Mass Tort Litigation Blog

"Hot Coffee" Film Director and Producer Susan Saladoff at Southwestern Law School

On this Monday, October 3, Susan Saladoff, the Director and Producer of the HBO film, Hot Coffee: Is Justice Being Served?, will speak at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, as part of Southwestern's Treusch Public Service Lecture Series.  Prominent plaintiffs' attorney and Southwestern alum Brian Panish will also offer commentary.  The film will be shown at 6:00 p.m., followed by the presentations at 7:30 p.m. and a reception afterwards.  The event is free, but parking is $8.  Space is limited, and an RSVP is necessary to attend; RSVP to [email protected] or 213-738-6710.  Here is the flyer, and here is additional information about the event and lecture series.

BGS

Class Actions: On Death and Dying

[This post has been updated.]

There is no question that this term in the Supreme Court's decisions in AT&T v. Concepcion and Wal-Mart v. Dukes justify a gloomy prognosis for class actions.  But the patient was already very sick.  On the arbitration/consumer class action side, Myriam Gilles diagnsed the  problem back in 2004 in her article Opting Out of Liability and this post by David Schwartz tells the rest of the story.  But even if you don't have an arbitration provision, given the differences in state consumer protection laws its extremely difficult to certify a national consumer class action in federal court.  And any class action worth anything (that is, over $5 million) will be in federal court because of CAFA.  On the class action side, CAFA plus the predominance standard of 23(b)(3) means the diagnosis for national consumer class actions in the case where the isn't an arbitration clause is "start making plans for the next life." 

Wal-Mart's cribbed reading of the commonality inquiry might have a role to play here, although I have yet to be convinced that there is a difference between a "common question" and an "answer" - the issue isn't about answers/questions but about the level of generality of the question that is being asked.  Its really a deep jurisprudential issue when you think about it -- at what level of generality can you pitch a question that will tie members of a class together.  The majority opinion in Wal-Mart says that the questions were at a too general level to comply with the common question of fact or law requirement of 23(a), but the analysis of what those questions were (and the glibness) indicates that something else is going on here.  That something else is that the thing that could have been a common question -- whether plaintiff's theory of liability is viable -- cannot be asked because the Supreme Court has a fortiori rejected it.  The most telling sentence of the opinion is this:  "To the contrary, left to their own devices most managers in any corporation—and surely most managers in a corporation that forbids sex discrimination—would select sex-neutral, performance-based criteria for hiring and promotion that produce no actionable disparity at all."  131 S.Ct. 2541, 2554 (2011). (Note that there is no citation included for this proposition.  I did not omit the citation - the Court did not provide one).  The decision on commonality had little to do with commonality or class action doctrine but instead with a rejection of the substantive theory that plaintiff was propounding. Without that theory, there were too many differences to bring all these claims under the same class action umbrella.  But the validity of that theory ought to have been decided not by judicial fiat but by a reasoned opinion based on a full and fair litigation of the question.  Say, on a 12(b)(6) motion for failure to state a claim. 

Because the common question always needed some specificity, I don't think Wal-Mart did much to the commonality inquiry.  What it did do, however, was give judges license to combine the idea behind 12(b)(6) motions for failure to state a claim with the class action inquiry to determine what legal theories would be considered "questions" that could be "common" to the class.  It also warns the federal courts to be more aware of the potential that individual defenses will render the class action unmanageable or create too many differences between class members to justify class treatment.  [Edited to add: But these questions ought to be decided on the typicality or adequacy prong if they are part of 23(a) at all.  There may be a common question as to the class as a whole, but because of available individualized defenses no plaintiff can be typical of the class or an adquate representative. While these distinctions are not determinative of the outcome, if you are going to analyze a rule let's do it correctly]. 

Ignored in all of the discussions I've seen so far, perhaps because it touches on interjurisdictional preclusion (a mouthful if ever there was one), is Smith v. Bayer.  This case allowed what looked like a parallel class action to go forward in state court even though a similar one had been denied certification in federal court. Will a change of scenery from federal to state court help the class action heal?  That is the question left open in Bayer.  [Edited to add: I nearly forgot to mention that Bayer involved a class action that predates CAFA.  Today, most national class actions of any substance would be in federal court. Local class actions would not be, but whether they are viable in the states with smaller economies is an open question.]

ADL

 

 

Sending Mass Torts to State Court

I just read a very interesting student note from 1987 suggesting that in mass tort cases the JPMDL should be permitted to send mass tort cases to state court.  George T. Conway III,* The Consolidation of Multistate Litigation in State Courts, 96 Yale L. J. 1099, 1101 (1987).  The rule of thumb could be that the state with the applicable law would be the target jurisdiction.  Of course this would take new Congressional action to implement, but what an idea! 

*The author is now a litigation partner at Wachtell - I wonder what he would say of his student note with many years of experience under his belt?  If you're reading this, leave a comment or drop me an email. 

ADL

Asbestos Victim Receives $20 Million Jury Verdict

A Miami (Broward County) jury awarded some $20 million to Charles Garrison and his wife in an asbestos case against Union Carbide, Corp.  Garrision was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2008 and explained that he never saw any warning labels on Georgia Pacific's joint compound about its asbestos-laden contents.

The Market Watch press release is here and AboutLawsuits.Com also has coverage available here.

ECB

Monestier on Global Securities Class Actions

Tanya Monestier (of Roger Williams) has posted a draft of her article, "Is Canada the New 'Shangri-La' of Global Securities Class Actions?" on SSRN.  It's forthcoming in the Northwestern Journal of International Law and Business.  Here's the abstract:

There has been significant academic buzz about Silver v. Imax, an Ontario case certifying a global class of shareholders alleging statutory and common law misrepresentation in connection with a secondary market distribution of shares. Although global class actions on a more limited scale have been certified in Canada prior to Imax, it can now be said that global classes have “officially” arrived in Canada. Many predict that the Imax decision means that Ontario will become the new center for the resolution of global securities disputes. This is particularly so after the United States largely relinquished this role last year in Morrison v. National Australia Bank. 

Whether Imax proves to be a meaningful precedent or simply an aberration will largely depend on whether the court dealt appropriately with the conflict of laws issues at the heart of the case. No author has yet addressed the conflict of laws complications posed by the certification of global class actions in Canada; this Article seeks to fill that void. In particular, I use the Imax case as a lens through which to canvass the conflict of laws issues raised by the certification of global classes. I look at the difficult questions of jurisdiction simpliciter, recognition of judgments, choice of law, parallel proceedings, and notice/procedural rights that need to be addressed now that global classes have come to Canada.

ECB

Oil Spill Trial To Begin

District Court Judge Carl Barbier (EDLa) has issued a case managment order for the upcoming trial arising out of the BP Horizon Deep Water Oil Spill.  You can find the order here: Pretrial Order #41.  According to BNA, the MDL has more than 500 lawsuits arising out of the spill.

ADL

Leadership on the Federal Bench: The Craft and Activism of Jack Weinstein

Jeffery B. Morris's new book, Leadeship on the Federal Bench: The Craft and Activism of Jack Weinstein, is now available through Oxford University Press and Amazon.  Here's the description given: 

Leadership on the Federal Bench: The Craft and Activism of Jack Weinstein considers the ways a particularly gifted federal judge seized the opportunities available to district judges to influence the results of the cases before him, and employed the tools available to him to make policy having a national impact. In the book, author Jeffrey Morris considers the ways in which the judge, Jack Weinstein of the Eastern District of New York, has been limited by his position. This book adds to the slim literature about the policy-making role of district judges applying the work of legal historians, political scientists and those trained in the law. Focusing upon an admitted judicial activist - perhaps the most famous, innovative and controversial district judge sitting today - the book permits a close look at activism at the trial level.

Leadership on the Federal Bench: The Craft and Activism of Jack Weinstein begins by analyzing the job of a federal district judge and why it is profitable to study Judge Weinstein. Related topics include Weinstein's background before appointment to the bench; the political and legal environment within which Weinstein has judged and the characteristics of the district in which he sat and its possible impact on him. Part of the book focuses on Weinstein's judicial output for each of his four decades on the bench. Cases are drawn from a diverse number of areas, among them the areas of civil rights, freedom of speech, search and seizures, organized crime and political corruption cases, evidence and procedure. Finally, conclusions are made on the role of district courts, judicial activism in general, along with a summary of Judge Weinstein's career.

One needn't know too much about class actions or mass tort litigation to know about Judge Weinstein's work in everything from asbestos to Agent Orange to Zyprexa.  Judge Weinstein is likewise a prolific scholar and has written a book of his own, Individual Justice in Mass Tort Litigation.

ECB

Class Actions Come to Mexico

The Wall Street Journal Law Blog has an article titled, Class Actions Head South of the Border, which discusses the move to group litigation in Mexico.  Here's an excerpt:

The Mexican law includes various requirements must be satisfied to bring a class action, including that prospective class members be “in the same common factual or legal circumstances,” Chadbourne & Parke explains, noting that the law allows claimants to obtain restitution, monetary damages, or injunctive relief.

Another interesting component of the Mexican law is that it includes a loser pays provision.

For those wanting more background on the law, here’s a Bloomberg Businessweek article from last year.

ECB

 

Book on Vioxx by Snigdha Prakash

Snigdha Prakash has written an interesting book on the Vioxx litigation, "All the Justice Money Can Buy: Corporate Greed on Trial."  The book follows the early course of the Vioxx litigation and then turns its attention to the Humeston/Hermans trial, during which Prakash was embedded with Mark Lanier and his trial team.  Dramatic and well-written, and not shy about taking sides, the book is a great read and offers a rare inside look at the functioning of a trial team and the tensions that can arise among plaintiffs' lawyers in mass tort litigation.

HME

Conference Preview: Mass Torts and the Federal Courts

Sheila Scheuerman (Charleston School of Law and Torts Prof Blog) is putting together what sounds like an exciting conference on mass torts:

The Federal Courts Law Review at the Charleston School of Law is sponsoring a symposium on "Mass Torts in the Federal Courts" on February 24, 2012, in Charleston.  Ken Feinberg will be giving the keynote address.  Panels will address the lessons of Wal-Mart v. Dukes for mass torts, the current issues surrounding preemption in mass tort cases, and a look at the ethical issues in mass tort litigation.  Registration is not yet open, but if you would like additional information about either conference, contact Associate Professor Sheila B. Scheuerman at sscheuerman (at) charlestonlaw.edu.

ADL