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The principal-agent problem in class actions, which occurs whenever the interests
of class counsel (the agent) conflict with those of the class (the principal), has
plagued the class action system for decades. When these conflicts of interest arise,
they often lead to plaintiff classes receiving lower monetary awards than they other-
wise deserve, above-market fees for attorneys, and underenforcement of claims
against wrongdoers. Throughout the years, both Congress and scholars alike have
tried to address this issue, but it persists. This Note invites Congress and scholars to
think differently about potential solutions to a problem that has been around for far
too long. It argues that looking to qui tam litigation, specifically, the False Claims
Act, provides a unique approach that could help significantly curtail the principal-
agent problem. By permitting the government to install itself as lead counsel in class
actions involving money damages—when it deems an action to be worthy—the
financial incentives between any given class and its respective class counsel are
realigned. While private attorneys seek the maximum amount of attorney’s fees,
even if it comes at the expense of the client, government lawyers do not have the
same motivation. Adding an amendment to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23
permitting qui tam litigation would allow the government to act as a gatekeeper for
class actions while leaving the option open for private attorneys to bring suit should
the government decide not to do so. By providing different channels of enforce-
ment, the amendment offers a promising opportunity to better deter private sector
misconduct, discourage frivolous suits, and improve the overall outcomes for plain-
tiff classes.

In Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court, the Supreme Court
heard a challenge to specific personal jurisdiction brought under the “arising out of
or relating to” prong (also referred to as the “arising out of” prong) of the min-
imum contacts test for only the second time. In attempting to evade jurisdiction for
injuries caused by defective cars in Montana and Minnesota, Ford argued that
because the specific cars at issue were not originally sold in those fora, its pur-
poseful contacts with the state did not proximately cause the injury at issue, and
therefore the injuries did not “arise out of” those contacts. Ford’s argument is based
on a misreading of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court, the only case in
which the Court analyzed that prong of the minimum contacts test. This Note seeks
to explore the development and purposes underlying the “arising out of” prong,
concluding that its purpose is to ensure a sufficient connection between the forum
and the underlying claim such that the state has a legitimate regulatory interest and
that litigation in the forum is convenient. After describing the development and
purpose of the “arising out of” prong and contrasting it with the purpose under-
lying the “purposeful availment” prong, this Note addresses the ways in which chal-
lenges to jurisdiction are brought when it is unclear if the claim arises in a
particular forum. This Note then takes on the Ford case and discusses how the
Supreme Court’s decision fits into the framework describing what work the “arising
out of” prong is doing in the jurisdictional analysis.

Over one third of all pending cases in the federal court system are part of a Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) proceeding. Previous and ongoing MDLs include claims stemming from the opioid epidemic, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the National Football League concussion cases, and a myriad of pharmaceutical and medical products liability suits. Both the percentage and sheer number of cases utilizing this form of aggregate litigation have dramatically increased in recent years. Bellwether trials, designed to test the facts and legal theories underpinning many of the consolidated cases, are a key feature of MDLs in facilitating resolution. This Note examines the role of MDL bellwether trials and the potential impact of proposed reforms. Part I surveys the functions of bellwether trials as well as current judicial limitations imposed on the practice. Part II examines proposals that would further restrict the use of MDL bellwether trials: first, a bill from the 115th Congress and second, proposed amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. These proposals would require the consent of all parties for an MDL bellwether to ensue. Finally, Part III explores the potential effects of these proposed reforms as well as the discrepancies between their purported aims and the likely impact of their enactment. These proposals would exacerbate the MDL “black hole,” result in less informed settlements, and create more opacity in the MDL process. Principally, they are an attempt to wrest power over procedure to cement defendants’ structural advantage over the MDL.

Over the past 50 years, multidistrict litigation (MDL) has quietly revolutionized civil procedure. MDLs include the largest tort cases in U.S. history, but without the authority of the class-action rule, MDL judges—who formally have only pretrial jurisdiction over individual cases—have resorted to extraordinary procedural exceptionalism to settle cases on a national scale. Substantive state laws, personal jurisdiction, transparency, impartiality, reviewability, federalism, and adequate representation must all yield if doing so fulfills that one goal.

Somehow, until now, this has remained below the surface to everyone but MDL insiders. Thanks to the sprawling MDL over the opioid crisis—and unprecedented opposition to it—MDL is finally in public view. State attorneys general have resisted the opioid MDL’s intense nationalism, its relentless drive to global settlement, its wild procedural innovation, its blurring of differences across state law, and its dramatic assertions of jurisdictional authority. Opiates is the most extraordinary MDL yet, but most big MDLs share many of its features, and Opiates is already the roadmap for the next mega-cases. Moreover, even as resistance to Opiates has dispersed some of the MDL’s early power, that resistance itself has come in the form of unusual procedural mechanisms.

MDL is designed for individual cases—giving similar suits filed in different districts an efficient pretrial process before sending them home for trial. In reality, that is pure fiction. Few cases ever return. And the MDL’s mode of coordination—from its anti-federalism stance to its insistence that each proceeding is too unique to be confined by the Federal Rules—chafes at almost every aspect of procedure’s traditional rules and values. MDL is not-so-secretly changing the face of civil procedure.

This Article weaves together for the first time these exceptional features of MDL and their disruption of procedure’s core assumptions. Is MDL a revolution? Or simply a symptom of a larger set of modern procedural tensions manifesting in many forms? Either way, it begs the question: What do we expect of litigation on this scale?

We recognize that MDL fills important gaps by providing access to courts but argue for some return to regular order to safeguard due process, federalism, and sovereignty. We suggest specific shifts—from more pretrial motions to new paths for appellate review, attorney selection, and jurisdictional redundancy—where the normative balance seems particularly out of whack; shifts we believe are in line with the spirit of Federal Rule 1’s own inherent paradox—the ideal of “just, speedy and inexpensive procedure.”

We also offer the first comprehensive analysis of the historic suits over the opioid crisis. Opiates is the first MDL that pits localities against their own state attorneys general in a struggle for litigation control. Its judge has publicly stated that solving a national health crisis that Congress dumped in his lap is different from ordinary litigation. Opiates has even invented a new form of class action. It is hyper-dialectical, jurisdictionally competitive, outcome-oriented, repeat-player-rich, fiercely creative procedure.

Children have legal rights. Yet, children typically lack the legal capacity to represent their interests in courts. When federal courts are presented with children’s claims, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure require courts to ensure that children’s legal interests are adequately protected. To do so, courts decide who can speak and make decisions for the child within the litigation. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 17(c) maps out a loose process for addressing these concerns but fails to fully account for a critical factor in protecting child litigants: the decisionmaking rights of parents. 

Because parents have constitutionally protected authority to make important decisions for their children, litigation brought on a child’s behalf presents a collision of rights and obligations between parents, children, and “the state,” here, the federal courts. Court doctrine interpreting Rule 17(c) is tangled and inconsistent and fails to offer clear guidance regarding what preference, if any, parents should have to represent their children’s interests in litigation. This Article proposes for the first time that constitutional doctrine establishing parents’ protected decisionmaking authority should make parents the default representatives for their children in federal civil litigation. The Article presents an account of court practices and an analytical framework to guide courts’ application of Rule 17(c), which implements the general constitutional rule of parent priority while upholding the courts’ responsibility to protect children’s interests. 

A court’s method of decisionmaking regarding interstate choice of law affects forum shopping and class action strategy. Rather than read vaguely worded state statutes with the expectation of discovering a legislative intent with respect to extraterritorial application, as the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws suggests, courts should employ a rebuttable presumption that the legislature has not considered the choice of law issue. When a court is faced with an interstate choice of law question in which one potentially applicable law is a statute of the forum state, in the absence of explicit statutory language regarding how a choice of law analysis should be conducted for the forum statute in question, the court should decide which law to apply not by attempting to divine some nonexistent legislative intent but by resorting to the general choice of law principles utilized in the forum state.

Almost twenty years ago, the Supreme Court’s decision in Tanner v. United States established that under Federal Rule of Evidence 606(b) juror intoxication was an “internal” influence to which jurors were incompetent to testify. Since that decision, many states have discarded their diverse approaches regarding the admissibility of juror testimony on juror misconduct in favor of Tanner’s external/internal framework.

This Note demonstrates why the policy considerations justifying restrictions on juror testimony are not well served by Tanner’s external/internal framework. The Note offers states an alternative approach to the issue of juror misconduct which would better protect both jurors and litigants.

This Article argues that diversity jurisdiction was intended to funnel politically significant litigation into the federal courts principally because federal officials would have the power to dictate the composition of federal juries. All existing accounts for the origins of diversity jurisdiction ultimately rely upon putative differences between the state and federal benches for their explanations of the jurisdiction’s origin. This emphasis on the bench is anachronistic, however, because the jury possessed far more power than the bench to decide cases in eighteenth-century American courts. American juries during this period customarily had the right to decide issues of law as well as fact and were largely beyond the control of the bench. The Framers saw state court juries—independent bodies of citizens with almost unfettered power to resolve legal disputes—as one of the greatest dangers in allowing ordinary citizens too much control over the governance of the nation. By wresting adjudicative power out of the hands of state court juries and bestowing it upon federal juries whose compositions could be tightly controlled by federal officials, diversity jurisdiction accomplished the Constitution’s overarching purpose of checking the operation of “unrestrained” democracy in the states.

Once the federal courts were established, federal officials controlled the composition of federal juries in several ways. In most districts, federal marshals dictated the composition of federal juries by hand-selecting jurors of their choice. In addition, Congress ensured that the political, economic, and social characteristics of federal juries would differ dramatically from their state counterparts by providing that the federal courts would draw their juries overwhelmingly from the urban, commercial centers of the nation. The state courts, by contrast, drew their juries predominantly from the agrarian populations living outside those centers. It is highly unlikely that this pervasive control over the composition of federal juries was an unintended consequence of the Constitution. Instead, as this Article argues, the evidence strongly suggests that the federal officials’ control over the composition of federal juries constituted the single most important impetus behind the creation of diversity jurisdiction and a significant rationale for the establishment of the lower federal courts.