Public Nuisance
The New Mass Tort Frontier

Describes 21st century public nuisance litigation against defendants for harms from lead paint, opioids, guns, vaping, and climate change.

Linda S. Mullenix (Author)

9781009334921, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 November 2023

286 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2 cm, 0.552 kg

'This is an essential, insightful, and engaging account of the rediscovery and development of public nuisance in American litigation. Don't miss it!' Elizabeth Cabraser, Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein, Executive Committee and Plaintiffs' Lead Negotiator, National Opiate Litigation; Executive Editor, The Law of Class Action: Fifty-State Survey 2023 (American Bar Association Class Action & Derivative Suits Committee)

In Public Nuisance, Linda Mullenix describes the landscape of 21st century mass tort litigation involving public harms – including lead paint, opioids, firearms, e-cigarettes, climate change, and environmental pollution – and the novel theory of public nuisance that lawyers and local governments have used to receive compensation from those who have created public nuisances. The book surveys conflicting judicial decisions rooted in common law and statutory interpretation and evaluates the competing arguments for and against the expansion of public nuisance law. Mullenix argues that that the development of public nuisance theory is part of the historical arc of mass tort litigation and suggests a middle approach to new public nuisance law, namely that we should embrace the common law and legislated public nuisance statutes.

Introduction
1. Historical context of private and public nuisance at law and equity
2. Shifting mass tort theories in the 1990s and the judicial resistance to the expansion of public nuisance liability
3. Expanding public nuisance doctrine: inroads and retreats, the lead paint mass tort litigation
4. Litigating public nuisance claims: burdens on plaintiffs
5. Expanding public nuisance doctrine: defenses
6. Expanding public nuisance: remedies beyond injunctions and abatement to monetary damages
7. Environmental contamination, PCBs, and climate change as public nuisance harms
8. Opioids as a public nuisance health and welfare harms
9. Firearms violence as a public nuisance
10. E-cigarettes and vaping as a public nuisance harms
11. Evaluating the competing arguments regarding the contemporary use of public nuisance in mass tort litigation
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Torts / Delicts [LNV]