Mark D. White

At Prawfsblawg, Sergio Campos (University of Miami School of Law) picks up on a theme explored in The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination (as discussed in the New Yorker review) about divided selves and applies it to mandatory class action suits. From the post:

[M]ass torts are rife with internal conflicts.  For example, in asbestos litigation, the "presents" want to recovery as quickly and as much as possible, but the "futures" want to make sure that there are funds available for them should they manifest injury.  But how does the mandatory class action resolve this conflict?  In fact, by forcing individual plaintiffs to litigate collectively when they would be better off going alone, isn't the mandatory class action only making things worse, by, in effect, forcing the "high" value claims to subsidize the "low" value claims?   As I argue in my draft "Mass Torts and Due Process," focusing on conflicts among class members obscures a more fundamental conflict.  Like procrastination, mass torts primarily involve an intertemporal conflict within each class member.

Read the rest at Prawfsblawg...