Litigation and Inequality : Federal Diversity Jurisdiction in Industrial America, 1870-1958

Through the prism of litigation practice and tactics, Purcell explores the dynamic relationship between legal and social change. He studies changing litigation patterns in suits between individuals and national corporations over tort claims for personal injuries and contract claims for insurance benefits. Purcell refines the "progressive" claim that the federal courts favored business enterprise during this time, identifying specific manners and times in which the federal courts reached decisions both in favor of and against national corporations. He also identifies 1892-1908 as a critical period in the evolution of the twentieth century federal judicial system. Frontmatter Introduction (page 3) 1. Origins of a Social Litigation System (page 13) 2. The Social Structure of Party Inequality and the Informal Legal Process (page 28) 3. The Federal Common Law (page 59) 4. The Battle for Forum Control, I: The Jurisdictional Amount and the Limits of Corporate Liability (page 87) 5. The Battle for Forum Control, II: Joinder and the Limits of the System (page 104) 6. Removal and the Problems of Local Prejudice: Three Perspectives on the System (page 127) 7. Contraction and Evolution: The System After 1910 (page 148) 8. The Rise of Interstate Forum Shopping (page 177) 9. Tactical Escalation in Insurance Litigation (page 200) 10. Disintegration (page 217) 11. Retrospective: History, Procedure, and the Social Role of the Federal Courts (page 244) Notes (page 293) Index (page 419) Explores the relationship between legal and social change through a study of American litigation practice. The text examines changing litigation patterns in suits between individuals and corporations over tort claims for personal injuries and contract claims for insurance benefits