Bite-Sized Business Law
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Get a breakdown of the top stories in business law from industry leaders on the front lines with Bite-Sized Business Law. Host Amy Martella takes a closer look at the latest corporate happenings through interviews with the attorneys, legal experts, public figures, and scholars behind the news to distill business law’s biggest stories into bite-sized portions.
This is your chance to go further into the world of business law and stay up to date with legal cases and industry trends.
Corporations impact us all, leading changes that extend far beyond business to shape the economy, public policy, technology, and beyond. Looking at the big picture, Amy discusses not only the underlying issues in business ethics and legal cases leading the biggest stories but also sparks thought-provoking discussions on where the law should be headed.
Amy is the Executive Director of the Corporate Law Center at Fordham University School of Law. Her background ranges from big law to government to tech startups, allowing her to offer an insider’s perspective of the issues that shape corporate actions, large and small. Covering crypto regulation to securities fraud, AI’s impact to Elon Musk’s pay package, Bite-Sized Business Law covers it all with guests of varying viewpoints to provide the nuanced analysis needed to tackle complex problems.
Whether you're looking for the latest in legal insight on intellectual property, mergers and acquisitions, business ethics or legal cases in the business law world, you’ll find it here. Enjoying a thoughtful perspective on the news stories of the moment, Bite-Sized Business Law examines big issues and delivers them in small doses.
Bite-Sized Business Law is a project by the Corporate Law Center at Fordham Law. The Center serves as a hub for scholars, professionals, policymakers, and students to engage in the study, discussion, and debate of current issues in corporate law. The Center focuses on aspects of corporate law, corporate compliance, antitrust law, and securities regulation. Through initiatives like the Mergers and Acquisitions seminar and the Securities Litigation and Arbitration Clinic, students actively engage in real-world research and cases, bridging the gap between classroom learning and practical application in the legal field.
Bite-Sized Business Law
The Opaque Capital Fueling Mass Tort Litigation
Today on Bite-Sized Business Law, we tackle a topic that we’ve only alluded to in previous episodes, which is the funding of mass tort litigation by outside financiers. Dubbed “opaque capital” by one of today’s guests, its use for funding complex mass tort litigations gives rise to some tricky legal, business, and ethical predicaments that we discuss in detail. Joining us for this conversation are legal scholars Samir Parikh and Maria Glover. Samir is the Robert E. Jones Professor of Advocacy and Ethics at Lewis & Clark Law School and a nationally recognized expert on mass tort restructurings and business reorganizations. His recent article, 'Opaque Capital and Mass Tort Financing’, is sure to garner a lot of attention, as did his recent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the Texas two-step bankruptcy trend. Maria is a Professor of Law at Georgetown University, where she specializes in civil procedure and complex litigation. Maria has also testified before congressional committees and her work is not only published in leading law journals but cited by the media and the US Supreme Court. Tune in to hear Samir and Maria’s hot takes on third-party litigation funding, opaque capital, opportunities for exploitation in the mass tort litigation space, settlements, disclosure, regulation, and more!
Key Points From This Episode:
• The history of litigation finance and why mass tort litigation is attracting bad actors.
• Distinguishing between class actions, mass torts, and multi-district litigations (MDL).
• Third-party litigation funding (TPLF) and contingency fees in the US versus Australia.
• The role of TPLF in mass torts, particularly for ad campaigns and lead generation.
• Defining opaque capital and the “new breed” of financiers moving into this space.
• Critical points in the process when TPLF has ugly consequences: the Alchemist's Inversion.
• Maria’s take on the perceived problems with mass tort litigation settlements.
• Claim generation and the trouble with funding that is contingent on quantity for payout.
• Some of the ways that non-meritorious claims affect everyone negatively.
• Outlining the ethical and legal obligations law firms have when accepting funding.
• Opinions on disclosure and transparency when it comes to financier agreements.
• The European movement towards more aggressive regulation in the mass tort space.
• Final comments on how this all relates to the shared ownership of law firms.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: