Litigation Commons^™

Antibiotic Resistance, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

Ten years ago, when I wrote War Stories,' copyright lawyers were fighting over the question whether unlicensed personal, noncommercial copying, performance or display would be deemed copyright infringement. I described three strategies that lawyers for book publishers, record labels, and movie studios had deployed to try to assure that the question was answered the way they wanted it to be. First, copyright owners were labeling all unlicensed uses as "piracy" on the ground that any unlicensed use might undermine copyright owners' control. That epithet helped to obscure the difference between unlicensed uses that invaded defined statutory exclusive rights and other …

Regulatory Litigation In The European Union: Does The U.S. Class Action Have A New Analogue?, S. I. Strong

Faculty Articles

The United States has long embraced the concept of regulatory litigation, whereby individual litigants, often termed “private attorneys general,” are allowed to enforce certain public laws as a matter of institutional design. Although several types of regulatory litigation exist, the U.S. class action is often considered the paradigmatic model for this type of private regulation.

For years, the United States appeared to be the sole proponent of both regulatory litigation and large-scale litigation. However, in February 2012, the European Union dramatically reversed its existing policies toward mass claims resolution when the European Parliament adopted a resolution proposing to create a …

Evaluating And Improving The Mdl Process, Francis Mcgovern, John G. Heyburn

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Paul Finkelman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The North Carolina Racial Justice Act: An Essay On Substantive And Procedural Fairness In Death Penalty Litigation, Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Case For Trial By Formula, Alexandra Lahav

Faculty Articles and Papers

The civil justice system tolerates inconsistent outcomes in cases brought by similarly situated litigants. One reason for this is that in cases such as Wal-Mart v. Dukes, the Supreme Court has increasingly emphasized liberty over equality. The litigants’ right to a “day in court” has overshadowed their right to equal treatment. However, an emerging jurisprudence at the district court level is asserting the importance of what this Article calls “outcome equality” – equal results reached in similar cases. Taking the example of mass torts litigation, this Article explains how innovative procedures such as sampling are a solution to the problem …

Tending To Potted Plants: The Professional Identity Vacuum In Garcetti V. Ceballos, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Law And The Argumentative Theory, 90 Or. L. Rev. 837 (2012), Timothy P. O'Neill

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

Like many law professors, I have coached my share of moot court teams. As you probably know, in most competitions students either choose or are assigned one side of the case to brief. But for the oral argument segment of the competition, students must argue both sides of the case, “on-brief” and “off-brief,” often in alternate rounds.

At the end of a competition, with their heads still swimming with arguments and counterarguments, students will sometimes ask, “OK, so can you tell us which is the correct side?” I always say, “Of course I can. . . . The correct side …

Electronic Discovery And The Constitution: Inaccessible Justice, Jennifer M. Smith

Journal Publications

Computers are the cynosure of American society. As a result, most information is stored electronically and only a small amount of information ever becomes a paper document. This explosion of electronically stored information has affected every aspect of society, including the court system. Litigation is drastically different than a few years ago due to this onset of electronically stored information. The discovery of electronically stored information in litigation has become known as electronic discovery. For many, electronic discovery is expensive and complicated, and thus, litigants are settling frivolous cases to avoid the costs and complexities of engaging in discovery to …

Information Lost And Found, Frederic M. Bloom

Publications

At the core of every lawsuit is a mix of information-revealing documents that chronicle a party's malfeasance, guarded memos that outline a lawyer's trial strategy, fading memories that recall a jury's key mistakes. Yet the law's system for managing that information is still poorly understood. This Article makes new and better sense of that system. It begins with an original examination of five pieces of our civil information architecture--evidence tampering rules, automatic disclosure requirements, work product doctrine, peremptory challenge law, and bans on juror testimony--and compiles a novel study of how those doctrines intersect and overlap. It then fits these …

Forum Non Conveniens On Appeal: The Case For Interlocutory Review, Cassandra Burke Robertson

Faculty Publications

Court-access doctrine in transnational litigation is plagued by uncertainty. Without a national court-access policy, federal courts often reach inconsistent forum non conveniens decisions even on very similar facts. This inconsistency is compounded by the district court’s largely unreviewable discretion in making those forum-access decisions, which precludes effective resolution of these conflicts through the appellate process. As a result, the law underlying the forum non conveniens doctrine remains unsettled, creating systemic inefficiency both in litigation procedure and in regulatory policy.

This article, prepared for the symposium “Our Courts and the World: Transnational Litigation and Civil Procedure,” argues that expanding appellate review …

A Question Of Taste: Touchstones For Determining The Certifiability Of Classwide Claims For Declaratory And Injunctive Relief Under Rule 23 Of The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure, Randy D. Gordon

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Claim Accrual Under The Federal Tort Claims Act: When Should Claimants File Suit Against The Federal Bureau Of Investigation For Tort Liability, Caitlin A. Romasco

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Firearms Identification: The Need For A Critical Approach To, And Possible Guidelines For, The Admissibility Of Ballistics Evidence, Bonnie Lanigan

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Swept Under The Rug: The Brady Disclosure Obligation In A Pre-Plea Context, Daniel Conte

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Closing The Loophole In Massachusetts Protection Order Legislation To Provide Greater Security For Victims Of Sexual Assault: Has Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 258e Closed It Enough, Hayley Jodoin

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Cafa's Impact On Forum Shopping And The Manipulation Of The Civil Justice System, Kalee Difazio

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law - In Protecting One's Right To Speak, The First Amendment Also Protects One's Right To Lie - 281 Care Committee V. Arneson, 638 F.3d 621 (8th Cir. 2011), Jaclyn Mcneely

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Criminal Law - Use Of Equitable Tolling To Enforce Violations Of Supervised Release After Original Term Has Expired - United States V. Buchanan, 638 F.3d 448 (4th Cir. 2011), Eric Speed

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Play Through The Whistle: The Scope Of Anti-Retaliation Protection For Employee Complaints Pursuant To Erisa Section 510, James Coughlin

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.