Are punitive damages inappropriate in mass tort cases? Should they be eliminated from all forms of mass tort litigation? “Yes”, says Cornell Professor of Law Emeritus, James A. Henderson Jr. Who is Professor Henderson? Why do his observations and opinions deserve our attention? Well, for one thing, he is a respected scholar whose prodigious articles on torts issues over the years have helped inject principles of reasonableness into the tort liability explosion of the 1970s to this day.
Second, he is the co-reporter (along with Prof. Aaron D. Twerski) of the American Law Institute’s prestigious Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability (1998), an authoritative treatise that is widely consulted and cited by lawyers and courts around the country. And, if that weren’t enough, his two textbooks (co-authored with Twerski), “Torts: Cases and Materials” and “Products Liability: Problems and Process,” help guide the education of thousands of law students. So, when a scholar of that superior mettle warns against the law crossing the bounds of propriety in mass tort case handling, we ought to pay attention.
