Federal courts have been grappling with the problem of mass actions for decades. Balancing fairness, access to justice, and efficiency is an ongoing challenge. Beginning with class actions in 1966 and multidistrict litigation in 1967, US courts have allowed for mass aggregation. Increasingly, in the 21st century, bankruptcies too have been used to resolve an extremely large volume of claims.
The opioid crisis has been perhaps the most dramatic of the mass torts that US courts have attempted to resolve. Beginning with a large multidistrict litigation and evolving into a large bankruptcy action, opioid cases have played a dominant role in the new cycle, law firms’ business books, and law reviews’ pages. In June 2024, the Supreme Court decided Harrington v. Purdue, effectively sending the bankruptcy action back to square one. How will our legal system move forward, both in this case, and in mass actions more generally?
The event will take place January 31, 2025, 9am - 5pm. We encourage everyone to attend in-person at Greenberg Lounge of Vanderbilt Hall, 40 Washington Square South, NY, NY 10012.
The event is free, and we will be applying for CLE credit. RSVP here.
Panel 1: Harrington v. Purdue
The Supreme Court’s decision in Harrington v Purdue upended not just one of the largest and most complicated judgments in American history, but also struck at the heart of bankruptcy as a forum for resolving mass actions. This panel will include individuals intimately familiar with the case and what it means for our legal system.
Moderator: Sheila Birnbaum (Interim Director, Center on Civil Justice)
Panelists:
- Arthur Gonzalez (retired Chief Bankruptcy Judge, Southern District of New York)
- Marc Kesselman (General Counsel, Purdue Pharma)
- Joshua Macey (Professor, Yale Law School)
- Joe Rice (Co-Founder, Motley Rice)
- Lindsey Simon (Professor, Emory University School of Law)
Panel 2: Bankruptcy, Mass Torts, and Class Actions: What’s Next?
After Harrington v. Purdue, what’s next? What allows 524(g) to work? Mass litigation is getting increasingly complex and dominating a larger percentage of Federal dockets. How do we use our existing tools to resolve these issues, and what new tools do we need?
Moderator: Troy McKenzie (Dean, NYU School of Law)
Panelists:
- Jayne Conroy (Partner, Simmons Hanly Conroy)
- Sandy Esserman (Shareholder, Stutzman, Bromberg, Esserman & Plifka)
- Marshall Huebner (Partner, Davis Polk & Wardwell)
- Chris Seeger (Founding Partner, Seeger Weiss)
Lunch Break
Panel 3: Valuation of Claims
Beyond the procedure of organizing mass claims lies a growing and complicated problem – how to value them. Are there best practices in valuation? Are there data-driven, technological, or simply procedural tools we can use?
Moderator: Sam Issacharoff (Professor, NYU School of Law)
Panelists:
- Elizabeth Cabraser (Partner, Lieff Cabraser)
- Alexandra Lahav (Professor, Cornell Law School)
- Ed Morrison (Professor, Columbia Law School)
- James Murdica (Partner, Barnes & Thornburg)
Panel 4: A View from the Bench
Judges sit at the heart of mass actions. They are created for, among other things, judicial economy. But, at the end, judges wind up tasked with increasingly complex legal and factual issues, requiring multiple types of technical expertise, with exceptionally diverse sets of party and non-party stakeholders. This panel brings together a number of experienced judges to get their perspective.
Moderator: Dan Polster (U.S. District Judge, Northern District of Ohio)
Panelists:
- Melanie Cyganowski (retired Bankruptcy Judge, Eastern District of New York)
- Robert Drain (retired Bankruptcy Judge, Southern District of New York)
- Michael Kaplan (Chief Bankruptcy Judge, District of New Jersey)
- Casey Rodgers (U.S. District Judge, Northern District of Florida)