NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Vanderbilt University Law School has received $2.9 million from the settlement of a class action lawsuit to which it was not a party. The award will fund the school’s new civil litigation and dispute resolution program, designed to produce graduates with the experience and necessary competencies to make them more productive from their first day at work.
The civil litigation and dispute resolution program, envisioned several years ago as a complement to the school’s already nationally ranked offerings, was started in the fall of 2005 with support primarily from the university’s academic venture capital fund. Going forward, it will rely on the $2.9 million endowment now earmarked for this program and the revenues it generates.
The award is the result of a settlement in Lankford v. Dow Chemical Co., a class action involving plaintiffs in 29 states and the District of Columbia. Plaintiff’s counsel alleged that three companies – The Dow Chemical Company, E.I. du Pont de Nemours and DuPont Dow Elastomers LLC – conspired to fix the price of Neoprene, violating trade practices, consumer protection and antitrust statutes during a four-year period ending in 2003. Neoprene is a synthetic rubber used in the manufacture of a range of consumer products including cables, transmission belts, conveyer belts, adhesives and sporting goods apparel.
Because the wronged parties purchased products containing the material rather than purchasing Neoprene directly, it was judged impossible to identify individuals harmed; even if that were possible, the cost of distributing the settlement funds to individual class members easily could dwarf their actual recoveries.
In such cases, the court turns to the doctrine of cy pres, meaning, literally, “so close.” In the Lankford case, the defendants agreed to a $4.2 million settlement to resolve the case, with no admission of liability. Once court costs and other fees were deducted, the judge directed that the more than $2.9 million remaining should to go to “an appropriate charitable or government organization,” subject to the court’s approval.
The case was brought in Tennessee Circuit Court. In seeking a recipient that would satisfy the requirement that the funds be used to benefit as closely as possible the class of individuals harmed, counsel for the plaintiff, the Nashville firm of Branstetter, Kilgore, Stranch & Jennings, recommended endowing Vanderbilt’s nascent civil litigation and dispute resolution program.
Judge Marietta Shipley considered an affidavit by Dean Edward Rubin detailing the Vanderbilt program and appointed a special master, Kathleen Reed Edge of the Nashville firm of Miller & Martin, to evaluate the merits of the proposed distribution.
Vanderbilt’s civil litigation and dispute resolution program was deemed an appropriate recipient, in part because it is a nationally regarded school with graduates throughout the country, including all the jurisdictions in which the Lankford class members are located. As importantly, the law school promises to use “the settlement award [to] benefit each of the jurisdictions by producing well-educated attorneys in matters concerning settlement agreements.” In short, allegations of corporate malfeasance often result in litigation and the design of complex settlements, and that is precisely what the Vanderbilt program addresses.
Neither the judge nor the special master has a connection to Vanderbilt, though the principal attorneys for the plaintiff class are Vanderbilt Law School graduates. Gerard Stranch is a 2003 law school graduate, and Dewey Branstetter earned his undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt in 1978 and his law degree in 1981. As ordered by the judge, the law school will report annually to the court on its use of the funds.
As the program’s “convener,” Professor of Law Richard Nagareda is responsible for convening discussions among faculty interested in civil litigation and dispute resolution, with an eye toward enhancing both the intellectual environment for innovative scholarship in the field and the school’s upper-level curricular offerings for students interested in practicing in those areas.
Nagareda explained law firms are made up of two major areas of practice: corporate law and litigation. Vanderbilt already has an established law and business program, and this new program is “the perfect complement, offering our students a deeper theoretical background and more experience in litigation and requiring them to prepare more sophisticated written material and to become familiar with the range of ways lawyers resolve disputes.”
Nagareda said the program will build on the school’s strong tradition in litigation education by including “a deeper, richer curriculum” which inevitably will intersect with the school’s clinical program. “Despite the image portrayed on television, most litigation in this country, whether you’re talking about private law firms, public interest organizations or government agencies, results in sophisticated and complex settlements, not trials. This truth calls for legal education to nurture particular competencies, for instance in research, negotiation, working with expert witnesses and aggregating multiple claims,” he explained.
Since becoming dean in July, Rubin has championed the civil litigation and dispute resolution program. “The idea behind our program is to offer students an advanced education that will enable them to step immediately into sophisticated litigation practice anywhere in the country and to enjoy a substantial advantage over students from other elite law schools,” he said. “After graduating from this program, our alumni will hit the ground running in the real world of litigation.”
In addition to educating the litigators of the future, the law school will invest in legal scholarship and scholarly events, Nagareda said. Vanderbilt already has three litigation and dispute resolution conferences scheduled in 2006. In February, it will present a conference on empirical research and civil litigation. In April, the school will convene scholars who will define the field over the coming decades for “The Next Generation of Scholarship on Civil Litigation and Dispute Resolution.” And next fall, Vanderbilt will hold a workshop for the most senior scholars in the field.
“We will be the place that every serious scholar in this field will regard as an essential stop for presentation of his or her work,” Nagareda said.
Media contact: Susanne Hicks, (615) 322-NEWS
Susanne.hicks@vanderbilt.edu