4 ms·

There is no need for these class action cases. Where there is a legitimate class of injured plaintiffs, treat them under the worker's comp statutes.

duskwuff 7y ago
Worker's compensation only applies to employees. Shrimp fishermen are not employees of BP; opiate addicts are not employees of Purdue Pharma; passengers are not employees of cruise lines, and so on. Besides, worker's compensation isn't geared to handle large classes of plaintiffs either! The entire point of the mass tort / class action system is that it's a way of handling a large group of plaintiffs in a single case. Worker's compensation works with one plaintiff at a time, which means that a large group of plaintiffs (like the 40,000 alleged here) would completely overwhelm the courts.
gamblor956 7y ago
Class actions are cheap and efficient, especially where the alternative is thousands of individual cases.
- worik 7y ago
  Perhaps it would be a good idea to read the article before commenting like that. Near the end it has this gem: "...Yale Law School professor emeritus Peter Schuck, the author of Agent Orange on Trial: Mass Toxic Disasters in the Courts. While they can empower the so-called little guy to go after corporate wrongdoers, mass torts are vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation, he argues. Even when everything’s on the up-and-up, they’re “an extremely inefficient way of compensating victims,” Schuck told me. They take a long time to litigate, have high transaction costs (up to 40 percent of the total outlay, according to Schuck), and can lead to unpredictable rewards." So given the law professor calls class actions (mass torts) inefficient with high transaction costs, what is the opinion "Class actions are cheap and efficient..." based on?
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    Don’t these criticisms apply equally (if not more) to the alternative of thousands of individual suits?
    - worik 7y ago
      There are other options. This is a place where the state has the opportunity to justify its existence
    - gamblor956 7y ago
      They do. That one book is really about one country trying to sue another country for the use of military weapons against enemy combatants that knowingly and deliberately used civilian populations as human shields. They should be suing their own government.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    Efficiency is not the purpose of the courts, and especially not of tort law. If we were to make anything about the courts less capricious, I wouldn't start with one of the only tools we have for controlling the evil deeds of corporations.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    Personal experience as a class action litigant and as a lawyer in a class action on both sides. I don't know why one legal professor's book about a class action by an entire nation involving a weapon of war is relevant to a discussion of wholly civil class actions. Of course a class action is inefficient for addressing the injuries of war; that should be addressed by diplomacy.
gnicholas 7y ago
How would you get the appropriate party (here, BP) to pay for the damages that they caused? Under this theory, only the employers of injured employees would foot the bill.

duskwuff 7y ago

Worker's compensation only applies to employees. Shrimp fishermen are not employees of BP; opiate addicts are not employees of Purdue Pharma; passengers are not employees of cruise lines, and so on. Besides, worker's compensation isn't geared to handle large classes of plaintiffs either! The entire point of the mass tort / class action system is that it's a way of handling a large group of plaintiffs in a single case. Worker's compensation works with one plaintiff at a time, which means that a large group of plaintiffs (like the 40,000 alleged here) would completely overwhelm the courts.

gamblor956 7y ago

Class actions are cheap and efficient, especially where the alternative is thousands of individual cases.

worik 7y ago
Perhaps it would be a good idea to read the article before commenting like that. Near the end it has this gem: "...Yale Law School professor emeritus Peter Schuck, the author of Agent Orange on Trial: Mass Toxic Disasters in the Courts. While they can empower the so-called little guy to go after corporate wrongdoers, mass torts are vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation, he argues. Even when everything’s on the up-and-up, they’re “an extremely inefficient way of compensating victims,” Schuck told me. They take a long time to litigate, have high transaction costs (up to 40 percent of the total outlay, according to Schuck), and can lead to unpredictable rewards." So given the law professor calls class actions (mass torts) inefficient with high transaction costs, what is the opinion "Class actions are cheap and efficient..." based on?
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Don’t these criticisms apply equally (if not more) to the alternative of thousands of individual suits?
  - worik 7y ago
    There are other options. This is a place where the state has the opportunity to justify its existence
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    They do. That one book is really about one country trying to sue another country for the use of military weapons against enemy combatants that knowingly and deliberately used civilian populations as human shields. They should be suing their own government.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  Efficiency is not the purpose of the courts, and especially not of tort law. If we were to make anything about the courts less capricious, I wouldn't start with one of the only tools we have for controlling the evil deeds of corporations.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  Personal experience as a class action litigant and as a lawyer in a class action on both sides. I don't know why one legal professor's book about a class action by an entire nation involving a weapon of war is relevant to a discussion of wholly civil class actions. Of course a class action is inefficient for addressing the injuries of war; that should be addressed by diplomacy.

gnicholas 7y ago

How would you get the appropriate party (here, BP) to pay for the damages that they caused? Under this theory, only the employers of injured employees would foot the bill.