December 16, 2004

Intense bickering between plaintiff's firms in the diet drug litigation has shone a spotlight on the various types of firms that trade and sell inventories of cases, including the "advertisers" who may do little more than answer the phone for their high share of a fee (farming out the actual representation immediately to other firms) and the "warehousers" who accumulate cases for batch disposition. The New York Sun's Josh Gerstein quotes Notre Dame law prof Jay Tidmarsh who says the batch handling of settlements needs more scrutiny: ""The ethical rules we have were really developed for one-on-one cases. What we have in this mass tort area are a very different animal," Mr. Tidmarsh said. "It's a significant problem."