Litigation Commons^™

Is Limited Remand Required If The District Court Admitted Or Excluded Evidence Without A Daubert Analysis?, Robert B. Gilbreath

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Prisoners' Rights Lawyers' Strategies For Preserving The Role Of The Courts, Margo Schlanger

Articles

This Article is part of the University of Miami Law Review’s Leading from Below Symposium. It canvasses prisoners’ lawyers’ strategies prompted by the 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”). The strategies comply with the statute’s limits yet also allow U.S. district courts to remain a forum for the vindication of the constitutional rights of at least some of the nation’s millions of prisoners. After Part I’s introduction, Part II summarizes in several charts the PLRA’s sharp impact on the prevalence and outcomes of prison litigation, but demonstrates that there are still many cases and situations in which courts continue to …

Lawyered Up: Local Communities, Courts, And Urban Renewal, Madeline Spolin

Sociology Honors Projects

What is the role of the judicial system in solving issues of urban renewal? I propose that communities use courts as a redress to become part of the decision making process on urban renewal issues, because courts provide procedural issues that are easily open to challenge in federal statute. I analyze public statements made throughout the construction of the Green Line in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, a federally funded urban renewal project. In spite of built in public consultation processes, changes to transit design do not occur when concerns are raised at public consultation meetings; instead, they come from …

The Litigation Budget, Jay Tidmarsh

Vanderbilt Law Review

Because of fears that litigation is too costly, reduction of litigation expenses has been the touchstone of procedural reform for the past thirty years. In certain circumstances, however, the parties have incentives--both rational and irrational--to spend more on a lawsuit than the social benefits that the case provides. Present and proposed reform efforts do not adequately address these incentives, and, in some instances, exacerbate the parties' incentives to overspend. The best way to ensure that the cost of a lawsuit does not exceed the benefits that it provides to the parties and society is to control spending directly: to require …

The Litigation Budget, Jay Tidmarsch

Vanderbilt Law Review

Because of fears that litigation is too costly, reduction of litigation expenses has been the touchstone of procedural reform for the past thirty years. In certain circumstances, however, the parties have incentives-both rational and irrational-to spend more on a lawsuit than the social benefits that the case provides. Present and proposed reform efforts do not adequately address these incentives, and, in some instances, exacerbate the parties' incentives to overspend. The best way to ensure that the cost of a lawsuit does not exceed the benefits that it provides to the parties and society is to control spending directly: to require …

Spring 2015 Utton Center Newsletter, Utton Center, University Of New Mexico - School Of Law

Publications

No abstract provided.

Judging Multidistrict Litigation, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

High-stakes multidistrict litigations saddle the transferee judges who manage them with an odd juxtaposition of power and impotence. On one hand, judges appoint and compensate lead lawyers (who effectively replace parties’ chosen counsel) and promote settlement with scant appellate scrutiny or legislative oversight. But on the other, without the arsenal class certification once afforded, judges are relatively powerless to police the private settlements they encourage. Of course, this power shortage is of little concern since parties consent to settle.

Or do they? Contrary to conventional wisdom, this Article introduces new empirical data revealing that judges appoint an overwhelming number of …

Juries, Judges, And The Politics Of Tort Reform, David Logan

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Optimizing Reservoir Operations To Adapt To 21st Century Expectations Of Climate And Social Change In The Willamette River Basin, Oregon, Kathleen M. Moore

Publications

Reservoir systems in the western US are managed to serve two main competing purposes: to reduce flooding during the winter and spring, and to provide water supply for multiple uses during the summer. Because the storage capacity of a reservoir cannot be used for both flood damage reduction and water storage at the same time, these two uses are traded off as the reservoir fills during the transition from the wet to the dry season. Climate change, population growth, and development in the western US may exacerbate dry season water scarcity and increase winter flood risk, creating a need to …

Extraterritorial Jurisdiction - Antitrust - The Impact Of The British Protection Of Trading Interests Act On The United States Antitrust Suit Brought By Laker Airways Against British Airways And British Caledonian., Ward S. Bondurant

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Product Liability Law In Japan: An Introduction To A Developing Area Of Law, Younghee Jin Ottley, Bruce L. Ottley

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Four Decades Of Federal Civil Rights Litigation, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Civil rights cases constitute a substantial fraction of the federal civil docket but that fraction has substantially declined from historic peaks. Trial outcomes, as in other areas of law, constitute a small fraction of case terminations and have changed over time. The number of employment discrimination trials before judges has been in decline for about 30 years, a trend also evident in contract and tort cases. The number of employment trials before juries increased substantially after the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 but has been in decline since 1997. In constitutional tort cases, the number of judge …

Solving The Puzzle Of Transnational Class Actions, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

How should a U.S. class action treat proposed foreign class members in a circumstance where any resulting judgment will likely not bind those absentees abroad? The dominant approach has been an exclusionary one, dropping the absentees from the class. This essay instead recommends an inclusionary approach, so that all the foreigners would remain members of the class in transnational class actions. But the court should create a subclass in damages actions for the foreign claimants who might have an incentive to sue again; the subclass would proceed by the accepted technique of claims-made recovery, so that the subclass members could …

The End Of Class Actions?, Brian T. Fitzpatrick

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this Article, I give a status report on the life expectancy of class action litigation following the Supreme Court's decisions in Concepcion and American Express. These decisions permitted corporations to opt out of class action liability through the use of arbitration clauses, and many commentators, myself included, predicted that they would eventually lead us down a road where class actions against businesses would be all but eliminated. Enough time has now passed to make an assessment of whether these predictions are coming to fruition. I find that, although there is not yet solid evidence that businesses have flocked to …

Should The Law Preserve Party Control? Litigation Investment, Insurance Law, And Double Standards, Anthony J. Sebok

William & Mary Law Review

Litigation investment, sometimes known as litigation finance, is increasingly accepted around the world. Once prohibited as champerty, litigation investment is now embraced in England, Canada, and Australia, as well as in many civil law nations. In the United States, the development of a robust market for investment in litigation has been met by various objections. One objection is that litigation investment interferes with the autonomy of lawyers. A second objection is that it promotes frivolous litigation.

This Article takes up a popular argument against litigation investment: the legal system should not encourage parties to sell their control over litigation that …

Buying Time In Spain: The Spanish Law Of Installment Sales, John M. Steadman

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Meet 'Tenth Justice': Solicitor General Verrilli, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Admit Or Deny: A Call For Reform Of The Sec's "Neither-Admit-Nor-Deny" Policy, Priyah Kaul

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

For four decades, the SEC’s often-invoked policy of settling cases without requiring admissions of wrongdoing, referred to as the “neither-admit-nor-deny” policy, went unchallenged by the courts, the legislature, and the public. Then in 2011, a harshly critical opinion from Judge Jed Rakoff in SEC v. Citigroup incited demands for reform of this policy. In response to Judge Rakoff’s opinion, the SEC announced a modified approach to settlements. Under the modified approach, the Commission may require an admission of wrongdoing if a defendant’s misconduct was egregious or if the public markets would benefit from an admission. Many supporters of the neither-admit-nor-deny …

Incorporating Legal Claims, Maya Steinitz

Faculty Scholarship

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in commercial litigation funding. Whereas the judicial, legislative, and scholarly treatment of litigation finance has regarded litigation finance first and foremost as a form of champerty and sought to regulate it through rules of legal professional responsibility (hereinafter, the "legal ethics paradigm"), this Article suggests that the problems created by litigation finance are all facets of the classic problems created by "the separation of ownership and control" that have been a focus of business law since the advent of the corporate form. Therefore, an "incorporation paradigm," offered here, is more appropriate. "Incorporating …

Harmonizing Third-Party Litigation Funding Regulation, Victoria Sahani

Faculty Scholarship

Third-party litigation funding is no longer a new phenomenon, but rather is a mainstay in global commerce and dispute resolution. Yet many observers still consider the third-party litigation funding industry as a “wild west” due to a lack of regulation in many countries. Some of the countries that have regulations suffer from a lack of uniformity and an array of conflicting laws at the sub-national level (i.e., the laws of states, provinces, territories, etc.). For example, the United States has a confusing patchwork of state laws on third-party litigation funding. This Article proposes harmonizing the regulatory framework for third-party litigation …

Tax Accrual Workpapers And Textron: Is Litigation Strategy No Longer Protected?, Lindsey Sullivan

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Trending@Rwu Law: Professor Jared Goldstein's Post: A Fireside Chat With Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Jr., Jared Goldstein

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Logan On Possibility Of Bp Settlement, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Logan On Impact Of Bp Liability, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Victim Or Thug? Examining The Relevance Of Stories In Cases Involving Shootings Of Unarmed Black Males, Sherri Keene

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Isolating Litigants: A Response To Pamela Bookman, Alan M. Trammell

Scholarly Articles

In a recent article, Litigation Isolationism, Pamela Bookman identifies a phenomenon that similarly changes hue depending on one’s perspective or disposition. Bookman argues that four doctrines (personal jurisdiction, forum non conveniens, abstention comity, and the presumption against extraterritoriality) conspire to make U.S. courts significantly less hospitable to transnational litigation. In Bookman’s assessment, such isolationism is counterproductive because the doctrines often fail to vindicate their stated goals of respecting the separation of powers, international comity, and defendants’ interests. The article is crisp and elegant. It synthesizes disparate areas of law to elucidate a broader development in civil litigation. And it makes …

Standing Issues In Tax Litigation, Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Work Made For Hire – Analyzing The Multifactor Balancing Test, Ryan G. Vacca

Law Faculty Scholarship

Authorship, and hence, initial ownership of copyrighted works is oftentimes controlled by the 1976 Copyright Act’s work made for hire doctrine. This doctrine states that works created by employees within the scope of their employment result in the employer owning the copyright. One key determination in this analysis is whether the hired party is an employee or independent contractor. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court, in CCNV v. Reid, answered the question of how employees are distinguished from independent contractors by setting forth a list of factors courts should consider. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court did not give further guidance on …

Identity Contests: Litigation And The Meaning Of Social-Movement Causes, Mary Ziegler

Scholarly Publications

What do we mean by a right to life? Should—or does—such a right cover only antiabortion claims? Or should the term apply more broadly—to debates about class and welfare, about the death penalty, or even about human rights? In the abortion wars, litigation strategy has helped to dictate the answers to these questions. Historians and legal scholars have studied the tensions between lawyers and the lay actors they represent, chronicling how lawyers modify and even limit the social changes activists demand. By putting the attorney-client relationship center stage, scholars have sometimes obscured an equally important story about how litigation strategy—as …

A Sour Battle In Lago Agrio And Beyond: The Metamorphosis Of Transnational Litigation And The Protection Of Collective Rights In Ecuador, Manuel A. Gomez

Faculty Publications

This article intends to explore the interplay between different dispute processing mechanisms and fora in the realm of transnational litigation, through the lens of the Chevron-Ecuador legal saga. My goal is to discuss the transformation of a transnational complex case and the challenges faced by the parties, their procedural strategies, and the perceived advantages of the different mechanisms. In this regard, I will also address the development of mechanisms for the protection of diffuse rights involving the environment; the role of the courts in supervising compliance with judicial remedies, their engagement in activities that go beyond their traditional role as …