Litigation Commons^™

Teach Your Jurors Well: Using Jury Instructions To Educate Jurors About Factors Affecting The Accuracy Of Eyewitness Testimony, Derek Simmonsen

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Spoliation Of Electronic Evidence: Sanctions Versus Advocacy, Charles W. Adams

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

This Article proposes that courts should refrain from imposing adverse inference jury instructions as sanctions for the spoliation of evidence. This proposal bears some similarity to the approach taken twenty years ago by the 1993 amendments to Rule 11, which constrained courts' ability to sanction. Instead of imposing an adverse jury instruction as a sanction for spoliation of evidence, courts should allow evidence of spoliation to be admitted at trial if a reasonable jury could find that spoliation had occurred and if the spoliation was relevant to a material issue. If a court allows the introduction of evidence of spoliation …

Debate: The Future Of Mass Torts, Sergio J. Campos, Howard M. Erichson

Articles

No abstract provided.

Securities Class Actions As Public Law, James D. Cox

Faculty Scholarship

The Political Economy of Fraud on the Market provides a wide-ranging criticism of and thoughtful reforms for securities class actions....However, both their critique of contemporary class actions and their model of the reforms they propose leave unexamined a good many matters relevant to both the criticism and reform of securities class actions....Bratton and Wachter earn high marks for being less passionate and much more thoughtful than others in the chorus calling for reform; indeed, their observations are among the most thoughtful to be found in this area. Nonetheless, their analysis is incomplete in many important areas, and in addition to …

The Impact Of Third-Party Financing On Transnational Litigation, Cassandra Burke Robertson

Faculty Publications

Third-party litigation finance is a growing industry. The practice, also termed “litigation lending,” allows funders with no other connection to the lawsuit to invest in a plaintiff’s claim in exchange for a share of the ultimate recovery. Most funding agreements have focused on domestic litigation in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. However, the industry is poised for growth worldwide, and the recent environmental lawsuit brought by Ecuadorian plaintiffs against Chevron demonstrates that litigation funding is also beginning to play a role in transnational litigation.

This article, prepared for a symposium on “International Law in Crisis,” speculates about …

Forum Non Conveniens And Enforcement Of Foreign Judgments, Christopher A. Whytock, Cassandra Burke Robertson

Faculty Publications

When citizens of Ecuador sued Texaco, Inc. in a U.S. court seeking damages for oil contamination in the Amazon, Texaco successfully moved to dismiss the suit in favor of Ecuador based on the forum non conveniens doctrine, arguing – as that doctrine requires – that Ecuador was an adequate alternative forum and more appropriate than the United States for hearing the suit. The plaintiffs then refiled the suit in Ecuador, and a court there entered a multi-billion dollar judgment against Chevron Corporation, which had merged with Texaco. Chevron now argues that the Ecuadorian legal system suffers from deficiencies that should …

Survey Of Illinois Law: At Long Last, A Long Look At Respondents In Discovery, 35 S. Ill. U. L.J. 703 (2011), Marc Ginsberg

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mismatch: The Misuse Of Market Efficiency In Market Manipulation Class Actions, Charles R. Korsmo

Faculty Publications

Plaintiffs commonly bring two distinct types of claims under Section 1(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934: 1) claims of material misrepresentations or omissions; and 2) claims of trade-based market manipulation. Despite the distinctive features of the two types of claims, courts have tended to treat them identically when applying the “fraud on the market” doctrine. In particular, courts have required both types of plaintiffs to make identical showings that the relevant security traded in an “efficient market” in order to gain a presumption of reliance. The reasons for requiring such a showing by plaintiffs in a misrepresentation case …

Effective Pre-Trial Motions: Persuading The Judge, Maureen A. Howard

Articles

Victories won in pre-trial motions can significantly affect the direction and outcome of a trial. For this reason, successful trial lawyers prepare for motions with the same thoroughness that they employ for the trial itself. Arguing a motion to a trial judge, however, is different from arguing your case to a jury; to be effective, an advocate needs to be mindful of the difference.

Judges generally resist what they perceive as emotional manipulation, theatrics, or excessive rhetoric. Many judges expect lawyers to cleanly and succinctly argue the facts and the law without employing any appeal to emotion. That being said, …

Good Medicine/Bad Medicine And The Law Of Evidence: Is There A Role For Proof Of Character, Propensity, Or Prior Bad Conduct In Medical Negligence Litigation?, 63 S.C. L. Rev. 367 (2011), Marc Ginsberg

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Selling Sex: Analyzing The Improper Use Defense To Contract Enforcement Through The Lens Of Carroll V. Beardon, 59 Clev. St. L. Rev. 693 (2011), Julie M. Spanbauer

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

The 1963 decision of the Supreme Court of Montana in Carroll v. Beardon occupies less than three full pages in the Pacific Reporter and involves a simple real estate transaction in which a "madam" sold a house used for prostitution to another "madam." The opinion is the last in a long line of cases which speak specifically to the issue of enforcement of facially legitimate contracts that in some manner involve or are related to prostitution. It is commonly cited in treatises and hornbooks as representative of the movement by courts toward enforcement of such contracts under the law of …

State Secrets Are A Privilege, Not A Right: Can Foreign Victims Of Extraordinary Rendition And Torture Overcome The State Secrets Privilege Using The Alien Tort Statute, Andrew Kingman

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Civil Procedure - Supreme Court's Vaden Decision Regarding Federal Question Jurisdiction Does Not Apply To Diversity Jurisdiction - Northport Health Services Of Arkansas, Llc V. Rutherford, 605 F.3d 483 (8th Cir. 2010), Joseph D. Picozzi

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Determining Self-Employment Income For Child Support Purposes: The Massachusetts View Compared With The National View, Jason V. Owens

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law - Permitting Blanket Strip-Search Policies For All Arrestees Entering General Jail Population - Florence V. Board Of Chosen Freeholders Of Burlington County, 621 F.3d 296 (3d Cir. 2010), Michael Beler

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Tort Damages - Medical Provider's Charges And Range Of Payments Accepted For Services Rendered Is Admissible Under Section 79g - Law V. Griffith, 930 N.E.2d 126(Mass. 2010), Matthew Blum

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

The Freedom Of Information Act Trial, 61 Am. U. L. Rev. 217 (2011), Margaret B. Kwoka

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the paucity of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases that go to trial and courts' preference for resolving these disputes at the summary judgment stage. Using traditional legal analysis and empirical evidence, this Article explores whether we should expect FOIA cases to go to trial and how the scarcity of FOIA trials compares to the trial rate in civil litigation generally. It concludes that the unusual use of summary judgment in FOIA cases has unjustifiably all but eliminated FOIA trials, which occur in less than 1 % of FOIA cases. It further examines how conducting FOIA trials …

The Price Of Pay To Play In Securities Class Actions, Adam C. Pritchard, Stephen J. Choi, Drew T. Johnson-Skinner

Articles

We study the effect of campaign contributions to lead plaintiffs—“pay to play”—on the level of attorney fees in securities class actions. We find that state pension funds generally pay lower attorney fees when they serve as lead plaintiffs in securities class actions than do individual investors serving in that capacity, and larger funds negotiate for lower fees. This differential disappears, however, when we control for campaign contributions made to offcials with infuence over state pension funds. This effect is most pronounced when we focus on state pension funds that receive the largest campaign contributions and that associate repeatedly as lead …

Getting Good Results For Clients By Building Good Working Relationships With 'Opposing Counsel', John M. Lande

Faculty Publications

Lawyers’ relationships with their “opposing counsel” make a big difference in how well they handle their cases. “Opposing counsel” often do oppose each other, sometimes quite vigorously, though they also regularly cooperate with each other. In the normal course of litigation, lawyers need to cooperate on many procedural matters. In some cases, they also cooperate to achieve their respective clients’ substantive interests. If the lawyers have a bad relationship, the case is likely to be miserable for everyone involved. If they have a good relationship, they are more likely to agree on procedural matters, exchange information informally, take reasonable negotiation …

Plausible Answers And Affirmative Defenses, Eric S. Janus, Thomas Tinkham

Faculty Scholarship

Our federal courts have introduced a degree of uncertainty in the law of pleading that ought to be resolved with a clear decision about the scope of Twombly and Iqbal. We write to set forth what we believe are the overwhelming arguments in support of the developing majority view: pleading standards should not distinguish between plaintiffs and defendants, or between pleadings asserting and pleadings defending against a claim. Proponents of the minority view make policy arguments grounded in the asserted realities of litigation, leveraging small textual differences between Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 8(a) and 8(c). But the …