3.3 – Web Search: Federal Tort Law
7 7 unread replies. 16 16 replies.
With some relatively limited exceptions, e.g., the Federal
Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. §§ 2671-2680 (which relinquishes the otherwise
sovereign immunity of the United States in certain instances, i.e., allowing
U.S. citizens the ability, which they would otherwise not have, to sue the
federal government for the negligent acts of its agents, for instance, the
ability to sue the Federal Aviation Administration for allegedly negligent air
traffic control errors, so here we’re talking about a different “sovereign
immunity” doctrine than the international law one discussed in Jennings (2015,
pp. 227-228) and Emerson (2015, p. 639), as the vast majority of tort law is
state law (Emerson, 2015, p. 59), i.e., “[f]or torts, the applicable law is
usually the law of the state where the injury occurs,” [emphasis in original],
as opposed to federal law (as the language of the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28
U.S.C. § 2674, effectively adopts state law, with certain specified exceptions,
to determine whether or not the U.S. will be liable). However, there are still
instances where Congress has acted to impact the way tort law functions. Under
the ostensible belief that there were deficiencies/injustices in how state
courts were processing/handling such class actions, Congress passed, and the
President signed into law, the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, making it
easier for defendants to “remove” the action to federal court (i.e., although
initially filed by a plaintiff in a state court, the proceedings thereafter,
including any trial, would be conducted by/in a federal district court).
Using your Web browser, go to thomas.loc.gov (Links to an
external site.)Links to an external site.. Find out:
Who introduced this legislation (and when);
What the bill number was;
When (and by what vote), it passed the Senate and the House
of Representatives;
When the President signed it; and
The Public Law Number for this bill/act.
Then find the citation for the U.S.C. segment that describes
the procedure/requirements for the removal of class actions described above.
