Civil Procedure Commons^™

No More “Heads Defendants Win, Tails Plaintiffs Lose”: How The Georgia Supreme Court’S Relation Back Decision In Cannon Rebalances Pleading Power, Jordan Lipp

Mercer Law Review

Imagine your daughter dying in a high-speed police chase—when she was not even the driver that evaded police or caused the crash. You want to hold someone accountable, but you do not know who the right person is if you sue: the deputy, the sheriff in his personal capacity, the sheriff in his official capacity, the county, the sheriff’s office, the county commissioners, the insurer of the police car? You sue the wrong one, and it is too late. Now what?

Thankfully for you, Georgia has forgiving pleading standards. Relation back is a legal fiction that assumes a claim was …

The Federal Rules Of Pro Se Procedure, Andrew Hammond

Fordham Law Review

In recent years, more than a quarter of all federal civil cases were filed by people without legal representation. Yet, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure refer to pro se litigants only once, and the U.S. Supreme Court has not considered in over a decade the question of what process is due to unrepresented civil litigants. Many judicial opinions in these cases go unpublished, and many are never appealed. Instead, the task of developing rules for pro se parties has taken place inside our federal district courts, whose piecemeal and largely unnoticed local rulemaking governs thousands of such litigants each …

The Impending Collision Of Smart Contracts And The Automatic Stay, Carter D. Wietecha

Notre Dame Law Review

This Note begins by briefly examining the nature and function of smart contracts, including how they have changed over time. Next, it evaluates the relevant language of Code provisions dealing with the automatic stay and discusses decisions treating the interaction of early generation smart contracts with the automatic stay. It concludes with a discussion of how the Supreme Court’s recent decision in City of Chicago v. Fulton has significantly changed the legal landscape for smart contracts and how the automatic stay will likely interact with smart contracts in the near future.

Creating A Civil Remedy In Georgia For Survivors Of Out-Of-State Childhood Sexual Abuse, Alexandra H. Bradley

Mercer Law Review

Sexual abuse casts long shadows and causes long-lasting effects on its survivors, particularly children. Especially tragic, most abused children are abused by an adult whom that child knows and trusts. This abuse by anyone, especially by a child’s parents or close family friend, often causes lifelong emotional damage. Survivors generally do not recognize the extent of their abuse until many years later.

This late onset or delayed discovery has made it difficult for courts to provide redress. Although technically children could sue their abuser when the abuse occurs, children generally do not know they have a cause of action, nor …

So Help Me, God, Decide This Case: The Eleventh Circuit’S New Standard For Dismissing Religious Jurors During Deliberations, Amanda Claxton

Mercer Law Review

You are on trial for a crime. Maybe you did precisely what the government claims, though perhaps not. However, a judge will not decide your fate because you exercised your constitutional right to a jury trial. During deliberations, you hear that a juror practices a religion condemning those who commit the crime you are accused of. You feel the juror would unfairly prejudice your chances of walking away freely. To your dismay, the judge refuses to dismiss the juror. You ask whether allowing this prejudicial juror to determine your fate is legal. After United States v. Brown, it is. …

Civil Procedure Update 2022 (Handout And Slide Deck), Verónica C. Gonzales, Julio C. Romero

Faculty Scholarship

This presentation aims to 1) review recent amendments to the state and federal rules of civil procedure; 2) help you understand the impact of recent federal and state published opinions interpreting and applying the rules of civil procedure; and 3) assess your understanding of the updates.

The Mother Of Exiles Is Abandoning Her Children: The Systemic Failure To Protect Unaccompanied Minors Arriving At Our Borders, Rosa M. Peterson

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Unaccompanied minors arrive at the United States border every day. Many brought by the hope of finding a life lived without fear, a luxury many United States citizens take for granted. Their truths become the barriers and shackles which keep them in detention centers and unaccompanied minor facilities throughout the United States; children find their very words wielded as weapons against them in immigration court. Words often spoken to therapists in perceived confidence, during counseling sessions. This practice is a systemic failure to protect unaccompanied minors arriving at our borders who are seeking protection and help. The United States …

Confidentiality, Warning And Aids: A Proposal To Protect Patients, Third Parties And Physicians

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Mad Plume V. Mad Plume, 22-Ap-05 (Blkft. Tr. Ct. App., April 5, 2022), Blackfeet Appellate Court

Court Decisions

In the Blackfeet Tribal Court of Appeals, the Court reiterated that is will not consider an appeal that is untimely. The Blackfeet Law and Order Code, Ch. 11, Sec. 13 E requires appeals to be filed within ten days.

Acid Rain: Detoxifying Diversity Jurisdiction’S Poisonous Cycle, Baerett Nelson, Gavyn Roedel

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

Diversity jurisdiction authorizes federal courts to act as impartial tribunals over certain matters of state law. To preserve states' judicial sovereignty, the US Supreme Court has prohibited diversity courts from directly interpreting state law, holding that federal courts must "predict" the legal outcome as if a state court had adjudicated. However, litigant abuse hinders consistency in legal outcomes. Discrepancies between courts spur forum shopping, which cyclically generates more legal incongruence. This paper identifies a "toxic cycle" plaguing diversity jurisdiction and offers five prescriptions which courts and Congress must use to reverse it.

The Exchange Of Recognition And Enforcement Of Foreign Judgments Between Saudi Arabia And The United States, Ibrahim Saleh Aloraini

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

Saudi Arabians and Americans face challenges when they seek to enforce judgments in each other’s country courts because of the absence of international conventions on recognition and enforcement of foreign country money judgments. The lack of such conventions impacts the aggrieved party interest for businesspeople and individuals from both countries, and no research has been found that discusses an agreement between the two counties on foreign judgments. Therefore, this dissertation focuses on the challenges parties face when they desire to enforce a judgment either in Saudi Arabia or the U.S. The study examines the laws that govern foreign country money …

Presuit Civil Protective Orders On Discovery, Jeffrey A. Parness

Georgia State University Law Review

There are few civil procedure laws broadly authorizing trial courts in the United States to consider presuit requests seeking protection from discovery sanctions or spoliation claims in later civil actions. There should be more laws on presuit protective orders addressing information maintenance, preservation, and production.

New presuit protective order laws are most apt where there have been demands by potential adversaries involving alleged information preservation duties under civil discovery laws or under substantive spoliation laws; where the recipients have strong reasons to secure early judicial clarifications; and where the availability and use of presuit protective orders will serve both private …

Jurisdictional Elements And The Jury, G. Alexander Nunn

Faculty Scholarship

Do jurisdictional elements in criminal statutes actually matter? Of course, formally, the answer is obvious; jurisdictional elements are of paramount importance. In fact, they often serve as the entire justifying basis for a federal (rather than state) criminal prosecution. But beyond mere technicalities, do jurisdictional elements actually make a difference in a jury deliberation room?

In pursuit of an answer, this Article undertakes a novel empirical study designed to assess the antecedent issue of how laypeople weigh jurisdictional elements when determining guilt. The project’s experiment ultimately finds that when one increases the amount of evidence demonstrating a defendant’s substantive guilt, …

How Class Action Fees Work In The Eleventh Circuit, Jeffrey G. Casurella

Mercer Law Review

Litigating the reasonableness of attorney’s fees in a Federal Rule 23 class action is no picnic. Usually, payment of legal fees is set from a contractual arrangement between attorney and client. That is often quick and easy. Conversely, payment of class action legal fees is set by a district court. That process can be drawn out and labor intensive. In this latter situation, a district court must be persuaded, ultimately, that the amount of the award is reasonable. But what does “reasonable” mean? It is a tricky question—class action math always is—and litigating it can become contact sport.

The parties …

Service By Publication: A Modern Alternative, Darrell L. Sutton, Samuel M. Lyon

Mercer Law Review

Service is perhaps the most basic practice of law imaginable. All plaintiffs must serve, and all defendants must be served, for a case to proceed forward. Without service, there is no case to settle—no legal battle to wage.

According to the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law[.]” Colloquially known as the Due Process Clause, this phrase has significant implications for the pendency of actions against defendants, and in particular, how those defendants are served. While “traditional” service methods, such as personal service, assure …

Substituted Service And The Hague Service Convention, William S. Dodge

William & Mary Law Review

State law plays a surprisingly large role in transnational litigation, and how it defines the applicability of the Hague Service Convention is an important example. In Volkswagenwerk Aktiengesellschaft v. Schlunk, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Convention does not apply when, under state law, service of process is made within the United States. In Schlunk, Illinois law permitted substituted service on the U.S. subsidiary of a foreign parent company, so the Convention did not apply. This Article looks at substituted service under state law today and when it permits avoidance of the Hague Convention. The Article focuses …

Jury Nullification As A Spectrum, Richard Lorren Jolly

Pepperdine Law Review

Jury nullification traditionally refers to the jury’s power to deliver a verdict that is deliberately contrary to the law’s clearly dictated outcome. A spirited scholarship is built around this conception, with some painting nullification as democratic and others as anarchic. But this debate is largely unmoored from experience. In practice, courts have formally eliminated the jury’s authority to review the law and have established procedures that make it easier to prevent and overturn seemingly nullificatory verdicts. Thus, outside of a jury’s verdict acquitting a criminal defendant, jury nullification as traditionally understood does not exist. In no other context is a …

State Spoliation Claims In Federal District Courts, Jeffrey A. Parness

Catholic University Law Review

The increasing amounts of electronically stored information (ESI) relevant to civil litigation, and the ease of their loss, caused federal lawmakers explicitly to address the possible consequences of certain pre-suit or post-suit ESI losses. These lawmakers acted in both 2006 and 2015 through Federal Civil Procedure (FRCP) 37(e). But they acted only on certain ESI. Their actions have prompted increasing attention to the significant risks of pre-suit and post-suit losses of all ESI, and of non-ESI, otherwise discoverable in civil actions. In addition, their actions have spurred increasing attention to the availability of substantive law claims involving spoliation of information …

Class Action Boundaries, Daniel Wilf-Townsend

Fordham Law Review

In recent years, some judges have begun doubting—and at times denying— their jurisdiction in class actions whose membership crosses state lines. This doubt has followed from the U.S. Supreme Court’s significant tightening of personal jurisdiction doctrine, which has led many to argue that courts no longer have jurisdiction over the claims of unnamed class members unless those claims have some independent relationship with the forum state. Such an argument raises foundational questions about due process and federalism, and has significant implications for the size, location, and feasibility of many class actions. This Article argues that what it terms the “state-border …

Reply Or Perish: The Federal Rule 83(A)(1) Problem With Local Rules Requiring Responses To 12(B)(6) Motions, Alexis Pawlowski

Fordham Law Review

The federal courts of appeals are divided over whether district courts have the legal authority to grant Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss solely for lack of reply pursuant to local rules requiring responses to motions. Seven circuits hold that district courts must always consider the merits of an unopposed Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss. However, the First and D.C. Circuits allow district courts to dismiss Rule 12(b)(6) motions for lack of response pursuant to local rules in certain circumstances. The majority view is that the use of these local rules in the First and D.C. Circuits …