Professor Howard Erichson, of Fordham Law School, has posted on SSRN (here) and discussed at the Mass Tort Litigation Blog (here) his new paper, “The Trouble With All-Or-Nothing Settlements.” Erichson’s thesis is that defendants’ demands for global peace in mass torts create ethical tensions.
The abstract describes the seven tensions:
“First,
Usually, we comment on stuff that affects us.
That’s way too limiting.
Today, we’re going to comment on something that doesn’t affect us at all.
Here’s the spat, which we both observed last week at the annual meeting of the American Law Institute: Historically, the decision whether to settle a lawsuit has been reserved exclusively
Ordinarily, a federal trial court cannot order that some other lawsuit in state court be stopped.
When federal courts preliminarily approve class action settlements, however, they often enjoin prosecution of competing cases that could interfere with the settlement. Federal courts issue those injunctions under the “in aid of jurisdiction” exception to the Anti-Injunction Act. See
We’ve been thinking again about the American Law Institute’s “Principles of the Law of Aggregate Litigation,” in part because we’ll be asked to vote on whether to accept the draft at the ALI’s annual meeting in May.
The draft is long and says many things.
One thing that it says, however, is this:
To facilitate
The American Enterprise Institute hosted a panel discussion on Monday about the Vioxx settlement.
C-SPAN (and C-SPAN 2) broadcast the event yesterday, but without much advance notice.
At noon on this Monday, January 7, 2008, one of your humble scribes — Herrmann — will participate in a panel at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., to discuss the Vioxx settlement.
With one small exception, the AEI has lined up an all-star cast. In the words of the program description:
“Speakers include
Here’s more proof (as if more were needed) that Herrmann’s a step slow. (And it’s again only Herrmann. This post relates to the Vioxx settlement, and Bexis is playing no role in drafting this.)
We posted last week about the Vioxx settlement. The aspect of the settlement that interested us most was finality: After AmChem
Herrmann posted last weekend about the Vioxx settlement. Everybody and his brother seems to be looking for “experts” to comment on the settlement; by posting on the subject, we knowingly entered the fray. And that’s fine. Herrmann is happy to discuss the settlement, but please remember three things:
1. Bexis has had nothing to do
We know, we know: The parties announced the Vioxx settlement on Friday, and it’s already Sunday, and we haven’t yet chimed in.
We have two excuses. First, Bexis’s tongue is tied. His firm is involved in the Vioxx litigation, so he can’t comment on the settlement. He, of course, played no role in drafting this