Posts Tagged ‘procedure’

Multi-district litigation: time for real rules

A milestone was reached in March: over half of all cases “currently open in the federal judicial system now are contained in multi-district litigation.” [James Beck, Lexology] And that poses a problem if you believe in uniform, stable, and knowable procedures for handling cases:

As we’ve discussed many times before, the ordinary Federal Rules of Civil Procedure apply sporadically, if at all in MDLs. Likewise, some MDL judges apply Daubert rigorously, and others do not. Some MDLs are disposed of on the basis of federal preemption, while other MDL judges seem never to have granted a preemption motion in their careers. Appellate opportunities are few and far between, and almost always arise when plaintiffs lose, since defense losses don’t generate immediately appealable orders. The current MDL system makes the federal judicial system resemble the baroque Holy Roman Empire – an agglomeration of hundreds of feudal principalities, feigning allegiance to one set of laws, but in reality operating more or less independently – with some of those margraves and palatine counts wielding rather despotic power.

Like some wasps do to caterpillars, agglomerations of “plaintiff steering committees,” assisted by shadowy funded media solicitors, have parasitized the federal judicial system, converting it into a system not for justice, but for converting mass solicitations into mass settlements without the merits of 99+% of the filed “inventory” ever being examined.

And because of the rise of the defendant technique known as “pre-service removal,” Beck says, the share of cases in MDLs is likely to rise further.

Liability roundup

February 15 roundup

“‘Good ol’ boys club’ in multidistrict litigation: Same plaintiffs firms repeatedly lead suits”

A familiar roster of plaintiff’s firms keep grabbing profitable lead positions in mass litigations that begin with multiple filings in different states. Judges and critics suspect that committees are often overstaffed to set up a likelihood of higher fees, and that cozy mutual backscratching helps allocate lucrative positions to repeat players in the club. [Amanda Bronstad, National Law Journal]

Suit over outside-Mississippi adultery turns on awareness of boyfriend’s domicile

Mississippi, along with North Carolina, has preserved the tort of “alienation of affections,” which enables lawsuits by married persons against a spouse’s lover for undermining a marriage. Exercising long-arm jurisdiction, it even allows suits against alleged paramours who have never set foot in Mississippi but (it is claimed) engaged in trysts with a married Mississippian outside the state. In a recent case, however, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that a woman sued under the law could move to dismiss the case for lack of personal jurisdiction on the grounds that she had no idea her boyfriend resided in Mississippi over the course of a relationship conducted in other states. [Nordness v. Faucheaux via Volokh]

June 10 roundup

  • Alan Dershowitz, Harvard lawprof, suing TD Garden over slip and fall in bathroom three years back [Boston Globe]
  • “Harsh Sanction Proposed For Attorney Who Blogged About Probate Case” [Mike Frisch, Legal Profession Blog]
  • Maryland veto sets back reform: “Governor Hogan, Civil Asset Forfeiture Is Inherently Abusive” [Adam Bates, Cato]
  • “‘Vape’ bans have little to do with public health” [Jacob Grier, Oregonian in February]
  • Academics prosper through expert witness work, part one zillion [Ira Stoll]
  • Sounds good: call for civil procedure reform includes fact-based pleading, strict discovery limits, case-specific rules, and more [Jordy Singer, Prawfs, on recommendations from American College of Trial Lawyers Task Force on Discovery and Civil Justice and Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System]
  • Draft plan would arm FTC with vast power over data practices [James C. Cooper, Morning Consult, via @geoffmanne]

Supreme Court and constitutional law roundup

  • Polls, not chancy politics of Justice-watching, represent surest hope for gay-marriage supporters [me in New York Daily News]
  • “A reasonably good week for the Fourth Amendment” [Jonathan Blanks, Cato on Rodriguez v. U.S. on prolonged traffic stops, 6-3 SCOTUS, and from the D.C. Circuit, Janice Rogers Brown’s concurrence in Gross v. U.S., on rationale for D.C.’s gun sweeps]
  • David Bernstein, who has done so much to enrich our understanding of Lochner v. New York, hears from Mr. Lochner’s great-granddaughter [Volokh Conspiracy]
  • Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center: Supremacy Clause doesn’t provide implied private right of action [William Baude, SCOTUSBlog; James Beck (implication for product liability); from the losing side, Steve Vladeck/Prawfs]
  • Please, SCOTUS, kill off for good the awful Calder v. Jones “effects” test for personal jurisdiction [David Post] “We’re Not in Kansas: No General Jurisdiction After Bauman” [Steven Boranian, Drug and Device Law]
  • Noah Feldman, for one, isn’t buying Toobin’s latest sanctimonious swipe at Scalia [Bloomberg View]
  • Usage of commas in famous first line of Pride and Prejudice can shed light on how to read Constitutional guarantee of right to keep and bear arms [Eugene Volokh]