Trial Magazine

The Pound Civil Justice Institute, with Lewis & Clark Law School, will present “Class Actions, Mass Torts and MDLs: The Next 50 Years,” a CLE-accredited symposium open to attorneys, judges, law professors and students, and ­interested public officials. It will be held Nov. 1–2, in Portland, Ore.

Class actions and other aggregate litigation provide vital mechanisms for the enforcement of individual rights. Consolidated proceedings offer reduced transactional costs and less strain on public resources. As a result, 2017 federal court statistics show that multidistrict litigation (MDL) cases comprise nearly 40% of the federal civil caseload,¹ with large numbers of claims involving pharmaceutical and other products liability, environmental contamination, and mass disasters.² Meanwhile, decreased access to federal courts—through procedural hurdles such as challenges to jurisdiction, “plausibility” pleading, and forced arbitration—have posed challenges to mass action plaintiffs who deserve to have their claims resolved.

The symposium will bring together distinguished academics, judges, and practitioners to consider the status of class actions, mass torts, and MDLs, as well as possible future developments. The symposium will feature at least nine papers, with commentary and panel discussions, on topics including but not limited to: the current landscape of state court MDLs and class actions, the impacts of forced arbitration clauses, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 amendments, the future of mass torts, jurisdiction in multistate class actions, the role of attorneys in MDLs, and the role of class actions in social justice reform.

Legal academics who have committed to write papers or participate include: Lynn Baker (Texas); Robert Bone (Texas); Andrew Bradt (Berkeley); Zachary Clopton (Cornell); Brian Fitzpatrick (Vanderbilt); Samuel Issacharoff (NYU); Robert Klonoff (Lewis & Clark); Alexandra Lahav (Connecticut); David Marcus (UCLA); Arthur Miller (NYU); David Noll (Rutgers); Teddy Rave (Houston); Judith Resnik (Yale);  and Adam Steinman (Alabama). Northern District of Illinois Judge Robert M. Dow Jr., a member of the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Civil Rules and chair of its Rule 23 and MDL Rules subcommittees; Hon. Lee Rosenthal of the Southern District of Texas; and attorneys Elizabeth Cabraser, of San Francisco; Steve Herman, of New Orleans; and Gerson Smoger, of Dallas, have also agreed to participate.

For more information and to register, visit www.poundinstitute.org or call (202) 944-2841.

The Pound Civil Justice Institute is a nonprofit legal education think tank supported by attorneys and dedicated to a strong civil justice system.

Notes

1. Andrew D. Bradt, The Long Arm of Multidistrict Litigation, 59 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 4 (2018).
2. U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litig., MDL Statistics Report (June 18, 2019), www.jpml.uscourts.gov/sites/jpml/files/Pending_MDL_Dockets_By_Type-June-18-2019.pdf.