Litigation and inequality : federal diversity jurisdiction in industrial America, 1870-1958 / Edward A. Purcell, Jr.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

Purcell explores the dynamic relationship between legal and social change through the prism of litigation practice and tactics. He examines changing litigation patterns in suits between individuals and national corporations over tort claims for personal injuries and contract claims for insurance benefits. In this volume, Purcell refines the progressive claim that the federal courts favoured business enterprises during this time, and identifies specific ways and particular time periods in which the federal courts both advantaged and disadvantaged national corporations. He also identifies 1892-1908 as a critical period in the evolution of the 20th century federal judicial system.

Origins of a Social Litigation System -- The Social Structure of Party Inequality and the Informal Legal Process -- The Federal Common Law -- The Battle for Forum Control, I: The Jurisdictional Amount and the Limits of Corporate Liability -- The Battle for Forum Control, II: Joinder and the Limits of the System -- Removal and the Problems of Local Prejudice: Three Perspectives on the System -- Contraction and Evolution: The System After 1910 -- The Rise of Interstate Forum Shopping -- Tactical Escalation in Insurance Litigation -- Disintegration -- Retrospective: History, Procedure, and the Social Role of the Federal Courts.

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