Category Archives: Class Actions
Here. Excerpt: Greed is undermining class actions, according to Ted Frank, founder and director of the Center for Class Action Fairness in Washington. Consumer and other class settlements often pay more to trial lawyers than to their clients, Frank says, and he's devoted his professional life to fighting that trend. Frank is an objector—a lawyer […]
Here. Excerpt: [M]any of the Roberts Court’s most important business cases were decided by a 5–4 margin, with the five conservative Justices voting as a bloc. And, as [Vanderbilt law professor Brian] Fitzpatrick points out, “Scalia has done more than any other justice in making it difficult for consumers and employees to bring class-action suits. […]
Here. A heart-breaking story.
Elizabeth Chamblee Burch of Georgia and Margaret S. Williams of the Federal Judicial Center have written Repeat Players in Multidistrict Litigation: The Social Network. Here's the abstract: To promote pretrial efficiency, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation has transferred 36 percent of the entire federal courts’ civil caseload to transferee judges for coordinated handling. Transferee […]
Here. (HT: Gregory Gauthier)
(Also take note of the engaging debate in the Comments.) by Jeff Sovern Every other week, the Sunday Times Business Section runs a column called The Haggler, written by David Segal (who may be better known to law professors as the author of several critical articles on law schools). This week's version is headed A […]
by Jeff Sovern Richard posted a link last week to the Times article about how debt collectors first sue in court and then when consumers sue them, use arbitration clauses to block the consumer law suit. Today the Times published four letters responding to the article, including mine. I want to comment on two of […]
by Jeff Sovern In a recent American Banker essay, I argued that businesses praise arbitration not because they genuinely value it, but because it enables them to block class actions. I said that for two reasons: first, that if businesses truly believe arbitration is superior to litigation, as they say they do, they should prefer […]