Mass Tort Litigation Blog: Class Action

Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Class Action Blogs

OR PHONE (866) 635-1838 for Bankruptcy Help, (866) 635-6190 for Divorce,
(866) 635-2689 for Personal Injury or (866) 635-9402 for Criminal Defense

Find a Local Lawyer

Bankruptcy (866) 635-1838
Divorce (866) 635-6190
Personal Injury (866) 635-2689
Criminal Defense (866) 635-9402

Class Action

Mass Tort Litigation Blog

Law professors discuss mass tort and class action lawsuits.

Post Frequency: 9.9/day

Last Entry: March 29, 2011 at 17:41:19

$24 Million Pet-Food Settlement

Posted on May 26, 2008
Article in the L.A. Times -- Pet food companies OK $24-million settlement, by the Associated Press. Here's an excerpt: Companies that were sued over contaminated pet food linked to the deaths of perhaps thousands of dogs and cats have agreed...

FDA to Expand Post-Approval Review of Drugs

Posted on May 23, 2008
Gardiner Harris of the New York Times reports today in an article entitled "FDA to Expand Scrutiny of Risks From Drugs After They're Approved for Sale" that the FDA has a new program called the "Sentinel Initiative" that will monitor...

Institute for Safe Medicine Practices Releases New Chantix Report

Posted on May 22, 2008
The Institute for Safe Medicine Practices, a non-profit group organized to improve drug safety and review the FDA's adverse-event reports, recently released a study on Chantix. The report indicated a greater spectrum of side effects, including heart trouble, seizures, and...

Fen-Phen Kentucky Lawyers on Trial

Posted on May 22, 2008
There have been several reports lately about the mishandling of Fen-Phen settlement funds in Kentucky. Here are two excerpts. The first is from the Wall Street Journal Law Blog: There are many bizarre aspects of the story behind the three...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

FAA Bans Chantix Use By Pilots and Air Traffic Controllers

Posted on May 21, 2008
Article on cnnmoney.com -- FAA bans Pfizer anti-smoking drug. Our initial Chantix blog post in November 2006 has so far lead to 178 comments, most of them describing physical and mental problems occurring in people using Chantix. Here's an excerpt...

Merck to Settle Vioxx Advertising Claims by AGs for $58 Million & Ban on Medical Ghostwriting

Posted on May 21, 2008
Article in the Wall Street Journal -- Merck Will Pay $58 Million To Settle Vioxx Ad Claims, by Kevin Kingsbury. Here's an excerpt: Merck & Co. agreed to pay $58 million to settle claims by 28 states and the District...

10 Best Law Review Articles on Mass Torts

Posted on May 21, 2008
Since law professors love lists and hierarchies, I thought it might be fun to consider the best articles on the subject of this blog: mass tort litigation. I have excluded from the list below (1) any participants in this blog...

Video of Widener Law School Symposium on Crimtorts

Posted on May 20, 2008
Widener Law School has posted the videos of the panels for its Crimtorts symposium last February (see prior posts on the symposium here and here). BGS

Timothy Lytton on Clergy Sexual Abuse Litigation

Posted on May 15, 2008
Hot off the presses, here's Timothy Lytton's new book on the Catholic Church sex abuse litigation -- Holding Bishops Accountable: How Lawsuits Helped the Catholic Church Confront Clergy Sexual Abuse (Harvard University Press 2008). The book builds on Lytton's related...

Recovering the Social Value of Jurisdictional Redundancy

Posted on May 15, 2008
I just posted a piece that I wrote for the Tulane Law Review Symposium on the Problem of Multidistrict Litigation on bepress (download here) and SSRN (download here). The piece should appear on both these links shortly. Here is the...

David Marcus on Nagareda

Posted on May 15, 2008
David Marcus of the University of Arizona has written an extensive book review of Richard Nagareda's Mass Torts in a World of Settlement. The review, entitled Some Realism about Mass Torts, will appear in the University of Chicago Law Review....

Texas Court Overturns Vioxx Ruling

Posted on May 14, 2008
As reported in the New York Times by the Associated Press. The plaintiff in Garza v. Merck initially won $32 million, which was reduced to $7.75 million. The AP reports that "the Texas Fourth Court of Appeals overturned the verdict,...

Clermont on Litigation Realities

Posted on May 14, 2008
While not specific to mass torts, Kevin Clermont has posted his latest empirical work, Litigation Realities Redux, which is broadly applicable to the litigation process. Here's the abstract: Both summarizing recent empirical work and presenting new observations on each of...

No, the Minnesota Bridge Compensation Deal is not a Mini-9/11 Fund

Posted on May 09, 2008
Yesterday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed a $38 million settlement for victims of the I-35W bridge collapse. Here's the AP story in USA Today. Interestingly, state legislator Phyllis Kahn, who co-authored the compensation bill, was quoted in this article in the...

Saraceno on the Downsides of Group Litigation

Posted on May 09, 2008
Help has arrived if you are looking for counterarguments to the standard (and to my mind, convincing) argument that collective litigation usually aids plaintiffs by providing economies of scale, permitting investment based on aggregate stakes, and creating settlement leverage...

Brown on Asbestos Bankruptcies

Posted on May 09, 2008
S. Todd Brown of Temple University has posted a new paper on SSRN, Section 525(g) Without Compromise: Voting Rights and the Asbestos Bankruptcy Paradox, forthcoming in the Columbia Business Law Review, arguing that the voting structure for approving asbestos bankruptcy...

Oil Companies Settle Groundwater Contamination Suit

Posted on May 08, 2008
The New York Times reported yesterday that some of the oil companies involved in a groundwater contamination suit that spanned across 17 states, including New York and California, have agreed to settle for $423 million. Over a hundred public water...

Bone on the Normative Foundations of Litigation Reform

Posted on May 07, 2008
I just ran across a (relatively recent) article by Robert Bone entitled "Securing the Normative Foundations of Litigation Reform," 86 B.U. L. Rev. 115 (2006) and available on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Federal court adjudication has changed in major...

Elizabeth Thornburg on "Judicial Hellholes"

Posted on May 07, 2008
Professor Elizabeth Thornburg (SMU) has posted an article to SSRN -- Judicial Hellholes, Lawsuit Climates, and Bad Social Science: Lessons from West Virginia, W. Va. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2008). Here's the abstract: The American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) was founded...

Farber on Torts and Catastrophe

Posted on May 07, 2008
Daniel Farber (Berkeley Law) has just posted an article on SSRN entitled "Tort Law in the Era of Climate Change, Katrina and 9/11: Exploring Liability for Extraordinary Risks." The abstract follows: Tort cases generally deal with routine risks - the....

Indian Protests Over Bhopal Disaster

Posted on May 06, 2008
The Bhopal gas-leak disaster in India remains perhaps the most devastating single-incident mass tort in terms of loss of human life. As this article from the Associated Press shows, nearly 25 years later, the effects are still being felt. Here's...

Parness on Judicial Settlement Conferences

Posted on May 06, 2008
In the vein of scholarship propounding greater bureaucratization of the courts comes this article - "Improving Judicial Settlement Conferences" - from Jeffrey Parness (Northern Ill.) (and available on SSRN) suggesting more formalization and guidelines for judicial settlement conferences...

Compensation Deal for Minnesota Bridge Collapse Victims

Posted on May 05, 2008
The Minnesota state legislature appears on the verge of approving a $38 million compensation package to settle the claims of victims of the 2007 collapse of the I-35 bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, according to this AP story...

Ninth Circuit Opinion on Anti-Injunction Act

Posted on May 04, 2008
The Ninth Circuit issued an opinion last week on the All Writs Act exception to the Anti-Injunction Act. In Negrete v. Allianz Life Insurance Co. of North America, 2008 WL 1868993, the district court certified a nationwide RICO class a...

Pfizer Settlements for Bextra and Celebrex

Posted on May 04, 2008
Article in the Wall Street Journal -- Pfizer Settles Lawsuits Over Two Painkillers, by Nathan Koppel and Heather Won Tesoriero. What's interesting is Pfizer's approach to settlement: negotiating settlements with plaintiff's firms that have a large inventory of plaintiffs, rather...

The Hon. Sam C. Pointer, Jr. (1934-2008)

Posted on April 30, 2008
Judge Sam Pointer passed away on March 15. In his thirty years as a federal judge in Alabama, he made his mark in both civil rights and complex litigation. Readers of this blog may know him best for his work...

Conference on Mass Litigation

Posted on April 30, 2008
ALI-ABA is running a conference on mass litigation in Charleston, South Carolina, from May 29-31, 2008 with a strong faculty of judges, practitioners, and academics. Some agenda items of interest to mass tort lawyers include sessions on Negotiating Mass Litigation...

Second Circuit Rejects New York Gun Lawsuit

Posted on April 30, 2008
The Second Circuit today decided City of New York v. Beretta USA Corp. in favor of the defendant gun suppliers. Here's an excerpt from the N.Y. Times article: A federal appeals court dismissed New York City?s blanket lawsuit against the...

Verdict Upheld Against Port Authority in 1993 WTC Bombings

Posted on April 29, 2008
John Sullivan, writing for the New York Times, reports that the NY Court of Appeals has upheld the verdict. He writes: ?The evidence placed before the jury entitled it to conclude that the defendant?s negligence was, if not gross, dramatically...

Sebok's Book Review of Nagareda's Mass Torts in a World of Settlement

Posted on April 26, 2008
Professor Anthony Sebok (Brooklyn, pictured left) has published his book review, What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Mass Torts?, 106 Mich. L. Rev. 1213 (2008) Download sebok.pdf , which reviews Professor Richard Nagareda's recent book, Mass Torts...

Previous | Next

Related Law Bulletins

Update on AILF's Legal Action Center Visa Bulletin Litigation (Updated 7/10/07)
The following is the latest update from AILF regarding its pening ...

Litigation Relating To ICE Raids At Swift Meat Packing Plants
This information regarding litigation relating to ICE raids at Swi...

Litigation Strains Virginia Episcopal Docese
Virtue Online reported on Friday that the Episcopal Diocese of Vir...

New Baptist Covenant Blog
Last week, I pointed to the New Baptist Convenant website, now onl...

The Mexico Trucker Blog
I've written before about the perceived problems with relaxed rest...