At its height, the mass-tort litigation against Merck for its drug Vioxx received a great deal of press attention. And, when Merck settled with most of the plaintiffs, its decision to only settle with attorneys who were willing to resolve their entire inventory of Vioxx cases generated controversy among the legal commentariat.
Last…
There’s a fascinating strategic story buried deep within Snigdha Prakash’s book on the early Vioxx litigation, All the Justice Money Can Buy: Corporate Greed on Trial. It’s revealed in two passages, one toward the beginning of the book, one toward the end.
At the beginning of the book (and the trial it covers), New…
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…
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. …
