Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had three stories on the Marketplace page about events which will influence the practices of DRI members and the lives of all of us over time.
First, Continental Airlines was found criminally liable for apparently improperly maintaining an airliner resulting in the crash of a Concorde outside Paris in 2000. Second, GNC an American vitamin retail chain is on the verge of being bought by a Chinese state backed company for more than $2 billion. Finally, Wal-Mart will receive a hearing at the Supreme Court which will address whether class action litigation is appropriate for employment cases where individual acts predominate.
In the first case, it's the criminalization of acts where there is was no criminal intent when the plane was maintained. Our tort system was designed to address private wrongs and seldom has the criminal process been used to punish mere negligence. We are seeing increased efforts in financial cases, products cases, and in other controversial situations to involve criminal prosecution to precede or augment tort suits. The Dodd-Frank act has put even more muscle behind criminal and civil suits involving financial fraud and at the same time it has created an even greater arena for whistle blowers and their lawyers to profit from uncovering questionable acts. The linking of criminal and civil proceedings isn't new, but it is becoming more prevalent, as evidenced by the Continental case.
If foreign governments take a greater stake in our businesses, on top of buying our debt, will our dispute resolution system survive? How will our regulatory system work with increased foreign ownership of companies which dominate the American marketplace? These foreign influences can impact our commercial and tort systems and bring new interests to the table when decisions need to be made. This is what can happen when more acquisitions like GNC occur.
Finally, if the scales shift the balance in dispute resolution to the aggregation of claims as opposed to a fact by fact, case by case, method of evaluating causation and damages, our system of justice will also change in ways never imagined when we were in law school. That is what is at stake in the Wal-Mart case.
These changes are going to affect all of us, our firms and our practices. We should all work within DRI to be sure to share what we know and develop effective strategies to effectively represent our clients in the coming years in this very changed world. DRI has been very effective at helping its members do just that for the past 50 years and with your interest and commitment together we can make sure DRI help us all meet these new challenges, too.