Litigation Commons^™

The Duty To Preserve Documents Before Litigation Commences, Camille Cameron

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper explores the nature, extent and boundaries of the duties that exist to preserve relevant documents where no litigation has yet commenced and where such litigation can be reasonably anticipated. It uses as the context for this discussion the recent tobacco litigation case McCabe v. British Australian Tobacco (BA T). The duties to preserve are considered from the perspectives of prospective plaintiffs, who need the documents to prove a claim; prospective defendants (and their servants, agents and employees), who may for legitimate reasons have document management policies that call for routine destruction of documents; and judges (and juries), who …

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 …

Assessing Sovereign Interests In Cross-Border Discovery Disputes: Lessons From Aerospatiale, Hannah Buxbaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The Hague Evidence Convention addresses a particular kind of jurisdictional conflict: the conflict between one nation's issuance of extraterritorial discovery orders and another nation's right to govern discovery activity taking place within its territory. The particular mechanisms that the Convention establishes for use in cross-border discovery proceedings, and the compromises between civil-law and common-law procedures for evidence gathering that it embodies, were effected with that system goal in mind. In Aerospatiale, the Supreme Court considered the scope of the Convention's application, addressing the interaction of Convention procedures and pre-existing federal rules on evidence gathering. As portions of the decision make …

New Opportunities For Obtaining And Using Litigation Reserves And Disclosures, Matthew J. Barrett

Journal Articles

Following the publication of Opportunities for Obtaining and Using Litigation Reserves and Disclosures, which highlighted the helpful information about litigation reserves that a litigator can often detect or discover from an opponent's financial statements, accounting books and records, tax returns, public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC), and auditor, two important regulatory developments occurred in early 2003 that create additional opportunities to obtain information about an opponent's assessments of (i) expected liability in the underlying case or (ii) obligations or settlements in similar cases. First, pursuant to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the SEC issued final regulations …

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 …

Hired Guns And Smoking Guns: Mccabe V British American Tobacco Australia Ltd, Camille Cameron

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Significant ethical and procedural issues raised in the case of McCabe v British American Tobacco Australia Services Ltd - history of events leading to the Supreme Court of Victoria decision, particularly the implementation of the controversial 'Document Retention Policy' - procedural issues, including the role and purpose of discovery, nature of the striking out remedy and extent to which the adversarial system might be to blame for some of the conduct of the defence and its solicitors - ethical issues raised in the case - close links between American and Australian tobacco litigation and the influence of American tobacco lawyers …

Rediscovering Discovery: State Procedural Rules And The Level Playing Field, Seymour Moskowitz

Law Faculty Publications

In the modern era of few trials, the pretrial process is critical to the disposition of most cases. Discovery has been a fiercely debated subject for may years. Many commentators believe that discovery has become too expensive, very time consuming, and often abusive. Others disagree, and articulate an entirely different diagnosis of the problems in our civil justice system. Regardless, the scope of discovery, and the process for undertaking it, create predictable advantages and disadvantages for many types of litigants. Although state courts dispose of the vast majority of cases in the United States, academic writings on procedural matters, particularly …

Opportunities For Obtaining And Using Litigation Reserves And Disclosures, Matthew J. Barrett

Journal Articles

In late 1975, the accounting and legal professions reached an accord that led to three new professional standards: (1) a new financial accounting rule for contingencies, (2) an auditing standard addressing the requirement that an auditor obtain evidence about an audit client's contingent liabilities to determine whether the client has properly treated those items in its financial statements, and (3) the American Bar Association's Statement of Policy Regarding Lawyers' Responses to Auditors' Requests for Information under that auditing standard. The Commentary that accompanied the Statement of Policy explicitly stated that the organized bar's expectation that communications between lawyers and auditors …

Politics And Sociology In Federal Civil Rulemaking: Errors Of Scope, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

In April 2000 the United States Supreme Court promulgated a package of Proposed Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that took effect on December 1, 2000, without Congressional intervention. As one commentator observed, “(a)ll of (the proposed amendments) promise to have a significant effect on discovery practice.” One Proposed Amendment--narrowing the scope of discovery available pursuant to Rule 26(b)(1)--was particularly controversial before both the Advisory Committee, the Standing Committee, and the Judicial Conference. Nonetheless, the Proposed Amended Rule narrowing scope proceeded from the Court to finality with no intervention by Congress. Proponents of the change minimized criticism by …

Ulysses Tied To The Generic Whipping Post: The Continuing Odyssey Of Discovery "Reform", Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

One need not be a charter member of the Critical Legal Studies Movement (“CLS”) to see a few fundamental contradictions in litigation practice in the United States. A prominent philosophical tenet of the CLS movement is that law and society are gripped by a “fundamental contradiction” and simultaneously seek to embrace contradictory objectives. Civil litigation, particularly discovery, is no exception: New amendments to the discovery rules are the latest example of this contradiction. Although the new changes are not drastic, they continue the post-1976 pattern of making discovery the convenient scapegoat for generalized complaints about the dispute resolution system. One …

Identifying Real Dichotomies Underlying The False Dichotomy: Twenty-First Century Mediation In An Eclectic Regime, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Some people (lawyers, scholars, judges, dispute resolvers, policymakers) are more concerned about fidelity to procedural protocols while others are more concerned with the substantive rules governing disputes and substantive outcomes. Those in the dispute resolution community preferring facilitation tend to be proceduralists. For them, the observance of proper procedure is a high goal, perhaps the dominant goal. They reason, often implicitly, that adherence to the rules of procedure is the essence of neutrality, fairness, and the proper role of a dispute resolving apparatus. At some level, usually subconscious, there is a post-modern philosophical aspect of this preference. Because humans cannot …

The Secrecy Interest In Contract Law, Omri Ben-Shahar, Lisa Bernstein

Articles

A long and distinguished line of law-and-economics articles has established that in many circumstances fully compensatory expectation damages are a desirable remedy for breach of contract because they induce both efficient performance and efficient breach. The expectation measure, which seeks to put the breached-against party in the position she would have been in had the contract been performed, has, therefore, rightly been chosen as the dominant contract default rule. It does a far better job of regulating breach-or-perform incentives than its leading competitors-the restitution measure, the reliance measure, and specific performance. This Essay does not directly take issue with the …

Less Reliable Preliminary Hearings And Plea Bargains In Criminal Cases In California: Discovery Before And After Proposition 115 , Laura Berend

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

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

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Third-Party Modification Of Protective Orders Under Rule 26©, Patrick S. Kim

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that similarly situated litigants always should be given access to protected discovered materials, while nonlitigants should gain access to protected materials only in exceptional circumstances. This approach effectively balances the privacy and property interests of the original parties and the intervening parties with the interests of adjudicative efficiency. Part I establishes that there is no general public right of access to civil discovery and that courts should disregard such purported rights when considering whether to modify a protective order. Part II identifies three interests that courts should weigh when considering whether to modify a protective order: the …

"Show And Tell": An Analysis Of The Scope Of The Attorney-Client Waiver Standards, Roberta M. Harding

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

As today's society becomes increasingly litigious, document productions, a major discovery tool, are growing larger. One inevitable consequence of this phenomenon is the increased risk that communications protected by the attorney-client privilege may be inadvertently disclosed. Privileged communications may also be disclosed to an adversary under more questionable circumstances: specifically, the intentional, strategic disclosure of privileged information favorable to the disclosing party's position.

In any case involving the disclosure of privileged information, the court must initially decide whether the privilege is waived. To resolve this threshold issue courts apply one of the three waiver tests. If a court decides that …

Mandatory Disclosure And Local Abrogation: In Search Of A Theory For Optional Rules, Lauren K. Robel

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Halting Devolution Or Bleak To The Future? Subrin's New-Old Procedure As A Possible Antidote To Dreyfuss's "Tolstoy Problem", Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Professors Rochelle Dreyfuss and Stephen Subrin first presented their ideas on the 1993 Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (Civil Rules) at the 1994 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) in a program titled, “The 1993 Discovery Amendments: Evolution, Revolution, or Devolution?” After the program, I was left with the depressing view that the answer was devolution, which is defined as a “retrograde evolution,” or “degeneration.” Dreyfuss provides a detailed but succinct review of the changes in discovery occasioned by the new rules as well as a vantage point for assessing the social and …

Rediscovering Discovery: Washington State Physicians Insurance Exchange And Association V. Fisons Corporation, Brian J. Beck

Seattle University Law Review

Section I of this Article will present a model of the adversarial system and argue that the discovery process, although a component of that system, cannot function under the model. Section II lays out the facts of the Fisons case, the arguments presented by each side, and the court's decision. Section III discusses a survey conducted by the Author, which sought to ascertain the decision's impact on members of the Seattle bar. Utilizing survey results and observations regarding the adversarial system, the section then pinpoints some potentially troublesome issues left unresolved by the court and suggests ways to resolve them.

Discovery Cost Allocation: Comment On Cooter And Rubinfeld, Edward H. Cooper

Articles

Discovery practice continues to be the single most troubling element of contemporary procedure. To be sure, the system seems to work well in a high proportion of all federal cases. The proportion may seem astonishingly high in relation to the amount of attention devoted to discovery. The discovery problems that occur in a relatively small proportion of the federal caseload, however, impose serious burdens on the parties and the court system. Every proposal that addresses discovery "abuse" deserves serious attention. These comments focus on the discovery abuse portion of the paper by Cooter and Rubinfeld. Questions are posed that may …

Waiver: A Comprehensive Analysis Of A Consequence Of Inadvertently Producing Documents Protected By The Attorney-Client Privilege, Roberta M. Harding

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The inadvertent production of documents protected by the attorney-client privilege frequently occurs in contemporary litigation. This phenomena becomes more prevalent as the number of cases involving inadvertent document production grows. Unfortunately, given the present modes for resolving the waiver issue that stems from this occurrence, this occurrence could threaten to become the rule rather than the exception. The increased frequency of inadvertent document production is due primarily to more disputes arising out of production of documents demands by the opposing party that emerge as parties request the production of an increasing number of responsive documents. As a result, the sheer …

New Paradigm, Normal Science, Or Crumbling Construct? Trends In Adjudicatory Procedure And Litigation Reform, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

One aspect of a possible new era is the increasing ad hoc activity of various interest groups, including the bench and the organized bar, primarily pursued through official organizations such as the Judicial Conference, the Federal Judicial Center, the American Bar Association (“ABA”), and the American Law Institute. Traditionally, of course, judges and lawyers have lobbied Congress and state legislatures for litigation change, as demonstrated by the saga of the Rules Enabling Act (“Enabling Act” or “Act”). But, the legal profession's more recent “political” activity regarding litigation reform differs from the traditional model in several ways. First, the participation of …

Sanctifying Secrecy: The Mythology Of The Corporate Attorney-Client Privilege, Elizabeth G. Thornburg

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This article surveys the traditional justifications for giving corporations the benefit of attorney-client privilege. It rejects both moral and utilitarian explanations and argues that, far from being beneficial or benign, the privilege actually does great harm to the truth-seeking function of litigation and imposes tremendous transaction costs on the litigants and on the judicial system as a whole.

Pre-Trial Case Preparation In Complex Groundwater Litigation: The Lawyer’S Role, Michael D. Shimmin

Uncovering the Hidden Resource: Groundwater Law, Hydrology, and Policy in the 1990s (Summer Conference, June 15-17)

12 pages.

Data, Correspondence, Reports, And Exhibits For Ground Water Rights Cases (Or, Challenges In Developing And Presenting Data To Support A Ground Water Rights Case), Robert E. Brogden

Uncovering the Hidden Resource: Groundwater Law, Hydrology, and Policy in the 1990s (Summer Conference, June 15-17)

17 pages.

Sanctions, Symmetry, And Safe Harbors: Limiting Misapplication Of Rule 11 By Harmonizing It With Pre-Verdict Dismissal Devices, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

With only a small risk of overstatement, one could say that sanctions in civil litigation exploded during the 1980s, with the 1983 amendment to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 acting as the principal catalyst. From 1938 until the 1983 amendment, only two dozen or so cases on Rule 11 were reported, with courts rarely imposing sanctions. Although a few cases were notable by virtue of sanction size, prestige of the firm sanctioned, or publicity attending the underlying case, the legal profession largely regarded Rule 11 as a dead letter. In addition, other sanctions provisions, such as Federal Rule of …

The Expert In U.S. And German Patent Litigation, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

The expert often plays a crucial role in patent litigation in both Germany and the United States. Determination of facts and application of law to facts frequently require a technical understanding that only an expert can provide. Despite the similarity of the problem of conveying information to the decision-maker, the role of the expert in the two systems and the manner in which the problem of providing technical knowledge necessary for the decision is solved are so very different, that German jurists who transfer their German experiences and expectations over to US procedures, are in danger of experiencing great disappointment …

Clinical Realism: Simulated Hearings Based On Actual Events In Students' Lives, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

This essay describes a novel clinical format, a simulation course that is based on students' testimony about actual events in their own lives. The two main purposes of the course, however, are not novel. First, I aim to teach the students to be effective trial lawyers by instructing them in the techniques of direct examination and cross-examination and by making them sensitive to the roles of the other courtroom players: the witness, the judge, and the jury. Second, I hope to encourage the students to think about the social and ethical consequences of our method of trying lawsuits.

A Distorted Mirror: The Supreme Court's Shimmering View Of Summary Judgment, Directed Verdict, And The Value Of Adjudication, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

As almost anyone alive during the past decade knows, this is the era of the ‘litigation explosion,’ or there is at least the perception that a litigation explosion exists. Although all agree that the absolute number of lawsuits has increased in virtually every corner of the state and federal court systems, there exists vigorous debate about whether the increase is unusual in relative or historical terms and even more vigorous debate about whether the absolute increase in cases symbolizes the American concern for fairness and justice or represents a surge in frivolous or trivial disputes needlessly clogging the courts. As …

Report On Survey Of The Bar, Committee On Federal Courts Of The New York State Bar Association

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.