Tim Reagan, Marie Leary, Shannon R. Wheatman, Thomas E. Willging, Natacha Blain, George W. Cort, D. Dean P. Miletich
May 1, 2003
Case records generally are public records and all documents filed with a court are available to the public for inspection upon request unless a statute, rule, or order provides otherwise. This report summarizes federal and state court rules on sealing documents in trial courts files.
The Advisory Committee on Civil Rules has been considering a proposal to revise Fed. R. Civil P. 23 to create new certification standards that would apply only to settlement class actions. The Committee sought empirical research from the Center to help it decide how to proceed.
This is an expanded version of a report that was previously published as Appendix E of the Report of the Advisory Group on Civil Rules and the Working Group on Mass Torts (Report on Mass Tort Litigation) February 15, 1999.
This report by Professor Jay Tidmarsh of Notre Dame Law School examines five cases in which Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure has been used to achieve a settlement of a mass tort controversy.