Litigation and Inequality: Federal Diversity Jurisdiction in Industrial America, 1870-1958

Front Cover
Oxford 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

Introduction
3
1 Origins of a Social Litigation System
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
Index
419

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