This course will focus on the legal and policy issues relevant to conducting complex civil litigation, and in particular on the problem of adjudicating large numbers of closely related cases. One of the most important and controversial issues in civil procedure today is how to achieve the efficient and fair adjudication of large numbers of cases that arise from a common set of events or transactions and exhibit overlapping factual and legal issues. A number of procedural devices have been used for this purpose, including joinder, consolidation, class actions, multidistrict litigation, bellwether trials, case sampling, and bankruptcy. We will study all these devices, but we'll spend much of our time on class actions and multidistrict litigation (MDL). Specific topics to be covered include the requirements for class certification, judicial and attorney responsibilities in class litigation, appointment and compensation of lead lawyers, techniques for coordinating competing litigation in federal and state courts, case management techniques, and approaches to mass settlements. We will also examine the effect of recent Supreme Court decisions on the future of aggregate dispute resolution.
Rave, D. Theodore