Litigation Commons^™

A Model Litigation Finance Contract, Maya Steinitz, Abigail C. Field

Faculty Scholarship

Litigation financing is nonrecourse funding of litigation by a non-party for a profit. It is a burgeoning and controversial phenomenon that has penetrated the Unites States in recent years. Since "most of the important phenomena of modern litigation are best understood as results of changes in the financing and capitalization of the bar," it is not surprising that litigation financing has been dubbed by RAND as one of the "biggest and most influential trends in civil justice" and by the Chamber of Commerce "a clear and present danger to the impartial and efficient administration of civil justice in the United …

Private Policing Of Mergers & Acquisitions: An Empirical Assessment Of Institutional Lead Plaintiffs In Transactional Class And Derivative Actions, David H. Webber

Faculty Scholarship

Transactional class and derivative actions have long been controversial in both the popular and the academic literatures. Yet, the debate over such litigation has thus far neglected to consider a change in legal technology, adopted in Delaware a dozen years ago, favoring selection of institutional investors as lead plaintiffs in these cases. This Article fills that gap, offering new insights into the utility of mergers and acquisitions litigation. Based on a hand-collected dataset of all Delaware class and derivative actions filed from November 1, 2003 to December 31, 2009, I find that institutional investors play as large of a role …

Preliminary Injunctions Post-Mayo And Myriad, Jacob S. Sherkow

Articles & Chapters

The Supreme Court's recent interest in patentable subject matter has had several, unexpected downstream effects on preliminary injunctions in patent disputes.

The Supreme Court has recently expressed increased interest in patent eligibility, or patentable subject matter, the doctrine that limits the types of inventions eligible for patenting. Its two decisions, Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., in 2012, and Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., in 2013, represented the first broad restrictions on patentable subject matter in over thirty years. And later this term, the Court will decide yet another patent eligibility case: Alice Corp. v. CLS …

All His Sexless Patients: Persons With Mental Disabilities And The Competence To Have Sex, Michael L. Perlin, Alison Lynch

Articles & Chapters

With the growth in the field of mental disability law over the past 50 years, very few topics involving persons with mental illness remain taboo or off limits to scholars and judges who face these issues daily. However, discussions of the question of whether persons with mental disabilities have a right to voluntary sexual interaction often touches a raw nerve in conversations about mental disability law, even with those who are practicing in the field, and the discomfort people feel in examining this topic is exacerbated when discussing individuals who are institutionalized.

Although this often appears to be a difficult …

Class Actions And Justiciability, Sergio J. Campos

Articles

A lingering issue in class action law concerns the case or controversy requirement of Article III, otherwise known as the requirement of justiciability. For purposes of justiciability doctrines such as standing, mootness, and ripeness, is the class action brought by all class members, some class members, or just the class representative?

This Article argues that the answer should be none of the above-it should be the class attorney. This Article first shows that the function of the class action is to assign dispositive control of, and a partial beneficial interest in, the class members' claims to the class attorney. Put …

Compliance And Claim Funding: Testing The Borders Of Lawyers' Monopoly And The Unauthorized Practice Of Law, Michele M. Destefano

Articles

No abstract provided.

Claim Funders And Commercial Claim Holders: A Common Interest Or A Common Problem?, Michele M. Destefano

Articles

Commercial claim funding, where funders invest in business disputes in exchange for a percentage of any eventual settlement or judgment, is a growing industry in the United States. Funders may request confidential information about the claim and litigation strategy both before deciding to invest (to analyze the strength of the claim) and during the course of the financial relationship (to manage the investment). Further, these funders may work and communicate with claim holders and lawyers about the claim. However, there has been little caselaw and little in-depth analysis on whether--and in what circumstances-the attorney--client privilege and work-product doctrine can be …

The Trickle-Down War, Rosa Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The history of the European nation-state, wrote political sociologist Charles Tilly, is inextricably bound up with the history of warfare. To oversimplify Tilly’s nuanced and complex arguments, the story goes something like this: As power-holders (originally bandits and local strongmen) sought to expand their power, they needed capital to pay for weapons, soldiers and supplies. The need for capital and new recruits drove the creation of taxation systems and census mechanisms, and the need for more effective systems of taxation and recruitment necessitated better roads, better communications and better record keeping. This in turn enabled the creation of larger and …

Things We Do With Presumptions: Reflections On Kiobel V. Royal Dutch Petroleum, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The author argues in part I that the presumption should be regarded as categorically inapplicable to statutes conferring jurisdiction on the federal courts. He argues further that the majority opinion in Kiobel supports the conclusion that the presumption is inapplicable to such statutes. It is clear from the Court’s opinion that it was not applying the presumption to determine the geographical scope of the ATS qua jurisdictional statute. It was instead applying the presumption to determine the geographical scope of the federal common law cause of action it had recognized in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain.

Even when the presumption against …

How Congress Should Fix Personal Jurisdiction, Stephen E. Sachs

Faculty Scholarship

Personal jurisdiction is a mess, and only Congress can fix it. The field is a morass, filled with buzzwords of nebulous origin and application. Courts have sought a single doctrine that simultaneously guarantees convenience for plaintiffs, fairness for defendants, and legitimate authority for the tribunal. Caught between these goals, we've let each new fact pattern pull precedent in a different direction, robbing litigants of certainty and blunting the force of our substantive law.

Solving the problem starts with reframing it. Rather than ask where a case may be heard, we should ask who may hear it. If the parties are …

The Problem Of Settlement Class Actions, Howard M. Erichson

Faculty Scholarship

This article argues that class actions should never be certified solely for purposes of settlement. Contrary to the widespread “settlement class action” practice that has emerged in recent decades, contrary to current case law permitting settlement class certification, and contrary to recent proposals that would extend and facilitate settlement class actions, this article contends that settlement class actions are ill-advised as a matter of litigation policy and illegitimate as a matter of judicial authority. This is not to say that disputes should not be resolved on a classwide basis, or that class actions should not be resolved by negotiated resolutions. …

Have Institutional Fiduciaries Improved Securities Class Actions? A Review Of The Empirical Literature On The Pslra's Lead Plaintiff Provision, Michael A. Perino

Faculty Publications

In 1995, Congress substantially revamped the governance of securities class actions when it created the lead plaintiff provision as part of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. This paper reviews the empirical literature evaluating that provision. The story that emerges from these studies is of a largely successful statutory innovation that has markedly improved the conduct of these cases. There is little doubt that passage of the PSLRA spurred institutions to become more active in securities class actions. Overall, the results of that participation are positive. Existing studies demonstrate that cases with institutional lead plaintiffs settle for more and are …

Water Governance Challenges In New Mexico's Middle Rio Grande Valley: A Resilience Assessment, Melina Harm Benson, Dagmar Llewellyn, Ryan Morrison, Mark Stone

Publications

No abstract provided.

Jump In Before It's Too Late: Protecting And Increasing Streamflows In New Mexico, Sharon Wirth

Publications

Freshwater ecosystems need adequate streamflow to supply clean water for humans and maintain healthy habitat for wildlife. Over-appropriation, overuse, climate change, and drought plague New Mexico's rivers, taxing many rivers beyond sustainability. Despite the myriad of problems caused by little or no water in our rivers, policies and procedures to protect and increase streamflows in New Mexico are limited. While most Western states have made demonstrable progress in alleviating various legal and technical barriers to protecting and increasing streamflows, New Mexico has made only limited, recent progress towards solutions for our drying rivers. This article takes a critical look at …

Interested, But Not Injured: The Compromised Status Of Qui Tam Plaintiffs Under The Amended False Claims Act And The Return Of The Citizen Suit, A.G. Harmon

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Missing The Forest For The Trees: Gender Pay Discrimination In Academia, Melissa Hart

Publications

Women in virtually every job category still make less than men. Academia is no exception. This Article will explore some of the structural explanations for this continued disparity and the continued resistance to seriously confronting those structural barriers to equality. Using the still-unfolding story of a charge of discrimination filed against a university, this Article examines the script that has become all-too-familiar in discussions about the gender pay gap, whether in academia or elsewhere. The basic storyline in pay discrimination litigation is this: Evidence is presented about the existence of a gap between men's earnings and women's earnings. The response …

“Where Does A Wise Man Hide A Leaf?” : Modernising The Laws Of Disclosure In The Information Age, Denise Huiwen Wong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Litigation practice has been significantly altered by the advent of electronically stored information in daily corporate life. It is argued that the laws of disclosure should be updated to recognise that technology-assisted document review via keyword searching is crucial in ensuring that the costs of litigation are well managed. In order to facilitate keyword searching, a new legal concept of accuracy in the selection of keywords should be introduced into the laws of disclosure. At the same time, despite the adversarial nature of litigation, it is imperative that parties approach electronic disclosure with a spirit of collaboration in order to …

Product Liability, Franklin P. Brannen Jr.

Mercer Law Review

This Article surveys developments in Georgia product liability law between June 1, 2012 and May 31, 2013. The Article covers noteworthy cases decided during this period by the Georgia Court of Appeals, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and the United States district courts located in Georgia.

Evidence, John E. Hall Jr., W. Scott Henwood, Alex Battey

Mercer Law Review

This year's Survey of evidence finds us in a unique position. The overhaul of the Georgia Evidence Code (Evidence Code) went into effect on January 1, 2013. Therefore, appellate cases continue to emerge that interpret and apply the former rules, providing insight and raising questions about how the new rules have changed the face of evidence in Georgia. This Survey highlights cases decided by the Georgia Court of Appeals and the Georgia Supreme Court between June 1, 2012 and May 31, 2013, that illustrate this tension between the old and new rules of evidence. These cases are presented alongside other …

Trial Practice And Procedure, Brandon L. Peak, John C. Morrison Iii, Tedra C. Hobson, Mary K. Weeks, Jeb Butler, Anna W. Howard, Morgan E. Duncan

Mercer Law Review

This Article addresses several significant cases and legislation of interest to the Georgia civil trial practitioner occurring during the survey period of this publication.