Origins -- The development of a mass tort -- Regulating development indirectly -- Making and enforcing a grid -- The rise and fall of the mass tort class settlement -- Public legislation and private contracts -- Mandatory class actions revisited -- Maximizing or minimizing opt-outs -- Bankruptcy transformed -- Government as plaintiff -- Leveraging conflicts of interest -- Administering the leveraging proposal.
Summary
The traditional definition of torts involves bizarre, idiosyncratic events where a single plaintiff with a physical impairment sues the specific defendant he believes to have wrongfully caused that malady. Yet public attention has focused increasingly on mass personal-injury lawsuits over asbestos, cigarettes, guns, the diet drug fen-phen, breast implants, and, most recently, Vioxx. Richard A. Nagareda's 'Mass Torts in a World of Settlement' is the first attempt to analyze the lawyer's role in this world of high-stakes, multibillion-dollar litigation.
