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Andrew D. Bradt, Zachary D. Clopton & D. Theodore Rave
Bradt is the Shannon Cecil Turner Professor of Jurisprudence at University of California Berkeley School of Law, Clopton is the Daniel Hale Williams Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law, and Rave is the Bernard J. Ward Centennial Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law. Thanks to Bruce Markel, Troy McKenzie, and David Molton for helpful conversations. Madeline Love and Jackson Roberg provided excellent research assistance.
One of the crucial insights of the judges responsible for the Multidistrict Litigation Act was that no one could opt out. Indeed, the whole idea of MDL is that everyone is stuck there, required to participate in pretrial proceedings until the litigation is resolved or the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) decides it’s time…
Andrew D. Bradt† & Sergio J. Campos††
† Shannon Cecil Turner Professor of Jurisprudence, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Email: abradt@law.berkeley.edu. Phone: (510) 664-4984.
† † Professor of Law, Boston College Law School. Email: sergio.campos@bc.edu. Phone: (617) 552-4387. The authors would like to thank Abbe Gluck, Alexi Lahav, Samir Parikh, Adam Zimmerman, and the participants at a summer workshop at Boston College Law School for their comments. Emma McMillan and Chloe Heller provided excellent research assistance. All errors are our own.
Mass torts have inspired a number of innovative procedural approaches. They include creative uses of class actions, multidistrict litigation (“MDL”) and, more recently, the bankruptcy system. These procedural innovations have been challenged as a “revolution” that departs from “traditional litigation goals,” particularly our “deep-rooted tradition” of one having their “day in court.” In this Essay,…
Maya Steinitz
Professor of Law and R. Gordon Butler Scholar in International Law at Boston University Law School. I thank Nora Freeman Engstrom, Brian Fitzpatrick, Nancy Moore, Jessica Silbey, Chris Robertson, Mike Maurer, Nathan Miller, Abigail Field, and the participants of Boston University School of Law’s faculty workshop for their comments. I am also grateful to Ryan Reimers and Robert Madden for their research assistance. The Author occasionally serves in litigation finance matters as an expert witness or consultant to plaintiffs, defendants, litigation funding firms, law firms, and investors.
The main debate surrounding litigation funding in recent years has focused on the question of disclosure of funding agreements. While the issue is important, predominantly because of its effects on the course and outcome of individual cases, far more important are bigger, interrelated questions that have systemic effects on the civil justice system, the legal…
Samir D. Parikh
Professor of Law, Wake Forest University School of Law. For helpful comments and conversations, I am grateful to John Abegg, Suneal Bedi, John Beisner, Andrew Bradt, Elizabeth Cabraser, Sergio Campos, Zachary Clopton, Alex Dahl, Hon. Robert Drain, Nora Freeman Engstrom, Page Faulk, Peter Gardner, Maria Glover, Jason Joy, Alexi Lahav, Jessica Lauria, Matt Linder, Jim Murdica, Edward Neiger, Leigh O’Dell, Billy Organek, Robert Rasmussen, Teddy Rave, Chris Seeger, Emily Siegel, Brennan Torregrossa, Chaz Vandemotter, Anupama Yerramalli, and participants at the Duke-UNC-UVA-Wake Forest Business Law Colloquium and the Law & Economics Center’s Third Party Litigation Research Roundtable. I thank my family for their unwavering support.
Litigation finance makes the world go round. The capital financiers provide is the lifeblood for plaintiffs’ firms and individual claimants attempting to run the litigation gauntlet in high-stakes battles with wealthy corporate entities. Third-party litigation funding in general litigation is well documented and frequently discussed. But the role financiers play and the dynamics they create…
Alexandra D. Lahav
Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Professor, Cornell Law School. Conflicts of interest disclosure: The author has been a paid expert on how to approach Phase II in litigation. Many thanks to the editors of the Cornell Law Review and to Tom Baker, David Hoffman, Brian Fitzpatrick, Joe Sellers and participants in the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt University law school workshops for excellent comments that helped improve this Article.
This Article proposes nine methods for dealing with the damages phase in a mass tort or mass accident situation after an issue class action on liability has been certified and plaintiff has prevailed on liability in Phase I or once a case has been filed in a bankruptcy court and needs to be valued. Courts,…
Suneal Bedi† & Samir D. Parikh††
† Associate Professor of Business Law & Ethics, Jerome Bess Faculty Fellow, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Ishani Sachdeva provided excellent research assistance.
†† Professor of Law, Wake Forest School of Law. For helpful comments and conversations, I am grateful to Ronit Berkovich, Judge Shelley Chapman (ret.), Judge Robert Drain (ret.), Eric Green, Laura Davis Jones, Jessica Lauria, and Judge James Peck. Davis Hayter, Mark Lee, and Austin Magleby provided excellent research assistance. As always, I thank my family for their unwavering support.
In bankruptcy, establishing a mass-tort trust is the final piece in structuring resolution of protracted aggregate litigation faced by a corporate debtor. As seen in cases like Purdue Pharma and Boy Scouts of America, the multibillion-dollar aggregate settlement figure captures all the headlines. But the trust distribution provisions—which actually provide the details of how individual…
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Guy A. Rub
Vincent J. Marella Professor of Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law.
The doctrine of copyright exhaustion conceals a substantial and underappreciated subsidy at the heart of American copyright law. For more than a century, it has operated as a deliberate congressional scheme transferring billions of dollars in value to cultural institutions, such as libraries, museums, and galleries. This Essay reconceptualizes copyright law as a system of…
Amanda Borwegen & Ajay K. Mehrotra
J.D. 2025, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law; B.A. 2019, Washington & Jefferson College. Stanford Clinton Sr. and Zylpha Kilbride Clinton Research Professor of Law, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law; Affiliated Professor of History, Northwestern University; and Research Professor, American Bar Foundation. An earlier version of this essay was presented at the 2025 American Association of Law School Conference. We thank the participants at that conference for their useful feedback, and to those colleagues and friends who reviewed and discussed drafts of this essay including Jennifer Bird-Pollan, Ari Glogower, Christopher Hanna, Andy Koppelman, Philip Postlewaite, Samy Abdelsalam, and Maggie Amen. We are grateful to Noah Taran for excellent research assistance, and to Jeena Patel and the staff of the Cornell Law Review for their assistance. All errors, of course, remain our own.
On July 4, 2025, President Donald J. Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). This new law was built on the foundations of its immediate predecessor, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). This Essay examines the historical roots and contemporary implications of these two laws. It argues that both…
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