Multi-Party Litigation
The Strategic Context
Description:... Litigation: is it an effective response to the malignant behaviour of corporations and governments, or is it a cancer that has spread throughout, or even beyond, the body politic? Does litigation provide an even field where David can battle Goliath, or is it more like the Roman Coliseum, where the lion almost always wins?
Multi-Party Litigation draws upon insights from law and politics to assess the historical development and expansion, political design, and regulatory desirability of multi-party litigation strategies and counterstrategies in Canada, Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It describes a complex political battle that is being fought on multiple fronts by competing groups of attorneys, institutions, and interests. More than three decades ago, Marc Galanter suggested that well-resourced defendants can outmanoeuvre the plaintiff class. McIntosh and Cates show that this remains the case, arguing that the effectiveness of a litigation strategy depends both on the ability of the defendants to act aggressively on more than one political front, as well as on the makeup of the plaintiff class.
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