As both plaintiffs and defendants get more sophisticated, the problem of how to litigate mass torts grows more complicated. In particular, both litigants and courts struggle with the question of when a verdict should have preclusive effect in mass tort litigation, and when it should not. Before he passed away last year, Vanderbilt law professor
mass tort
Classic Scholarship – The Challenge of the Mass Trial
By The Editors on
Posted in Strategy
This week, we begin a new feature at Class Action Countermeasures. Much as I occasionally look at classic class-action cases, I’m also going to look at classic scholarship once per month. That scholarship will have to have some connection to class actions or other kinds of aggregated litigation. And I’ll be mining these articles…
Which Mass Tort Cases Deserve Settlement?
By The Editors on
Posted in Settlement
Fordham Law professor Howard Erichson (http://law.fordham.edu/faculty/1095.htm) has posted a new working paper that addresses the thorny issue of settlements in mass tort cases. Titled Uncertainty and the Advantage of Collective Settlement, (forthcoming, DePaul Law Review) it posits six different types of uncertainty in mass torts, each of which he links to well-known cases. …