Tag: Civil Procedure

Event Jurisdiction and Protective Coordination: Lessons from the September 11th Litigation – Report by Robin J. Effron

From Volume 81, Number 2 (January 2008)
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Shortly after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Congress passed the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act (“ATSSSA”). The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (“VCF”) was the centerpiece of the statute and provided a source of no-fault compensation to the tragedy’s victims and victims’ families. The ATSSSA also permitted victims to pursue traditional litigation instead.

The ATSSSA contains three “jurisdictional” features that have shaped the path of the litigation. The Act created a federal cause of action “for damages arising out of” the terrorist-related aircraft crashes and gave the Southern District of New York original and exclusive jurisdiction over all actions “resulting from or relating to the terrorist-related aircraft crashes.” Finally, it implemented a liability cap by limiting recovery in all actions to the defendants’ available liability insurance. These jurisdictional aspects of the “traditional” litigation option under the ATSSSA contain unusual and practically unprecedented elements, yet they have received almost no scholarly attention. This Article attempts to fill that gap by telling the story of the course of the September 11th litigation, tracking the challenges and issues that have arisen as a result of the ATSSSA’s coordination mandate, and exploring the relationship between federalization of forum and aggregation of claims.

 

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Resuscitating Deference to Lower Federal Court Judges Interpretations of State Law – Article by Jonathan Remy Nash

From Volume 77, Number 5 (July 2004)
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This Article examines the propriety of having federal courts afford deference to state law interpretations reached by lower federal court judges. Two Supreme Court decisions from the 1990s seemed substantially to circumscribe such deference. But in fact subsequent Court cases continue to afford deference. Moreover, such deference can be normatively valuable. This Article argues in favor of the use of deference in appropriate circumstances, including situations where the district court and court of appeals agree on the proper interpretation of state law, and where answers to state law questions are obtained through an intrafederal certification regime.

 

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