Mass Tort Litigation Blog

Repeat Players in MDL: VW edition

The New York Times has an article by Barry Meier called Lawyers Jostle for Lead Position in Volkswagen Suits.  

Quoted in the article are our own Beth Burch (who has recently written a great article on repeat players in MDL litigation) and Howard Erichson (who has written significant articles about the ethics of settlements in mass tort including Vioxx).

 

Announcement: Call for Papers: Civil Procedure Workshop

Readers may be interested in the following announcement from the organizers of the civil procedure workshop, contact information below. 

 

We are excited to announce the second annual Civil Procedure Workshop, to be co- hosted by the University of Washington School of Law, Seattle University School of Law, and the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. The Workshop will be held at the University of Washington in Seattle on July 14-15, 2016. 

The Workshop gives both emerging and established civil procedure scholars an opportunity
to gather with colleagues and present their work to an expert audience. Scholars will present their papers in small panel sessions. A senior scholar will moderate each panel and lead the commentary. In addition to paper presentations, we intend to engage members of the judiciary and federal civil rulemaking bodies in discussions about current developments in procedure. Our goal is for the Workshop to strengthen the study of procedure as an academic discipline, and to deepen ties among the academy, rulemakers, and the judiciary. Confirmed participants for 2016 include Robert Bone, Sergio Campos, David Engstrom, Samuel Issacharoff, Alexandra Lahav, Alexander Reinert, the Hon. Lee Rosenthal, Joanna Schwartz, and Adam Steinman. 

We welcome all civil procedure scholars to attend this Workshop. Those wishing to present a paper for discussion in the Workshop should submit a two-page abstract by January 15, 2016. While we welcome papers from both emerging and senior scholars, preference may be given to those who have been teaching for less than ten years. We will select papers to be presented by March 1, 2016. Please send all submissions or related questions to Liz Porter. 

The Workshop will provide meals for registrants. Participants must cover travel and lodging costs. We will provide information about reasonably priced hotels as the date approaches.

Feel free to contact us with questions.

 Liz Porter (UW), [email protected]


Brooke Coleman (Seattle U), [email protected]

Dave Marcus (Arizona), [email protected]​

Diversity Jurisdiction, MDL and History

I was just rereading Henry Friendly's Essay on the history of diversity jurisdiction. 

There he quotes from remarks by George Mason:

“What!” he exclaimed, “carry me a thousand miles from home — from my family and business, where perhaps, it will be impossible for me to prove that I paid it [a bond]? ... Suppose I have your bond for £ 1000 — if I have any wish to harrass you, or if I be of a litigious disposition, I have only to assign it to a gentleman in Maryland.”

Henry J. Friendly, The Historic Basis of Diversity Jurisdiction, 41 Harv. L. Rev. 483, 491 (1928).  This reminds me of the concerns raised by individuals swept into the MDL.  The subject is contract, but the idea is the same.

 

Christopher Hodges on US Class Actions: Promise and Reality

Professor Christopher Hodges (Oxford) has posted to SSRN his research paper, US Class Actions: Promise and Reality, EUI Department of Law Research Paper No. 2015/36.  Here's the abstract:

The US class action is the best-known tool of civil procedure for enforcement of mass private rights. It is intended to achieve judicial and procedural economy in civil procedure, and to exert significant pressure on corporate defendants to observe the law. This piece summarises the major empirical evidence on how the mechanism works. It confirms extensive enforcement of law. It also identifies issues of selectivity of case types (especially securities cases brought by investors), high transactional costs and reductions in sums received by claimants, the risk that high economic factors distort the legal merits of settlements, the limited evidence on evaluating the legal merits of outcomes, forum shopping, and aspects of conflicts of interest that have been criticised by European politicians as abusive. The piece notes that these features are predictable consequences of the policy of encouraging widespread private enforcement of law by incentivising intermediaries and reducing risk to claimants. Various questions are noted in relation to the future of collective redress in the different context of the European legal order.

Benjamin Zipursky on Reasonableness In and Out of Negligence Law

Professor Benjamin Zipursky (Fordham) has posted to SSRN his article, Reasonableness In and Out of Negligence Law, 163 U. Pa. L. Rev. 2131 (2015).  Here's the abstract:

The word “reasonable” and its cognates figure prominently in innumerable areas of the law – from antitrust and contract law to administrative and constitutional law, from the common law of nuisance to an assortment of rules in statutes and regulations. While some thinkers have equated “reasonableness” with “rationality,” others have looked to “justifiability,” and others still have decided that “reasonableness” means virtually nothing at all, but serves the important function of allocating decisionmaking authority. The reality is that the term “reasonable” is both vague and ambiguous, and thus plays many different roles in the law. As with terms such as “rights” and “responsibility,” we will benefit from an analysis of “reasonable” that admits that different meanings take center stage in different legal contexts. This broad, ‘varietal’ analysis of reasonableness in the law comprises the first half of the article.

Turning to negligence law, the second half of the article offers a broad critique of the Hand formula conception of reasonableness. The article criticizes both the Posnerian/economic interpretation of the Hand formula and the more basic idea (in the Restatement (First)) that the “unreasonableness” of risk is the core of negligence law. The breach element of negligence law is focused first and foremost not on a level of risk but on a kind of person – a reasonably prudent person or a reasonable person. By attending closely to the role of reasonableness concepts in various aspects of negligence doctrine, and comparing them to reasonableness concepts in other parts of the law, the article constructs and defends a “moderation and mutuality” conception of reasonableness in negligence law.

David Bernstein and Eric Lasker on Daubert and Amending Federal Rule of Evidence 702

Professor David Bernstein (George Mason) and Eric Lasker (Hollingsworth) have posted to SSRN their article, Defending Daubert: It's Time to Amend Federal Rule of Evidence 702, 57 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1 (2015).  Here's the abstract:

The 2000 amendments to Rule 702 sought to resolve the debate that had emerged in the courts in the 1990s over the proper meaning of Daubert by codifying the rigorous and structured approach to expert admissibility announced in the Daubert trilogy. Fifteen years later, however, the amendments have only partially accomplished this objective. Many courts continue to resist the judiciary’s proper gatekeeping role, either by ignoring Rule 702's mandate altogether or by aggressively reinterpreting the Rule’s provisions.

Informed by this additional history of recalcitrance, the time has come for the Judicial Conference to return to the drafting table and finish the job it began in 2000. Rule 702 should be amended to secure the promise of Daubert and effectively protect future litigants and juries from the powerful and quite misleading impact of unreliable expert testimony.