Litigation Commons^™

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

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Prioritization Of Criminal Over Civil Counsel And The Discounted Danger Of Private Power, Kathryn A. Sabbeth

Florida State University Law Review

This Article seeks to make two contributions to the literature on the role of counsel. First, it brings together civil Gideon research and recent studies of collateral consequences. Like criminal convictions, civil judgments result in far-reaching collateral consequences, and these should be included in any evaluation of the private interests that civil lawyers protect. Second, this Article argues that the prioritization of criminal defense counsel over civil counsel reflects a mistaken view of lawyers’ primary role as a shield against government power. Lawyers also serve a vital role in checking the power of private actors. As private actors increasingly take …

Not Treble Damages: Cartel Recoveries Are Mostly Less Than Single Damages, John M. Connor, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

Antitrust law provides treble damages for victims of antitrust violations, but the vast majority of private cases settle. The average or median size of these settlements relative to the overcharges involved has, until now, been only the subject of anecdotes or speculation. To ascertain what we term "Recovery Ratios," we assembled a sample consisting of every completed private U.S. cartel case discovered from 1990 to mid-2014 for which we could find the necessary information. For each of these 71 cases we collected, we assembled neutral scholarly estimates of affected commerce and overcharges. We compared these to the damages secured in …

Trial Practice And Procedure, John O'Shea Sullivan, Ashby K. Fox, Tala Amirfazli

Mercer Law Review

The 2014 survey period yielded noteworthy decisions relating to federal trial practice and procedure in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, several of which involved issues of first impression. This Article analyzes recent developments in the Eleventh Circuit, including significant rulings in the areas of statutory interpretation, subject matter jurisdiction, arbitration, and civil procedure.

Class Actions, Thomas M. Byrne, Stacey Mcgavin Mohr

Mercer Law Review

After an uneventful 2013 on the class action front, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit tackled an assortment of class action issues during 2014, which often required the court to navigate around a recent wave of Supreme Court precedents affecting that area.

Ethical Responsibility And Legal Liability Of Lawyers For Failure To Institute Or Monitor Litigation Holds, Nathan M. Crystal

Akron Law Review

The ethical and legal basis for subjecting counsel to discipline or liability for failing to initiate or implement litigation holds in connection with ESI exists. Recent important cases, while not imposing discipline or liability on counsel, have continued to lay the ground work for such liability. ...Cases in which counsel are held liable for damages to their clients or subject to discipline for failing to comply with well established ESI discovery obligations will not be long in coming as the new approach to winning litigation through discovery continues to develop.

Interlocutory Review Of Litigation-Avoidance Claims: Insights From Appeals Under The Federal Arbitration Act, Roger J. Perlstadt

Akron Law Review

Part I of this article outlines and critiques current law on stays pending appeal of refusals to enforce purported arbitration agreements. Part II proposes a simple analysis of expected error costs to determine whether to stay litigation pending interlocutory appeal of rejections of litigationavoidance claims. This analysis looks to (1) potential harm to plaintiffs of erroneously staying litigation pending appeal, (2) potential harm to defendants of erroneously refusing to stay litigation pending appeal, and (3) the likelihood of each of those types of harms arising, which is based on the likelihood that the district court’s denial of the litigation avoidance …

Is Meaningful Peer Review Headed Back To Florida?, Brendan A. Sorg

Akron Law Review

This comment lays the foundation to evaluate the sustainability of Amendment 7 post-PSQIA in Part II by first examining medical peer review, its origin, its evolution and why peer review remains important to patient safety. Although many physicians dislike peer review, Congress has acknowledged its importance by making peer review mandatory and by providing the statutory protections to ensure peer review remains meaningful.7 States have followed suit, passing their own laws that provide for the protection of peer review materials. Part II also addresses how Amendment 7 reversed Florida’s historical approach providing broad peer review protection and how this erosion …

What Are Lawyers For?, Daniel Markovits

Akron Law Review

What are lawyers for? What social purposes do lawyers serve? What functions underwrite the special obligations and entitlements that accompany the lawyer’s professional role? I shall try to sketch an answer to these questions, at least with respect to lawyers who function as litigators, in adjudication. The answer will surprise many. Lawyers, I shall argue, do not serve truth or justice, and should not seek them. Instead, lawyers serve to legitimate

New Hardware And Software Innovations (For Volumetric Modeling), A. Keith Turner

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

19 pages (includes illustrations and maps).

Bellwether Trial Selection In Multi-District Litigation: Empirical Evidence In Favor Of Random Selection, Loren H. Brown, Matthew A. Holian, Arindam Ghosh

Akron Law Review

For decades, courts overseeing mass tort litigation have struggled with how to identify the right plaintiffs for early trials. These initial trials, often called “bellwether” trials, are intended to help the parties evaluate the merits of other cases in the same litigation. But a successful bellwether process depends heavily on the method by which the trials are selected. A process that all litigants regard as fair and that results in the selection of plaintiffs who are representative of the claims of other plaintiffs can help to facilitate the resolution of an entire mass tort docket, whereas a process that is …

Inmates’ E-Mails With Their Attorneys: Off-Limits For The Government?, Amelia H. Barry

Catholic University Law Review

The attorney-client privilege is vital to inmates who otherwise have limited opportunities for private communications in prison. Traditionally, inmates have only been able to communicate with their attorneys via in-person visits, phone calls, and mailed letters. As federal inmates have begun using e-mail to converse with their attorneys, courts have had to determine if these conversations are protected by the attorney-client privilege. This Comment discusses courts’ approaches to this question, many of which have found that inmates’ e-mail communications with their attorneys are not privileged because by using the federal prison e-mail system, which warns users that conversations can be …

Scrutiny Of The Venire, Scrutiny From The Bench: Smithkline Beecham Corp. V. Abbott Laboratories And The Application Of Heightened Scrutiny To Sexual Orientation Classifications, Parker Williams

Catholic University Law Review

In SmithKline Beecham Corp. v. Abbott Laboratories, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals applied heightened scrutiny to a sexual orientation classification. Through SmithKline, the Ninth Circuit became one of the first federal circuit courts to do so explicitly; and by unequivocally applying a more exacting standard than rational basis, it furthered the framework developed in cases such as Romer v. Evans, Lawrence v. Texas, and United States v. Windsor. This Note asserts that SmithKline is a significant victory for the advancement of LGBT rights, as evidenced by its use to strike down several same-sex marriage bans …

Summary Of Logan V. Abe, 131 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 31 (Jun. 4, 2015), Michael S. Valiente

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

A party incurs an expense even if a third party pays the expense on the party’s behalf, as long as the party would otherwise be legally obligated to pay the expense. Thus, costs and reasonable attorney fees that a third party paid on behalf of a litigant can be recovered under NRS 17.115(4) and NRCP 68(f)(2). In addition, a party can recover expert witness fees even if the expert did not testify at trial and was not deposed.

The Call To Witness: Historical Divides, Literary Narrative, And The Power Of Oath, Nancy Cook

Marquette Law Review

A decade ago, in her book, Narrative, Authority and Law, Robin West posed these questions: How might we develop a moral sensibility with which to criticize law that is independent of the influence of law? How should we criticize law from a moral point of view, given the influence of law over our moral beliefs? What is the role of narrative in this enterprise?

The “Call to Witness” is an entreaty to look to narratives as acts of witness for a partial answer to these questions. Narratives bring to light the real conflicts underlying court cases and law, the motives …

Heir Property In The African American Community: From Promised Lands To Problem Lands, Roy W. Copeland

Professional Agricultural Workers Journal

Abstract

African American landowners have been reluctant to take advantage of intergenerational succession laws which provide for an orderly transfer of property from one generation to the next. This reluctance has led to a prevalence of heir property. Heir property is created when a person dies intestate. Heir property has created an impediment to wealth accumulation and has contributed to African American land loss in America. Partition actions are a byproduct of heir property which has operated to accelerate the loss of real property in the African American community. The Uniform Partition of Heir Property Act provides for procedural safeguards …

Newsroom: Horwitz On Closed Courtroom Debate, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Pbc: Safe Passage Through Guardianship, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Obtaining International Judicial Assistance Under The Federal Rules And The Hague Convention On The Taking Of Evidence Abroad In Civil And Commercial Matters: An Exposition Of The Procedures And A Practical Example: In Re Westinghouse Uranium Contract Litigation, Robert J. Augustine

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: National Law Journal: Logan On Bp Claims, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.