espionage As Unfair Competition, Robert L. Tucker

Akron Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Taking The Mass Out Of Mass Torts: Reflections Of A Dalkon Shield Arbitrator On Alternative Dispute Resolution, Judging, Neutrality, Gender, And Process, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Life in the modem and post-modem world has changed our understanding of many traditional legal matters. Although many died from plagues, wars, and some shipping and agricultural accidents in the years which preceded the Industrial Revolution and modem breakthroughs in medicine, the twentieth century has given rise to "group" injury and death -it unprecedented levels, all as we march toward growth, progress, and greater goods for greater numbers. Mass progress has resulted in mass injury, which in turn has transformed individualized justice into mass justice. Whether structured as large class actions or as thousands of individual cases dealing with the …

Mass Tort Litigation And Inquisitorial Justice, Howard M. Erichson

Faculty Scholarship

In the past decade, settlement class actions have become increasingly popular in mass tort litigation, having been used successfully in cases such as the Dalkon Shield litigation, the Bjork-Shiley heart valve litigation, and the orthopedic bone screw litigation. Although the Supreme Court's opinion in Amchem has engendered some confusion over the continued viability of mass tort settlement class actions, it appears that such settlements remain a dominant approach to resolving mass tort lawsuits. With increasing frequency, plaintiffs and defendants come to court holding hands, and courts must launch their own vigorous inquiries into the merits of the parties' proffered settlement. …

Warning Defect: Origins, Policies, And Directions, Robert E. Keeton

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

On a spectrum from the polar extreme of generality to the opposite pole of specificity, "What should warnings say?" is near the extreme in its degree of generality. A question phrased this way invites a correspondingly generic response. Such a response is not very useful to the trial judge and lawyers who regularly must fashion clear explanations on the law of warning defect for layperson juries. As used here, this question is not intended as a signal inviting just any kind of response that might be acceptable under the mores of casual conversation. It is a more serious request for …

Dashing Consumer Hopes: Strict Products Liability And The Demise Of The Consumer Expectations Test, Rebecca Korzec

All Faculty Scholarship

The threshold issue in American products liability litigation is whether the product was defective at the time it left the manufacturer's control. Traditionally, courts and scholars define “defect” in three functional categories: manufacturing defects, design defects and marketing defects. American products liability doctrine employs two major tests to determine whether a "defect” exists: the seller-oriented risk-utility test and the buyer-oriented consumer expectations test. The Draft of the Restatement Third of Torts: Products Liability, like some American jurisdictions, rejects the “consumer expectations” test as an independent standard in defective warning and design cases. Ironically, this limitation of the use of the …

The Scientological Defenestration Of Choice-Of-Law Doctrines For Publication Torts On The Internet, 15 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 361 (1997), Christopher P. Beall

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

Two major doctrines exist for choosing which state's law applies to an interstate tort: the "lex loci deliciti" (the law of the place of the wrong) approach and the "most significant relationship" approach. In the context of the Internet, the "lex loci deliciti" approach has been criticized for its harshness. For example, it is possible for an e-mail posting to be non-actionable where written, but actionable where read. Likewise, the "most significant relationship" approach has been criticized for its indeterminacy and lack of predictability because the outcome as to the extent of liability for a publication tort on the Internet …

"Countering Stereotypes." Review Of Medical Malpractice And The American Jury: Confronting The Myths About Jury Incompetence, Deep Pockets, And Outrageous Damage Awards, By N. Vidmar, Samuel R. Gross

Reviews

The story of The Medical Malpractice Trial has a place in popular American legal culture, somewhere on the shelf with Killers Who Got Off on Technicalities. The plot is simple and tragic. The protagonist is the Doctor, a good man with a flaw: He tries too hard. In the process, he makes an innocent mistake or believes he can prevent the unpreventable. In any event, he fails and the Patient dies or is permanently injured. For this unintentional error the Doctor is crucified, by the vengeful anger of the Patient or her survivors, the avarice of the plaintiffs' lawyer, the …

How U.S. Procedure Skews Tort Law Incentives, Jonathan T. Molot

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Going To Trial: A Rare Throw Of The Die, Samuel R. Gross, Kent D. Syverud

Articles

If it is true, as we often hear, that we are one of the most litigious societies on earth, it is because of our propensity to sue, not our affinity for trials. Of the hundreds of thousands of civil lawsuits that are filed each year in America, the great majority are settled; of those that are not settled, most are ultimately dismissed by the plaintiffs or by the courts; only a few percent are tried to a jury or a judge. This is no accident. We prefer settlements and have designed a system of civil justice that embodies and expresses …

"And The Truth Shall Make You Free": Truth As A First Amendment Defense In Tortious Interference With Contract Cases, Robert L. Tucker

Akron Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Class Action Chaos? The Theory Of The Core And An Analysis Of Opt-Out Rights In Mass Tort Class Actions, Michael A. Perino

Faculty Publications

From breast implants to cigarettes, mass tort class actions are a prominent and controversial part of the contemporary litigation landscape. A critical component of these actions is the ability of class members to “opt out” and thereby exclude themselves from the effect of any class judgment. The tension between individual autonomy and the desire for global resolution of mass controversies has led to an intense debate concerning the circumstances under which opt-out rights should be constrained, if at all.

This Article makes five distinct contributions to the class action literature. First, the Article applies the game theoretic concept of the …

Beyond Formalism And False Dichotomies: The Need For Institutionalizing A Flexible Concept Of The Mediator's Role, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Related to the problem of the false dichotomy is the formalist application of the either/or construct. If, for example, one adopts as a first premise the view that mediation is by definition non-evaluative, and then rigidly applies this premise to issues of appropriate mediator behavior, the result is a formalist system that permits mediators little or no leeway to depart from the non-evaluative style. This sort of regulatory regimen may satisfy the non-evaluative ethos of some mediation scholars, but it does so at the risk of becoming a rigid system that prevents mediators from taking practical actions most appropriate to …

Section L04(A)(2) After Commissioner U. Schleier: Litigating The Excludability Of Statutory Damages "Received On Account Of Personal Injuries", T. James Lee Jr.

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.