A Study of the Joining-Into Representative Party System: Focus on MDL in America
Date Issued
2016
Date
2016
Author(s)
Tsai, Shing-Wen
Abstract
The fact is that modern disputes today, such as public nuisance, traffic accident, product defect and other incidents which may hurt the interests of the public, are often lasting, obscure and expansive in nature. For instance, product liability litigation presents its own challenges. In some cases, the product exposure can occur over years and produce latent injury. Some individuals may not be aware that they have been exposed to a potentially injurious product, and some may not yet have been exposed but will be in the future. Besides, there may be an evolving and uncertain group of potential claimants and potential defendants. As a matter of fact, when multiple persons are injured and the injury is of minor degree, the injured may not be aware of the injury. When multiple parties litigate, the resources such as the labor, time and expenses that parties may be required to invest during the litigation process shall also be taken into consideration. Therefore, the joining-into representative party system is added to Article 44-2 of Taiwan Code of Civil Procedural. The characteristic of this system is the protection of parties’ procedural interests and collective interests in modern disputes. The strength of Taiwan’s joining-into representative party system is that multiple parties, whose common interests had arisen from the same public nuisance, traffic accident, product defect, or the same transaction or occurrence of any kind, were allowed to appoint one or more persons among themselves in accordance with the provision of Article 41 to sue for the same category of legal claims. Multiple parties have the opportunity not only to protect their procedural interests efficiently but also make use of the litigation system equally. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation originated with the adoption of the multidistrict venue statute, 28 U.S.C.A. 1407, in 1968. The statute authorizes the Panel to determine whether civil actions pending in more than one district which involve one or more common questions of fact should be transferred to a single district court for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings before a single judge and, if so, which judicial district and judge should handle the cases. Therefore, the possibility for conflict and duplication in discovery and other pretrial procedures in related cases can be avoided or minimized by such centralized management. According to the MDL Panel itself, the job of the Panel is to (1) determine whether civil actions pending in different federal districts involve one or more common questions of fact such that the actions should be transferred to one federal district for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings; and (2) select the judge or judges and court assigned to conduct such proceedings. The extent of coordination or consolidation of the pretrial proceedings is a matter determined solely by the transferee judge with the experience of complex cases. The transferee court’s authority has been described as broad, and it necessarily encompasses the management of cases, tight supervision of discovery, collaboration among lawyers, and promotion of global settlement that often emerge from bellwether trials. Federal courts have adopted new standards and made class actions more difficult for plaintiffs to bring, the MDL process embodied in 28 U.S.C. § 1407 is emerging as the primary vehicle for the resolution of complex civil cases. The joining-into representative parties system in Article 44-2 of Taiwan Code of Civil Procedure, which regulated that when multiple parties, whose common interests had arisen from the same public nuisance, traffic accident, product defect, or the same transaction or occurrence of any kind, were allowed to appoint one or more persons among themselves in accordance with the provision of Article 41 to sue for the same category of legal claims. The court provides parties with the information necessary for their dispute resolution with a public notice that parties may determine whether to resolve the dispute through the representative party or a joinder and take their self-interests into account by deciding whether to make use of this option as provided. Since the joining-into representative party system has been enforced for more than ten years, there have been comparatively few cases taking advantage of this system in Taiwan’s judicial practice. Therefore, the future development of the system still requires further observation. This study aims at introducing the characteristics of MDL in America and the content of the joining-into representative parties system in Taiwan. Furthermore, this study focuses on how the courts exercise and practice both systems, which one of the common issues of the disputes that have been individually brought to the court by other parties with common interests and that have been pending before courts under different jurisdictions.
Subjects
rights of procedure option
a public notice
representative party
joining-into representative party
consolidation of actions
Type
thesis
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