This report examines the "mass action" tort, which is being used by some local courts to join hundreds or even thousands of unrelated plaintiffs and defendants into a single massive proceeding, without the safeguards of class action litigation. The study reports on mass action activity in Jefferson County, Mississippi from 1999 through 2001. The report finds that mass action complaints were filed in Jefferson County by counsel from all over the country in numbers vastly disproportionate to the county's population and the overall volume of the court's civil docket; that the vast majority of these cases had little, if any, relationship to Jefferson County; and that plaintiffs' counsel consistently included one local defendant to insulate their cases from federal jurisdiction.
