Primary Jurisdiction and the Limits of Measurement in Mass Litigation

This Article examines the use of primary jurisdiction through the lens of institutional economics and the ongoing revolution in pre-suit, plaintiff-side testing in mass litigation. In this setting, primary jurisdiction serves a necessary pro-agency institutional role. The ability of plaintiffs’ attorneys to easily generate sophisticated laboratory testing results has allowed them to create a quasi-regulatory quality-control regime for defendants’ products and extract value from it through enhanced settlements. This offers defendants the burdens of regulation without the benefits of uniformity or policymakers with subject-matter expertise and capacity for public input. Primary jurisdiction enables defendants in mass litigation to move these quasi-regulatory actions back to regulatory settings, where the potential for efficient quality-control standards increases with agency expertise. Shifting decision-making in testing-based actions to agencies then preserves this value from conversion into litigation-based transaction costs. As scientific resolving power and the scope of potentially measurable harm evolve, primary jurisdiction thus functions as a central balancing mechanism allowing corresponding evolution in adjudication

Should Code Be Law?: Smart Contracts, Blockchain, and Boilerplate

Smart contracts...guarantee a very specific set of outcomes. There\u27s never any confusion and there\u27s never any need for litigation. ~JeffGarzik If the blockchain promise comes to a reality...most goods, labor and capital will be allocated through decentralized global platforms. Disputes will certainly arise. ~ Clément Lesaege and Federico Ast Blockchain-based smart contracts may characterize much of the future of exchange as they expand the scope of potentially efficient bargains through restructuring and reducing transaction costs relative to traditional contracts. This Article analyzes the changes in transaction costs and execution efficiencies as contractual distance -the number of intermediaries required to make an exchange, weighted by the rational level of actual agreement between parties-increases between bespoke contracts, template contracts, contracts of adhesion, and algorithmic contracts housed on platforms like Ethereum and arbitrated on platforms such as Kleros. This framework shows that smart contracts have the potential to lower the contractual distance required to make an exchange by (1) overcoming trust issues that require intermediaries, (2) lowering the incentive to write certain kinds of boilerplate, and (3) increasing the incentive to understand contractual terms. As a result, wide implementation of smart contracts may return contract law closer to the legal ideal of mutual understanding as the basis for exchange. At the same time, these auto-executing agreements risk making the future of contract law a return to the era of sealed instruments, enforcing themselves regardless of impossibility, fraud, and other legal safeguards. As examples of these costs and benefits, the Article focuses on smart contracts in two industries: the environmental public goods sector and the film industry. These industries illustrate the potential for smart contracts as well as steps that can be taken to ensure that as code becomes law, it will retain the doctrinal wisdom applied to contracts before they became smart

Elevated temperature stress corrosion of high strength sheet materials in the presence of stress concentrators Final report

Mechanism of hot salt stress corrosion cracking of titanium base alloy

Food Forensics in Class Action Litigation: The Race Between Pleading Standards and Technology

This Article examines the emerging use of “food forensics” to discover injury in class action litigation. Based on increased public interest in what goes inside food, plaintiffs are beginning to rely on statistical and chemical testing to verify label claims. The test results often spur producers to re-examine their products, but can also raise plausibility concerns under the veneer of science and deny consumers data they need to make informed decisions about food. Drawing on examples ranging from olive oil to multivitamins and canned octopus to pet food, I show how product testing in litigation represents a race between the resolving power of test results and slower-moving interpretation of pleading standards. I then propose a framework for navigating testing claims based on traditional case screening tools and statistical principles

The decisive role of aesthetics in the creation of inclusive environments : A proposal for a scheme of design principles regarding disability adaptation of Spånga by with focus on the site’s aesthetic cultural values

Funktionsanpassningar av miljöer genomförs för att generera ett inkluderande och jämlikt samhälle. Ett generellt fokus på funktion respektive försummande av estetik vid funktionsanpassningar medför att miljöer utformade för olika typer av människor inte gestaltas med likvärdig estetisk omsorg, vilket resulterar i att funktionsanpassningens huvudsakliga syfte inte uppnås. Estetikens roll i skapandet av inkluderande miljöer med avseende på funktionsanpassning har undersökts genom semistrukturella djupintervjuer. Vidare undersöktes, med hjälp av metoden Research by design, hur funktionsanpassningen i kulturmiljön Spånga by kan utvecklas med avseende på estetik och platsens estetiska kulturvärden. Resultaten diskuterades utifrån teoretiska perspektiv gällande estetik och kulturmiljö för att belysa hur funktionsanpassningar utifrån ett synsätt som lägger större vikt vid estetik kan generera ett samhälle som i större grad är inkluderande och jämlikt. Resultatet av intervjuerna visade att estetiken, som ansågs spegla samhällets värderingar, utgör en avgörande faktor i skapandet av inkluderande miljöer och estetiskt ignorerande uppfattades som en exkluderande handling av människor med normbrytande funktionsvariationer. Undersökningen av funktionsanpassningen i Spånga by visade att ett estetiskt fokus förmedlar och förstärker platsens estetiska kulturvärden då funktionsanpassningarna utgör en del av kulturmiljön vilket minskade stigmatiseringen av dem. Dessa resultat har belyst estetikens avgörande betydelse vid funktionsanpassning och hoppas inspirera till framtida lösningar vid utformningar av funktionsanpassningar i kulturmiljöer i Stockholms stad.Disability adaptation of environments is done to create an inclusive and equal society. However, when designing environments for people of different characteristics, lower levels of aesthetic ambition is common in the design due to a general focus on functionality and a neglect of aesthetics. This means that the main purpose of functional adaptation is unachieved. Therefore, the role of aesthetics in the creation of inclusive environments regarding disability adaptation have been examined by semi-structural interviews. Furthermore, the method Research by design was used to investigate how the disability adaptation of the cultural heritage site Spånga by could be developed regarding aesthetics and the site’s cultural values. The results were discussed based on theoretical perspectives about aesthetics and cultural heritage, in order to illustrate how disability adaptation, based on a perspective with increased aesthetic weight, can generate a society that to a greater extent is inclusive and equal. The interview results showed that aesthetics, which was considered reflective of societal values, play a crucial role in the creation of inclusive environments, and aesthetic ignorance was perceived as an act of excluding people with norm-breaking characteristics. The analysis of the functional adaptation of Spånga by showed that that the aesthetic perspective acts to mediate and enhance the cultural heritage values. These results are evidence of the importance of aesthetics in disability adaptation and hope to inspire in the design of future adaptations in cultural heritage sites in the city of Stockholm

Fraudulent Aggregation: The Effect of Daimler and Walden on Mass Litigation

This Article examines the effect of the U.S. Supreme Court’s jurisdictional tightening in Daimler and Walden on mass litigation. This Article shows how the Supreme Court’s changes to general and specific jurisdiction, considered together, end the practice of tactically allocating non-diverse plaintiffs across state lines to defeat diversity jurisdiction in nationwide litigation, a doctrine this Article terms fraudulent aggregation. This Article places the doctrine of fraudulent aggregation in the context of fraudulent joinder, the emerging doctrine of fraudulent misjoinder, and other attempts to avoid federal court jurisdiction through artful pleading. Examples from recent products liability litigation show both the application of the doctrine and the challenges facing its adoption—chiefly whether lower courts attempt to recreate general jurisdiction under the guise of expanded specific jurisdiction

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationQuestar Corporation commissioned and funded this research, in partnership with the University of Utah and Bechtel Corporation, to develop methods of protecting steel natural gas pipelines crossing zones of permanent ground deformation. The goal of this research was the development and testing of an Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) Geofoam cover system for such pipelines across active faults or areas of permanent ground deformation (e.g., landslides, permafrost thaw, liquefaction-induced lateral spread). The goal of an EPS Geofoam cover system atop a buried pipeline is to reduce the lateral, longitudinal and vertical forces induced on the pipe as the surrounding ground undergoes permanent deformation. The properties of EPS Geofoam have distinct advantages that lead to improved pipe performance during large ground deformation. The most important of these are its low unit weight and relatively high compressibility. These advantages are the primary focus of this research. Further, the interaction of a pipe and EPS Geofoam was explored and analyzed in a loading case where the pipe was pushed directly into the EPS. In addition to laboratory-scale tests, full-scale tests were conducted with vertical and horizontal plane strain movement of pipe interacting with EPS Geofoam cover systems. Subsequently, numerical modeling was done of the field tests to further evaluate the use of an EPS cover system for applications experiencing large, permanent deformation. The results of the research program have shown that EPS Geofoam can be used as a cover system for steel pipelines crossings at active normal faults, or for other types of permanent ground deformation where the expected offset is predominately vertical