Plaintiffs’ lawyer-turned-professor Morris Ratner has published a new article on making litigation costs a profit center for class action plaintiffs. You may remember he wrote about this issue before with Professor William Rubinstein. This new article, titled Class Counsel as Litigation Funders, makes it clearer that he isn’t talking so much about allowing plaintiffs’
Scholarship
Size Matters: The Psychology of the Class Action
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Posted in Scholarship
Back when the Dukes class action was before the Supreme Court, journalists and academics wrote a number of pieces—some longer, some shorter—about whether a class action could be too large. (After the fact, University of Chicago professor William Hubbard published an illuminating article on the same topic.) For the most part, the conclusions…
Vulnerability Theory & Class Actions
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Posted in Class Action, Scholarship
SUNY-Buffalo professor Christine Bartholomew has an article out with the intriguing title “Redefining Predator and Prey in Class Actions.” Unfortunately, it does not use zoology or mathematical predator-prey equations to explain class litigation—the kind of loopy academic mashups that can be both fun to read and insightful. Instead, she uses a new “vulnerability…
The Guardianship Model of the Class Action
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Posted in Scholarship
Northwestern Law professor Martin Redish should be very familiar to readers of this blog. I’ve covered his work before, from his constitutional challenges to the class action through his critique of the cy pres remedy to his surprising turn to what looked like a “trust model” of the class action last year. Professor Redish’s work…
A Theory of Novel Injury Theories
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Posted in Class Action, Scholarship
Back in 2010, noted legal scholar Marc Galanter wrote an article on “The Dialectic of Injury and Remedy.” It contains only one explicit mention of class actions, but, in general, touches on some points that recur frequently for class action lawyers.
Professor Galanter’s primary argument is that both injuries and remedies are socially…
The State of the Merger Class Action
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Posted in Scholarship
Merger-challenge class actions have become very popular in the last decade. (For a great source of data, check Cornerstone Research’s surveys on the subject.) They operate similar to traditional securities class actions, but have found a way of resurrecting the sense of urgency that the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA) removed; they do it…
The Cost-Conscious Plaintiff
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Posted in Scholarship
After years in the class action defense bar, I’ve learned that few things will get the average non-lawyer to think I’m doing God’s work more than talking about class action attorneys’ fees. The general consensus is that while all lawyers overcharge their clients, class action lawyers do it more–and more spectacularly–than most.
And that’s why…
Is the Search for Class Unity Misguided?
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Posted in Scholarship
That’s the question asked (and answered) by Texas law professor Robert G. Bone in his paper The Misguided Search for Class Unity. In it, Professor Bone argues that there are two views of the class action: (1) an “internal, outcome-based” view that tends to favor certification for the efficiency benefits, and (2) an “external…
Tall People and Class Actions
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Posted in Scholarship
April Fool’s–a day that one cannot trust what one reads on the Web, is fortunately over. So, please rest assured that Rutgers law student Brandon Riley’s note We’re Cramped as Hell, and We Won’t Take It Anymore: Plotting a Class Action Disability Claim on Behalf of the Very Tall against Air Carriers for a Failure …
An Introductory History of the Class Action – What Goes Around Comes Around
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Posted in Scholarship
Loyola of Los Angeles professor Georgene Vairo wrote a piece called What Goes Around, Comes Around: From the Rector of Barkway to Knowles for the Review of Litigation.
Professor Vairo’s piece makes two overall arguments: (1) the class action is a political, rather than procedural, problem; and (2) the recurring debates over use of…