Litigation and Inequality: Federal Diversity Jurisdiction in Industrial America, 1870-1958Oxford University Press, 1992 M12 31 - 464 pages Through the prism of litigation practice and tactics, Purcell explores the dynamic relationship between legal and social change. He studies changing litigation patterns in suits between individuals and national corporations over tort claims for personal injuries and contract claims for insurance benefits. Purcell refines the "progressive" claim that the federal courts favored business enterprise during this time, identifying specific manners and times in which the federal courts reached decisions both in favor of and against national corporations. He also identifies 1892-1908 as a critical period in the evolution of the twentieth century federal judicial system. |
Contents
3 | |
13 | |
2 The Social Structure of Party Inequality and the Informal Legal Process | 28 |
3 The Federal Common Law | 59 |
The Jurisdictional Amount and the Limits of Corporate Liability | 87 |
Joinder and the Limits of the System | 104 |
Three Perspectives on the System | 127 |
The System After 1910 | 148 |
8 The Rise of Interstate Forum Shopping | 177 |
9 Tactical Escalation in Insurance Litigation | 200 |
10 Disintegration | 217 |
History Procedure and the Social Role of the Federal Courts | 244 |
Notes | 293 |
419 | |
Common terms and phrases
amendment American Law appeal attorney burdens cause of action Chicago Circuit Civil claims clause Congress constitutional contract corporate defendants corporate diversity litigation decade decisions district diversity jurisdiction diversity of citizenship doctrine economic employees example favorable federal common law federal courts federal equity federal judges federal jurisdiction federal question federal question jurisdiction FELA fellow servant rule filed foreign corporations forum non conveniens H.R. Rep Ibid Illinois Central Railroad informal legal process insurance companies interstate forum shopping issue joinder tactic judgment Judiciary Act jurisdictional amount jury Justices late nineteenth Law Review limited lower courts national corporations national courts negligence Ohio Pacific Railway parties percent personal injury plaintiffs political practice prejudice procedural remand removal jurisdiction Removal of Causes restrict seemed separable controversy Sess settlement social Southern Railway statute substantive suits Supreme Court system of corporate Taft tion tort trial venue Warax workmen's compensation Yale Law Journal