Civil Procedure

PODCAST: The Petitioner’s Path to Victory in the Supreme Court in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co.   

TLR BLOG

As the Supreme Court’s 2022-23 term neared its conclusion, the Court issued an important personal jurisdiction decision in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co.  By a five to four vote, the Court rejected a Due Process Clause challenge to Pennsylvania’s corporate registration statute.  In Mallory, this meant upholding a Pennsylvania court’s exercise of personal jurisdiction over a Virginia corporation that did business in Pennsylvania when the corporation was sued by a Virginia citizen for injuries that, he alleged, were caused by the corporation’s conduct outside of Pennsylvania.    

Ashley Keller represented Robert Mallory, the plaintiff in the lawsuit, in the Supreme Court.  In this podcast, Keller discusses with Associate Dean Rodger Citron how he came to take the case, his strategy for getting the Supreme Court to grant certiorari and presenting original public meaning (or originalist) arguments in defense of the Pennsylvania statute, and why he was surprised that Justice Gorsuch ended up drafting the Court’s plurality opinion.  As Keller explains, Mallory is an important case for a number of reasons, including the fact that it shows that plaintiffs may array original public meaning arguments to support their view of the law.      

Brought to you by the Touro Law Review.   

Our guest today is Ashley Keller, Esq.

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PODCAST: A Discussion of A Civil Action

TLR BLOG

Jonathan Harr’s, A Civil Action, published in 1995, is one of the best nonfiction legal thrillers ever written. It tells the riveting story of a complicated civil suit over environmental pollution that occurred in Woburn, Massachusetts. Not surprisingly, Harr’s book was adapted into a film of the same name that was released in 1998. John Travolta played the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Jan Schlichtmann, a character worthy of Shakespeare. Robert Duvall nearly steals the film as Jerry Facher, the lawyer for one of the corporate defendants.

Nearly 25 years later, the film is still a gold mine for Civil Procedure professors. In his review, Roger Ebert described A Civil Action as “John Grisham for grownups.” Schlichtmann is relentless in pursuing the case against the defendants, becoming so invested that nothing else seems to matter – an approach that has significant consequences for everyone around him as the case turns into an interminable trial. Facher, meanwhile, is a master litigator who wrings every advantage from the rules and courtroom procedures.

In this podcast, Associate Dean Rodger Citron moderates a discussion of A Civil Action with his colleagues Laura Dooley and Deseriee Kennedy.

Brought to you by the Touro Law Review. 

Our guests today are Professor Laura Dooley and Professor Deseriee Kennedy.

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PODCAST: A Conversation About Opioid Litigation with Professor Adam Zimmerman

TLR BLOG

Earlier this year, in late June, an extraordinary class-action trial regarding the opioid crisis began in state court in Suffolk County. The plaintiffs, Suffolk and Nassau Counties and New York State, claim that the defendants – manufacturers and distributors of opioid drugs and retail pharmacies that sold them – created a “public nuisance” by aggressively selling these drugs in New York while downplaying their dangers and the possibility of addiction.

There were so many parties and lawyers involved that trial opened in the first-floor auditorium of Touro College, Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center. The Hon. Jerry Garguilo is presiding over the case and has empaneled a jury. Under New York law, the plaintiffs are entitled to a jury trial on their public nuisance claim; the case is believed to be the first opioid trial of its kind to go before a jury. While a number of defendants settled before or over the course of the trial, the case is still going on as of mid-November, now in a courtroom in Suffolk County.

In early October, Professor Adam Zimmerman, a Professor at Loyola Law School and the author of a number of scholarly articles about class action suits, discussed the legal and policy issues raised by the opioid trial in Suffolk County with Associate Dean Rodger Citron. Their wide-ranging discussion will be of interest to anyone following the opioid litigation in Suffolk County and around the nation, as well anyone who teaches or is taking Torts and Civil Procedure.

Brought to you by the Touro Law Review. 

Our guest today is Professor Adam Zimmerman

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