Litigation Commons^™

Catholic Dioceses In Bankruptcy, Marie T. Reilly

Catholic Dioceses in Bankruptcy

The Catholic Church is coping with mass tort liability for sexual abuse of children by priests. Since 2004, eighteen Catholic organizations have filed for relief in bankruptcy. Fifteen debtors emerged from bankruptcy after settling with sexual abuse claimants and insurers. During settlement negotiations, sexual abuse claimants and debtors clashed over the extent of the debtors’ property and ability to pay claims. Although such disputes are common in chapter 11 plan negotiations, the Catholic cases required the parties and bankruptcy courts to account for unique religious attributes of Catholic debtors. This article reviews the arguments and outcomes on property issues based …

Arbitration Law Update: 2018-2019, Teresa J. Verges, Elissa Germaine

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

This article summarizes the leading federal and state arbitration cases during the last year that are of particular relevance to the securities arbitration practitioner. The Supreme Court decided three cases related to arbitration involving the “wholly groundless” exception, class arbitration, and arbitrability. Courts also addressed issues concerning arbitrability, vacating arbitration awards, a receiver action on behalf of defrauded investors, the limits of FINRA arbitration over member’s other business activities, and discovery in arbitration.

Fact Or Fiction: Flawed Approaches To Evaluating Market Behavior In Securities Litigation, Ann Lipton

Publications

Courts entertaining class actions brought under Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act are required to make numerous factual judgments about the economic effects of the alleged misconduct. For example, they must determine whether and for how long publicly-available information has exerted an influence on security prices, and whether an alleged fraud caused economic harm to investors. Judgments on these matters dictate whether cases will proceed to summary judgment and trial, whether classes will be certified and the scope of such classes, and the damages that investors are entitled to collect.

Over the years, courts have developed a variety of …

The Architecture Of Drama: How Lawyers Can Use Screenwriting Techniques To Tell More Compelling Stories, Teresa M. Bruce

Publications

Hollywood writers have a secret. They know how to tell a compelling story—so compelling that the top-grossing motion pictures rake in millions, and sometimes billions, of dollars. How do they do it? They use a simple formula involving three acts that propel the story forward, three "plot points" that focus on the protagonist, and two "pinch points" that focus on the adversary. The attached Article argues that lawyers should build their stories in the same way Hollywood writers do. It deconstructs the storytelling formula used in movies and translates it into an IRAC-like acronym, SCOR. Attorneys who use SCOR will …

Unfamiliar Justice: Indigent Criminal Defendants' Experiences With Civil Legal Needs, Lauren Sudeall, Ruth Richardson

Faculty Publications By Year

Our legal system - and much of the research conducted on that system - often separates people and issues into civil and criminal silos. However, those two worlds intersect and influence one another in important ways. The qualitative empirical study that forms the basis of this Article bridges the civil-criminal divide by exploring the life circumstances and events of public defender clients to determine how they experience and respond to civil legal problems.

To date, studies addressing civil legal needs more generally have not focused on those individuals enmeshed with the criminal justice system, even though that group offers a …

Privacy's Double Standards: Public Disclosure Tort Case Chart (2006-2016), Scott Skinner-Thompson

Research Data

This document, Privacy's Double Standards: Public Disclosure Tort Case Chart (2006-2016), 93 Wash. L. Rev. Online 2051 (2018), https://www.law.uw.edu/wlr/online-edition/scott-skinner-thompson, was published as an electronic supplement to the empirical study, Scott Skinner-Thompson, Privacy’s Double Standards, 93 Wash. L. Rev. 2051 (2018), available at https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles/1218/.

Education Reform And Detroit’S Right To Literacy Litigation, Kristine L. Bowman

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Ongoing education reform litigation arising out of Detroit, Michigan presents an innovative claim: Children have an unenumerated federal constitutional right of access to literacy. On June 29, 2018, the district court granted defendants’ motion to dismiss. The case is now on appeal to the Sixth Circuit and is expected to be argued in the first half of 2019. This litigation has already broken new ground and, regardless of the ultimate outcome, it is valuable because it invites us to revisit fundamental questions about rights, remedies, and the role of courts in education reform.

The Case For An International Court Of Civil Justice, Maya Steinitz

Books

When multinational corporations cause mass harms to lives, livelihoods, and the environment in developing countries, it is nearly impossible for victims to find a court that can and will issue an enforceable judgment. In this work, Professor Maya Steinitz presents a detailed rationale for the creation of an International Court of Civil Justice (ICCJ) to hear such transnational mass tort cases. The world's legal systems were not designed to solve these kinds of complex transnational disputes, and the absence of mechanisms to ensure coordination means that victims try, but fail, to find justice in country after country, court after court. …

The Unconstitutionality Of The Protecting Access To Care Act Of 2017’S Cap On Noneconomic Damages In Medical Malpractice Cases, Kaeleigh P. Christie

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

"Hurricane" Sandy: A Case Study Of The Eastern District Of New York's Effort To Address Mass Litigation Resulting From The Effects Of Climate Change, Cheryl L. Pollak, Ramon E. Reyes Jr., Robyn Weinstein

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

On the evening of October 29, 2012, “Hurricane” Sandy made land- fall on the New York coastline, battering the land with strong winds, torrential rain, and record-breaking storm surges. Homes and commercial structures were destroyed; roads and tunnels were flooded; and more than 23,000 people sought refuge in temporary shelters, with many others facing weeks without power and electricity. At the time, Sandy was heralded as one of the costliest hurricanes in the his- tory of the United States; the second costliest hurricane only to Katrina, which hit New Orleans in 2005. Unfortunately, recent experience with Hurricanes Florence, Maria, Harvey, …

The Role Of Direct-Injury Government-Entity Lawsuits In The Opioid Litigation, Edgar Aliferov

Fordham Law Review

The opioid epidemic has ravaged the United States, killing over 100 Americans every day and costing the nation upward of $90 billion a year. All branches and levels of the government have pursued measures to combat the epidemic and reduce its societal costs. Perhaps the most interesting response is the emergence of direct-injury government-entity lawsuits, which seek to recover damages from opioid companies that facilitated prescription pill addictions. Cities, counties, and states across the country are suing opioid manufacturers and distributors in unprecedented numbers. This Note explores the role of direct-injury government-entity claims as compared to other forms of civil …

Evaluating New York's Notice Of Claim Requirements: Why Naming Individual Municipal Employees Is Not Essential, Daniel Randazzo

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Note argues that the approach adopted by the Fourth Department in Goodwin—that General Municipal Law § 50-e does not require the naming of individual municipal employees— is the correct approach in terms of the text of the statute and the purpose behind the statute, as well as policy and practical implications. This Note is comprised of four parts. Part I illustrates the importance of the notice of claim requirement and introduces the text of New York General Municipal Law § 50- e(2). Part II provides a synopsis of the case law on both sides of this issue, …

Business And Commercial Litigation In Federal Courts (4th Ed.) Edited By Robert L. Haig, James M. Wicks

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Four years ago, I reviewed Business and Commercial Litigation in Federal Courts (3d ed.), concluding then that notwithstanding the dwindling “brick-and-mortar,” traditional law libraries, this multi-volume treatise is a worthy tool in the arsenal of the business litigator. Well, now nineteen years after its inception, the treatise, Business and Commercial Litigation in Federal Courts (4th ed.) (“BCL”), is in its Fourth Edition, having added twenty-five new chapters leading to three more volumes. Is it still worth the shelf space? Unquestionably, this landmark treatise remains an essential guide for commercial litigators and in-house counsel alike. The addition of the new …

Creating A Workplace Culture Of Civility And Respect: Preventing Unlawful Harassment And Discrimination, Rose Davenport

Shared Knowledge Conference

This research project identifies a plan to study best practices addressing unlawful workplace harassment and discrimination in New Mexico-based hospital healthcare systems. Initially, this project focusses on Presbyterian Healthcare Services and the University of New Mexico Hospital, with the possibility of including other local healthcare systems. In light of recent developments from “#MeToo” and “Time’s Up” movements, the issues of unlawful sexual harassment and discrimination are hot topics in today’s society and need to be more openly addressed by all levels of an organization, in order to identify these issues head-on and hopefully prevent them from continuing to occur in …

Immigrant Defense Funds For Utopians, César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Will Delaware Be Different? An Empirical Study Of Tc Heartland And The Shift To Defendant Choice Of Venue, Ofer Eldar, Neel U. Sukhatme

Cornell Law Review

Why do some venues evolve into litigation havens while others do not? Venues might compete for litigation for various reasons, like enhancing their judges’ prestige and increasing revenues for the local bar. This competition is framed by the party that chooses the venue. Whether plaintiffs or defendants primarily choose venue is crucial because, we argue, the two scenarios are not symmetrical.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods LLC illustrates this dynamic. There, the Court effectively shifted venue choice in many patent infringement cases from plaintiffs to corporate defendants. We use TC Heartland to empirically …

Discovery Disclosure And Deterrence, Sergio J. Campos, Cheng Li

Vanderbilt Law Review

Courts, practitioners, and scholars have recently expressed concern over the ex post costs of discovery in civil litigation. In this Article, we develop a game theoretic model of litigant behavior to study an overlooked phenomenon-the ex ante effects of discovery on a defendant's incentive to engage in unlawful conduct. We focus on motions to seal, which limit the disclosure of discovered information to the public, but permit disclosure to the court and parties. Specifically, we examine the effect different rules regarding such motions have in deterring defendants from engaging in unlawful behavior. We show that as a rule becomes more …

Discovery And The Social Benefits Of Private Litigation, Paul Stancil

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the era just before the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure went into effect in 1938, federal civil litigation was a different animal.' Although Congress had created several private statutory causes of action before the 1930s,2 the federal civil docket prior to enactment of the Rules consisted primarily of diversity jurisdiction common law cases, labor injunctions and receiverships, and miscellaneous cases brought by the United States, including Prohibition-era "liquor cases" as well as internal revenue and food and drug enforcement. 3 Occasional exceptions notwithstanding, pre-New Deal federal courts hearing private claims functioned primarily as forums for the resolution of discrete, …

Will Delaware Be Different? An Empirical Study Of Tc Heartland And The Shift To Defendant Choice Of Venue, Ofer Eldar, Neel U. Sukhatme

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Why do some venues evolve into litigation havens while others do not? Venues might compete for litigation for various reasons, like enhancing their judges’ prestige and increasing revenues for the local bar. This competition is framed by the party that chooses the venue. Whether plaintiffs or defendants primarily choose venue is crucial because, we argue, the two scenarios are not symmetrical.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods LLC illustrates this dynamic. There, the Court effectively shifted venue choice in many patent infringement cases from plaintiffs to corporate defendants. We use TC Heartland to empirically …

The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse: Origins And Goals, Margo Schlanger

Articles

The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse (http://clearinghouse.net) solves a significant information deficit related to civil rights litigation by posting information about thousands of ongoing and closed large-scale civil rights cases. Documents are OCR’d and searchable; cases are searchable by metadata tags as well as full-text searching. Each case has a litigation summary by a law student. We live in a civil rights era—a time when people are using the courts, among other strategies, to fight for civil rights. The Clearinghouse posts the records of those fights, the stories of civil rights cases—across topics, across regions, across organizations—and makes them searchable, usable, …

Law School News: Appeals Court Hears Labor Arguments At Roger Williams University School Of Law 10-2-2018, Katie Mulvaney, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Demise Of Drug Design Litigation Death By Federal Preemption, Aaron Twerski

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Jurisdiction In The Trump Era, Scott Dodson

Fordham Law Review

The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States induced immediate speculation about how his tenure would affect various areas of the law. In civil-procedure circles, the intuition is that his status as a probusiness, antiregulation Republican seems likely to push procedural doctrine generally in pro-defendant directions. That intuition seems sound in the specific procedural subtopic of jurisdictional doctrine relating to forum selection. In this Essay, I document recent pre-Trump, pro-defendant trends in personal jurisdiction and diversity jurisdiction, and I detail how those trends impose significant burdens on plaintiffs. I then explain why the remainder of Trump’s presidency …

Asbestos Trust Transparency, Mark A. Behrens

Fordham Law Review

Originally and for many years, the primary defendants in asbestos cases were companies that mined asbestos or manufactured amphibole-containing thermal insulation. Hundreds of thousands of claims were filed against the major asbestos producers, such as Johns-Manville Corp., Owens Corning Corp., and W.R. Grace & Co. By the late 1990s, asbestos litigation had reached such proportions that the U.S. Supreme Court noted the “elephantine mass” of cases and referred to the litigation as a “crisis.” Mass filings pressured “most of the lead defendants and scores of other companies” into bankruptcy, including virtually all manufacturers of asbestos-containing thermal insulation. Following a 2000–2002 …

Book Review: Prosecuting Corporations For Genocide, Sarah Federman

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

When Law Calls, Does Science Answer? A Survey Of Distinguished Scientists & Engineers, Shari Seidman Diamond, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

Sound legal decision-making frequently requires the assistance of scientists and engineers. The survey we conducted with the cooperation of the American Academy examines the views of the legal system held by some of the nation’s most distinguished scientists and engineers, what motivates them to participate or to refuse to assist in lawsuits when asked, and their assessment of their experiences when they do participate. The survey reveals that a majority of the responding scientists and engineers will agree to participate when asked, and when they turn down requests, the most common reasons are lack of time and absence of relevant …

Patent Trolls, Nuisance Suits, And The Federal Trade Commission, Matthew Spitzer

North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology

The Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC’s”) Patent Assertion Entity Activity Report (“The Report”) includes a path-breaking collection of data. The Report was compiled with the object of changing policy, both in Congress and before the courts. Because of the FTC’s ability to force businesses and individuals to provide information, a power that no ordinary researcher possesses, the FTC has amassed a data set that can potentially be of great value. For example, the Report’s description of litigation Patent Assertion Entities’ (“PAEs”) and portfolio PAEs’ structure and behavior is, although not entirely new, very instructive. Unfortunately, the FTC made analytical errors that …

Rights And Retrenchment In The Trump Era, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

Fordham Law Review

Our aim in this Article is to leverage the archival research, data, and theoretical perspectives presented in our book, Rights and Retrenchment: The Counterrevolution against Federal Litigation, to illuminate the prospects for retrenchment in the current political landscape. In the book, we documented how an outpouring of rights-creating legislation from Democratic Congresses in the 1960s and 1970s, much of which contained provisions designed to stimulate private enforcement, prompted the conservative legal movement within the Republican Party to devise a response. Recognizing the political infeasibility of retrenching substantive rights, the movement’s strategy was to weaken the infrastructure for enforcing them. …

The Market For Corporate Control In The Zone Of Insolvency: Symposium Introduction, Edward J. Janger

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

No abstract provided.

Corporate Distress, Credit Default Swaps, And Defaults: Information And Traditional, Contingent, And Empty Creditors, Henry T. C. Hu

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Federal securities law seeks to ensure the quality and quantity of information that corporations make publicly available. Informational asymmetries associated with companies in financial distress, but not in bankruptcy, have received little attention. This Article explores some important asymmetries in this context that are curious in their origin, nature, and impact. The asymmetries are especially curious because of the impact of a world with credit default swaps (CDS) and CDS-driven debt “decoupling.” The Article explores two categories of asymmetries. The first relates to information on the company itself. Here, the Article suggests there is fresh evidence for the belief that …