Complex Litigation
The civil litigation system aims to resolve disputes in an efficient, centralized, and final manner. In the context of mass tort litigation, one technique courts often use to achieve these goals is what I call “scaling up”: holding individual trials, and then applying more
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were originally based upon a straightforward model of adjudication: Resolve the merits of cases at trial and use pretrial procedures to facilitate accurate trial outcomes. Though appealing in principle, this model has little relevance today. As is now well more
This Article identifies a market-based solution for monitoring large-scale litigation proceeding outside of Rule 23’s safeguards. Although class actions dominate the scholarly discussion of mass litigation, the ever increasing restrictions on certifying a class mean that plaintiffs’ more
In recent years, aggregate litigation has moved in the direction of multidistrict litigation followed by mass settlement without certification of a class action—a form sometimes referred to as the “quasi-class action.” Driven by increased restrictions on class certification, more
The federal circuit courts are divided on the question of whether the federal courts’ supplemental jurisdiction power encompasses permissive state law counterclaims that lack an independent basis of federal jurisdiction. By analyzing the arguments set forth in various circuit court more
Though the jurisdiction of U.S. courts is broad enough to give many foreign plaintiffs the ability to file suit here, the doctrine of forum non conveniens (FNC) enables a court to dismiss a case because another forum—typically the plaintiff’s home forum—would be more convenient more
The American Bar Association’s widely adopted Model Rule 1.8(g) requires that attorneys handling aggregate settlements obtain the consent of each client before the settlement is finalized. This method is well suited to cases involving small-scale tort litigation with few parties, but Rule more
Procedural evolution in complex litigation seems to have left the civil jury behind. Reliance on aggregating devices, such as multidistrict litigation and class actions, as well as settlement pressure created by “bellwether” cases, has resulted in cases of national scope being tried more
Litigants’ briefs in the myriad cases arising from the Deepwater Horizon explosion
raise questions about the extent to which the Oil Pollution Act’s two savings clauses
preserve additional remedies, such as punitive damages. A large number of comprehensive
federal more
Accident compensation, and particularly auto accident compensation, is typically
thought to take one of two dichotomous forms: either no-fault or traditional tort.
Further, conventional wisdom holds that while pure no-fault may be an option in
theory, it is not one in practice more