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Multi-party litigation is a world-wide legal process, and the class action device is one of its best-known manifestations. As a means of providing access to justice and achieving judicial economies, the class action is gaining increasing endorsement – particularly given the prevalence of mass consumerism of goods and services, and the extent to which the activities and decisions of corporations and government bodies can affect large numbers of people. The primary purpose of this book is to compare and contrast the class action models that apply under the federal regimes of Australia and the United States and the provincial regimes of Ontario and British Columbia in Canada. While the United States model is the most longstanding, there have now been sufficient judicial determinations under each of the studied jurisdictions to provide a constructive basis for comparison. In the context of the drafting and application of a workable class action framework, it is apparent that similar problems have been confronted across these jurisdictions, which in turn promotes a search for assistance in the experience and legal analysis of others. The book is presented in three Parts. The first Part deals with the class action concept and its alternatives, and also discusses and critiques the stance of England where the introduction of the opt-out class action model has been opposed. The second Part focuses upon the various criteria and factors governing commencement of a class action (encompassing matters such as commonality, superiority, suitability, and the class representative). Part 3 examines matters pertaining to conduct of the action itself (such as becoming a class member, notice requirements, settlement, judgments, and costs and fees). The book is written to have practical utility for a wide range of legal practitioners and professionals, such as: academics and students of comparative civil procedure and multi-party litigation; litigation lawyers who may use the reference materials cited to the benefit of their own class action clients; and those charged with law reform who look to adopt the most workable (and avoid the unworkable) features in class action models elsewhere.

Where does pleading doctrine, at the federal level, stand today? The Supreme Court's revision of general pleading standards in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly has not left courts and litigants with a clear or precise understanding of what it takes to state a claim that can survive a motion to dismiss. Claimants are required to show \"plausible entitlement to relief\" by offering enough facts \"to raise a right to relief above the speculative level.'' Translating those admonitions into predictable and consistent guidelines has proven illusory. This Article proposes a descriptive theory that explains the fundaments of contemporary pleading doctrine in a way that gives it some of the clarity and precision it otherwise lacks. The major descriptive thesis posited here is that the central animating principle of contemporary pleading doctrine is the requirement that a complaint—through the use of objective facts and supported implications—describe events about which there is a presumption of impropriety. Getting to that presumption requires different degrees of factual specificity depending on the factual and legal context of the claim. A secondary descriptive claim is that the doctrine in its current iteration privileges efficiency interests over the justice-related concerns of accuracy and procedural fairness. Unfortunately, this preference unduly harms the right of access to courts for those plaintiffs having claims that require the pleading of information they do not or cannot know. Further, it may be that certain types of claims, such as civil rights and antitrust claims, are more disadvantaged by this preference than others, suggesting that the doctrine needs to be recalibrated to better serve the interests of justice more evenly across different types of cases.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's 2007 opinion in 'Bell Atlantic v. Twombly', judges and civil procedure scholars throughout the country divided on the opinion's significance. In just twenty-four pages, 'Twombly' uprooted the 'Conley v. Gibson' standard for evaluating motions to dismiss a lawsuit under Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Under Conley, a court could dismiss a complaint only if it \"appear[ed] beyond doubt that the plaintiff c[ould] prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief.\" That standard had governed motions to dismiss for fifty years, and embodied the liberal notice-pleading regime envisioned by the framers of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. But no more. Faced with a suit alleging that almost every major telephone company had engaged in anticompetitive conduct amounting to an antitrust conspiracy, the Court introduced a new system of \"plausibility\" pleading designed to curb discovery abuse and weed out frivolous lawsuits. Now, plaintiffs had to include in their complaints \"enough factual matter\" to \"nudge[] their claims across the line from conceivable to plausible . . . .\"

Intended to prevent fraud against the government, the False Claims Act (\"FCA\") contains a qui tarn provision allowing private individuals, known as relators, to bring suits on behalf of the government and receive a portion of the damages. At the heart of the qui tarn provision lies the first-to-file bar, which provides that, once a first relator has filed a complaint, subsequent relators are prohibited from coming forward with complaints based on the facts underlying the first relator's pending action. A circuit split has recently emerged regarding the incorporation of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b)'s heightened pleading standard into the FCA's first-to-file rule. Neither the circuit court decisions nor the relevant scholarship on this issue, however, has provided a comprehensive explanation as to why the government's notice requirements should differ—if indeed they should differ at all—from defendants' notice requirements for purposes of the first-to-file bar. This Note aims to fill that void and argues that, unlike garden-variety civil defendants in an adversarial context, the government maintains a partnership with the relator and has sufficient investigatory tools beyond the four corners of the complaint to assess adequately the merits of the relator's allegations. Thus, the government does not require the heightened notice of Rule 9(b) at the first-to-file stage, and courts should ultimately adopt the approach employed by the First and D.C. Circuits in affording preclusive effect to first-filed FCA complaints, even if they are deficient under Rule 9(b).

Rats are an important issue in cities globally. Despite their ubiquity, perceptions and concerns about rats vary with circumstance and the context in which a person interacts with them. Municipal rat management programs are a service to communities and therefore must be responsive to the varied concerns of their residents. Understanding why communities are concerned about rats can help inform rat management programs to meet the specific needs of their residents. The objective of this study was to identify why the residents of Vancouver, Canada care about rats and what they want done to address them. To do this, we qualitatively analyzed 6,158 resident complaints about rats made to the city’s municipal government between January 2014 and May 2020. Using a qualitative descriptive coding process, we found that rats were a priority in a minority of cases. In general, people were more concerned about broader community issues, such as neighborhood disorder, of which rats were one part. Complaints tended to be made when problems were highly visible, nearby, and when the complainant wanted the city to take action to alleviate this issue, particularly when they were in and around their living spaces. The rates of complaints were highest in the most economically and socially deprived neighborhoods and lowest in the most privileged neighbourhoods. We synthesize this information with a view towards understanding how to develop objectives and actions for municipal management strategies that are grounded in community concerns.

The Supreme Court's landmark decisions in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal have had a serious effect on the way that Rule 12(b)(6) Motions to Dismiss are handled in federal courts across the country. In the five years since Iqbal was handed down, scholars and practitioners alike have discussed the merits and effects of this decision at length. However, there has been very little - if any - discussion on the relationship between amended complaints and original complaints when it comes to this newly-minted plausibility standard. This Comment aims to examine and critique a post-Twiqbal practice regarding amended complaints that is beginning to emerge in the Ninth Circuit. A number of district courts in the Ninth Circuit have held that courts may compare amended complaints to their predecessors as a part of the Twiqbal plausibility analysis. This Comment argues that this practice is not in line with the intent of Twiqbal nor with available precedent on amended complaints. As such, courts should refrain from adopting this practice going forward, and the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit should strike down this emerging practice if presented with a chance to do so.

When defendants move to dismiss a case under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (FRCP) 12(b)(6), the court generally may consider only the material contained in the pleading. If a party presents-and a court considers-matters outside the pleading, the Federal Rules require the court to convert the motion into one for summary judgment. Upon conversion, the parties are permitted to supply the court with \"materials in the record, including depositions, documents, electronically stored information, affidavits or declarations, stipulations... admissions, interrogatory answers, or other materials.\" Furthermore- and perhaps more importantly-if the parties do not have adequate information at this point in the process, the court may \"allow time to obtain affidavits or declarations or to take discovery,\" thus opening up the door to greatly increased time and expense.

Earlier this year I had the privilege of representing the ANMF at a symposium hosted by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Authority (Ahpra) exploring the distress and stress experienced by practitioners involved in a regulatory process.

The role of counterclaims in federal subject-matter jurisdiction is widely misunderstood. The Supreme Court has entrenched one misunderstanding into law by holding that a counterclaim cannot provide the basis for statutory arising-under jurisdiction over a civil action. In so holding, the Court relied on a literal reading of the well-pleaded complaint rule. Others have invoked the Court 's decision to argue that the well-pleaded complaint rule also governs diversity jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 1332(a). The Court's holding and efforts to extend it distort the law by conflating the well-pleaded complaint rule with the separate procedural principle that the plaintiff is the master of her complaint. Properly understood, the well-pleaded complaint rule does no more than bar defenses from providing a basis for arising-under jurisdiction. By contrast, the master-of-the-complaint principle- as given effect by the general removal statute-permits a plaintiff through her complaint to determine the availability ofa federal forum in statutory arisingunder and diversity jurisdiction cases alike. The role of counterclaims has also been misconceived because of a widespread failure to grasp that Sections 1331 and 1332(a) grant jurisdiction over civil actions, not claims. That grant-together with the nature of arising-under jurisdiction-means that arising-under jurisdiction exists over a claim only if the claim itself provides a basis for arising-under jurisdiction over the civil action. And the Court has held that a counterclaim cannot serve that function. By contrast, Section 1332(a)'s amount-in-controversy requirement looks to the amount at stake in the action as a whole. And the Court's decisions indicate that a civil action for this purpose consists of the plaintiffs claims and the defendant's counterclaims.

At first glance, the changes brought by Law no. 102/2023 to administrative litigation concern (only) the time limits: the starting point of the limitation period for bringing an action for annulment of the administrative act for which the prior complaint is no longer mandatory; the time limit within which the suspension of the administrative act that can no longer be revoked prior to the bringing of a substantive action for its annulment may be requested and the time limit within which the action for annulment must be brought if suspension has been requested under art. 14 LCA; the maximum time limit up to which the suspension of the execution of an administrative act for which an action for annulment has already been brought may be requested. On the other hand, some time limits are drastically shortened and other solutions are atypical both from the perspective of civil procedure and traditional rules in administrative litigation. The amendments are also important because they concern administrative acts for which prior complaint is no longer mandatory, and most administrative acts fall into this category (as they immediately produce legal effects). The article is a point-by-point analysis of the most recent amendments to the Administrative Litigation Act, apparently minor but with a potentially significant impact.