Mass tort defendants have recently begun exiting multi-district litigation (MDL) by filing for bankruptcy. This new strategy ushers defendants into a far more hospitable forum that offers accelerated resolution of all state and federal claims held by both current and future victims....

The class action is controversial because the class attorney can litigate or settle the claims of the class members without their consent. Many scholars have turned to corporate law to address the potentially disloyal behavior of the class attorney. These scholars have used analogies to...

We develop a stylized game theoretic model of litigant behavior to study the effects of increased pleading standards on incentives to engage in illegal activity. Such a model is necessary to build intuition about the potential costs associated with the procedures set forth by the U.S. Supreme...

This brief addresses the first question presented in Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, No. 14-1146, which concerns the use of statistical techniques in class actions. The brief informs the Supreme Court of the appropriate uses of statistics and other inferential proof in class actions. It also...

The Erie doctrine governs, among other things, when a federal court sitting in diversity jurisdiction may use a federal procedure that differs from the procedure that would be used in state court. Displacing the state procedure with the federal procedure (or not) may impact the substantive...

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act includes an individual mandate which penalizes individuals who do not purchase health insurance. Critics of the individual mandate, including a majority of justices on the Supreme Court, contend that Congress cannot use its Commerce Clause power to...

Federal courts have recently required proof of classwide injury to certify a class action for monetary remedies. Proof of classwide injury is defined as proof, which is common to the class, that the defendant's unlawful conduct injured every member of the class. This article argues that the...

In this series of essays, Professor Sergio Campos and Howard Erichson debate the wisdom of compelled collective treatment of mass tort claims.Campos urges abandonment of the "day in court" model and adoption of mandatory class actions for mass torts. Campos advances a view of mass tort claims as...

SME Metasys: A Business Management System for SMEs