Distribution of Funds in Class Actions - Claims Administration

Most class action securities cases result in a settlement where the parties agree on a defined amount of money to be placed in a fund for distribution to eligible beneficiaries. Although the size of the fund and the losses suffered by eligible beneficiaries are defined, the number of potential beneficiaries who decide not to participate in the settlement by opting out and the number and value of losses eventually claimed by those eligible beneficiaries are not known until long after the settlement amount has been established. In any closed-end fund, like the securities class action settlements, there is the potential for a Goldilocks dilemma ―the fund may be too large or too small for the claims being made, not ―just right. The ensuing tensions created by this mismatch between funds available and claims on those funds can be one of the most significant problems in any settlement fund distribution. The ability of courts, special masters, and claims administrators to cope with this mismatch is critical to the success of the distribution process. Courts, lawyers, academics, and claims administrators have generally accepted the traditional approaches normally taken in securities class action distribution processes as appropriate under the circumstances. This Article presents several alternative approaches for coping with the mismatch dilemma that are worthy of consideration for incorporation in future distributions. The literature on distribution processes has given too little attention to the successes and failures in cases that have utilized non-traditional techniques, and it is likely that future distributions can benefit from these actual experiences. The following case studies in both securities and non-securities contexts illustrate the Goldilocks dilemmas that arise and discuss approaches that courts, lawyers, and claims administrators might take to ameliorate them in situations where there are too many opt-outs, too few claims, too many claims, too little money, or too much money

The Evolution of Asbestos Bankruptcy Trust Distribution Plans

The evolution of asbestos litigation from the early 1970s to the present has become the source of much analysis. One commentator divides this history into several phases: the heroic phase, bureaucratic floundering, adaptation and maturity, search for global settlement, expansion of the number of cases, and legislative reform in a new era. A neglected aspect of the history of asbestos litigation has been the evolution of asbestos bankruptcy trust distribution plans. Since 1982 there have been more than 70 corporations which have filed bankruptcy proceedings because of their exposure to asbestos liability. As these corporations emerge from bankruptcy, their plans of reorganization establish trust distribution plans to pay asbestos claimants. These distribution plans provide a unique window into the evolution of a marketplace for the evaluation of asbestos claims among plaintiffs’ lawyers. Notwithstanding the “maturity”5 of the mass tort, this evolution reveals the historic development of relative values and differentiation among asbestos personal injury claims from the perspective of lawyers who represent plaintiffs. Specifically, plaintiffs’ counsel have voluntarily strengthened qualification criteria and altered the balance of payments for discrete diseases to deal with the scarcity of resources in the bankruptcy trust context

Second-Generation Dispute System Design Issues in Managing Settlements

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Effects of Clostridium difficile on the human immune response

Clostridium difficile is a bacterium that is rapidly becoming a large issue in the medical community due to its tendency to infect hospital patients and its resistance to antibiotics. By studying the way in which the pathogen interacts with the human immune system, it is possible to better understand how the body naturally fights off the disease. This knowledge can allow medical professionals to develop treatments that can help curtail the infection before serious symptoms occur. Working under a grant program alongside Professors Kirsten Hokeness and Chris Reid, I was able to research the effects that exposure to the C. difficile bacteria has on healthy human immune cells. Our findings show that there is a heightened level of chemokine production in these cells, which is indicative of an immune response to combat the C. difficile infection

Dispute Systems Design: The United Nations Compensation Commission

The Security Council of the United Nations established the United Nations Compensation Commission (“UNCC”) with its Resolution 687 on April 3, 1991.1 It was the first compensation system established under the authority of Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter and was designed to process and pay claims arising from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The purpose of this paper is to examine the design of the UNCC from a variety of perspectives: its historical setting, the alternative design approaches that have been taken in other compensation contexts, the details of its design, and its role in the design of future claims resolution facilities. This paper also examines the extent to which concepts of legitimacy and rough justice conflict or reinforce each other in the context of the UNCC

Compton scattering from the proton at NLO in the chiral expansion

We present calculations of differential cross sections for Compton scattering from the proton, using amplitudes calculated to fourth order in heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory. We compare with available data up to 200 MeV. We find that the agreement for angles below 90 degree is acceptable over the whole energy range, but that at more backward angles the agreement decreases above about 100 MeV, and fails completely above the photoproduction threshold.Comment: 13 pages RevTeX, 7 eps figures. Revised version correcting some errors, principally in the coding of 3rd order contributions; figures changed slightly and contribution from diagram 1h revised. Conclusions are largely unchanged, but the failure of the chiral expansion is visible at rather lower angles than appeared previously to be the cas