Taking the Mass out of Mass Torts: Reflections of a Dalkon Shield Arbitrator on Alternative Dispute Resolution, Judging, Neutrality, Gender, and Process

Life in the modem and post-modem world has changed our understanding of many traditional legal matters. Although many died from plagues, wars, and some shipping and agricultural accidents in the years which preceded the Industrial Revolution and modem breakthroughs in medicine, the twentieth century has given rise to group injury and death -it unprecedented levels, all as we march toward growth, progress, and greater goods for greater numbers. Mass progress has resulted in mass injury, which in turn has transformed individualized justice into mass justice. Whether structured as large class actions or as thousands of individual cases dealing with the same accident, product, or chemical, lawsuits claiming compensation for the harms caused by the fruits of production of a mass industrialized society proliferate in our legal system and challenge many of the basic tenets of American, adversarial, common law adjudication