Litigation Commons^™

Enforcement Piggybacking And Multistate Actions, Elysa Dishman

Faculty Scholarship

Civil enforcement in the United States is uniquely “multienforcer.” Numerous public and private enforcers including federal agencies, state attorneys general (AGs), and private litigants have overlapping authority to enforce myriad federal and state laws. Ideally, enforcers would complement one another’s efforts and use their comparative enforcement advantages to broaden the scope of enforcement and act as a check on underenforcement. But in reality, enforcers are often attracted to the same targets—large, public, deep-pocketed corporations. This means that multiple enforcers may pursue essentially the same enforcement action, arising from the same series of events and against the same target. Redundant enforcement …