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Described as an “elephantine mass” that “defies customary judicial administration,” asbestos litigation remains the longest-running mass tort in U.S. history. Ultimately, the efforts made to resolve the ever-expanding asbestos litigation failed. In 1997, in Amchem Products, Inc. v. Windsor, the United States Supreme Court struck down the use of a class action settlement to achieve a global resolution of all asbestos claims — those pending at the time and those of future claimants. In the wake of Amchem, dozens of asbestos defendants sought bankruptcy protection while plaintiffs continued to file claims in state and federal courts. Between 1988 and 2010, a United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) analysis of the approximately 100 bankruptcy trusts’ payment data showed that the asbestos trusts had paid about $17.5 billion to 3.3 million claimants. Since then, much has happened but basic problems remain. The patchwork system of plaintiffs claiming in federal and state courts, as well as the separate administrative claiming before bankruptcy trusts, raises complicated issues about how injured persons can be properly compensated while assuring that defendants are not assessed damages that are not warranted, and how to protect the trusts from fraud and preserve trust funds for future meritorious claimants.The American Bar Association Torts and Insurance Section appointed a Task Force to look into issues currently confronting asbestos stakeholders. I was appointed its Reporter. This Article focuses on how the Task Force went about its work and developed a record. It then presents some thoughts on how my service brought together my long-standing academic interest in how mass torts ought to be resolved and the realities of the current asbestos litigation. What I have learned thus far has led me to question my once zealous advocacy of aggregated mass tort claims resolution.When I served as Chairperson of the Dalkon Shield Claimant’s Trust, I wrote articles that focused on how the Trust resolved hundreds of thousands of claims. It is fair to say that I was a fan of aggregate resolution of mass torts. In my view, the use of multidistrict litigation, class actions, other aggregation tools, and even Chapter 11 reorganization provided fair and efficient vehicles for the resolution of mass torts. Indeed, the Dalkon Shield Board of Trustees expressly adopted motivating principles as they began to put meat on the bones of the CRF. First, and foremost, among these principles, was to “[t]reat all claimants fairly and equally, always focusing on the best interests of claimants collectively instead of on the interests of a particular claimant or group of claimants.” Another principle harkened back to the first: “Prefer settlement and prompt payment of claims over arbitration and litigation.” Rereading these principles in light of the compelling testimony of two of the Task Force witnesses challenged my weltanschauung about mass tort dispute resolution. Judge Robreno’s and Judge Davidson’s testimony about disaggregating cases into their core components, “letting lawyers be lawyers,” and getting cases ready for trial instead of obsessing about global or individual settlements is what led to the successful resolution of the cases before them.Moreover, Judge Robreno’s testimony suggests that attempts at aggregated resolution of the “elephantine mass” were all failures, except for the MDL itself, which has largely wrapped up its work. Rather, as Judges Robreno and Davidson testified, the disaggregation of asbestos claims allowed asbestos cases to be prepared for trial (or settlement discussions) more expeditiously. Now, dying plaintiffs can get a shot at a prompt trial date rather than having to wait out a global settlement. Perhaps tending to the needs of particular plaintiffs is the best way to protect the interests of the whole in mass tort litigation after all.

Results from an investigation to determine the low-speed tumbling characteristics of 12 generic fly ing-wing models are summarized. There is some concern that airplanes with fly ing-wing planforms could inadvertently enter an out-of-contro l tumbling motion under certain conditions. The objectives of this investigation were to 1) identify the geometric and mass-related parameters that cause flying wings to be capable of sustained tumbling and 2) analyze some of the driving mechanisms that cause steady tumbling. Free-tumble and free-to-pitch tests were conducted with dynamically scaled, generic flying-wing models. Results indicated that e.g. location, mass distribution, and geometric aspect ratio strongly affected the tumbling characteristics of the models tested and that positive static stability did not necessarily preclude tumbling. The magnitude of dynamic effects were found to be of the same order as static effects for the models undergoing autorotation-in-pitch.

Cultural landscapes were prominent during the Early Roman period when agronomic knowledge allowed the spread of intensive land exploitation in most of the available land. The aim of this contribution is to explore whether for the Campania region (Southern Italy) archaeoenvironmental data would support continuity or change in the cultural landscape of Roman tradition in the 4th and 5th centuries. To do so, new data from two sites located on the northern slopes of the Vesuvius, both buried by the AD 472 eruption have been investigated. Charcoal analysis, 14 C dating, and chemical analysis of organic residues were carried out in order to study the landscape and the food production at these sites. The results suggest the persistence of the Roman cultural landscape until the 4th and 5th centuries in this area. The landscape is in fact strongly marked both in agriculture and woodland exploitation and management, being characterized by managed chestnut forests as well as valuable cultivations of walnut, large vineyards, olive groves, and probably orchards and crops. The integrated approach with archaeobotanical and archaeometric analyses proves to be a powerful method for the study of the past landscapes, providing a good insight into the environment. Furthermore, this study provided the most ancient evidence of chestnut silviculture for wood.

For the last several decades, federal and state courts, with varying degrees of cooperation from the parties and lawyers involved, have developed ways of managing the complex mass tort cases confronting them. A key development was the emergence of the idea of using consolidation techniques to achieve global peace in the resolution of these often seemingly intractable cases. In the wake of the Supreme Court's decisions in Amchem and Ortiz, however, the use of class actions to achieve global peace became problematic. Meanwhile, Chapter 11 proceedings under the bankruptcy laws emerged as a vehicle for achieving global peace. Especially after Amchem, it appears that the use of Chapter 11, despite the problems raised for a defendant corporation, may be the best tool for achieving global peace. This working paper provides a brief history of the three leading mass tort bankruptcy cases: the Johns Manville Chapter 11 case involving asbestos personal injury claims, the A.H. Robins Chapter 11 case involving Dalkon Shield claims, and the Dow Corning Chapter 11 case involving breast implant claims. The purpose of the review of these cases is to highlight the important practical and doctrinal issues raised by the use of Chapter 11 as a vehicle for resolving mass tort litigation.

The September 11 attack on the World Trade Tower and the Pentagon left thousands of victims in its wake. Seemingly quite laudably, Congress almost immediately enacted a bill that set up a Victim's Compensation Fund ("VCF") that held out the potential for quickly and reasonably compensating those injured in the disaster as well as the families of those who were killed. This paper describes the VCF, and discusses some of the problems that the Special Master of the VCF confronted while preparing the rules for how the victims would be compensated. This discussion then leads into the much larger question of the extent to which Congress ought to be involved in the resolution of personal injury and other state based claims. Traditionally, of course, our legal system generally has left the resolution of personal injury claims to state law. Additionally, the vast majority, at least until the rise of mass tort litigation, of such cases were resolved in state courts. It would seem that United States Supreme Court's recent federalism cases would support federal abstinence in this area. To the contrary, Congress, generally led by Republicans, have enacted and proposed legislation that have the effect of stripping state courts of their traditional role in the resolution of tort and other state law based cases. Thus, the paper raises the question whether the VCF is the camel's nose under the tent. It is notable that at the same time that Congress created the VCF, it also provided a massive bailout for the airline industry. Is the legislative climate such that we can expect future enactment of legislation providing, for example, compensation for victims of exposure to asbestos, while limiting the liability of the corporations and entities involved in the ever-expanding asbestos litigation? What are the federalism implications of bills like the Class Action Fairness Act that would allow defendants to remove virtually any class action from state court to federal court? The paper concludes that the ought to be a reasonable balance. There always has been concurrent federal and state jurisdiction over a large number of cases. As a practical matter, when complex litigation of a national scope threatens the ability of the state and federal court's ability to provide reasonable compensation within a reasonable time frame, the federal courts should play an important role, and Congress ought to provide the courts with the tools necessary to resolve the litigation and achieve global peace if possible. Nonetheless, it is important to consider that federal resolution, whether in federal courts or some administrative scheme like the VCF, violates important principles of federalism, and therefore ought not become the general rule. For example, given the intractability of the asbestos litigation and the numerous bankruptcies it has spawned, it may well be appropriate for Congress to enact appropriate legislation. The VCF is a response to a disaster, though localized, that is national in nature. On the other hand, bills like the Class Action Fairness Act are suspect because they simply evidence distrust of state courts' ability to fairly resolve cases.

The so-called Bednar tumor represents a pigmented variant of dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans (DFSP) and is characterized by a usually scant (1-5% of cells) population of dendritic melanocytes within an otherwise typical DFSP. This pigmented variant accounts for up to 5% of all DFSPs. Other variants of DFSP include cases showing features (in the primary or recurrence) of either giant cell fibroblastoma or fibrosarcoma. Less than 5% of DFSPs are associated with metastases and many of these show either a fibrosarcomatous component or, much more rarely, an "MFH"-like appearance. Only one previous case has been reported which showed combined features of the pigmented and fibrosarcomatous variants.We present herein 3 cases of fibrosarcomatous Bednar tumor, all occurring in males, 2 aged 75 and 1 aged 23; two patients were white and one black. The tumors were located on the trunk or shoulder and two had been present for many years with recent rapid growth. One patient developed local recurrence and metastases to bone and lung and died within 1 year. The other two patients are disease free at 3 and 5 years follow-up respectively. All three cases showed typical histological features and in two tumors the pigment was evident macroscopically.A through literature review, including all cases of fibrosarcomatous DFSP and metastasizing fibrosarcomatous DFSP (whether or not pigmented), confirms that the fibrosarcomatous variant of DFSP (including its pigmented counterpart) is significantly more aggressive than usual DFSP, thus underlining the importance of its accurate recognition.

We have proposed a progressive querying environment that enables the user to interact with the database by a sequence of partial queries, and to visualize both database queries and retrieval results in many different representations. In our approach, the user can query the database in the Virtual Reality (VR) space, and then switch to the logical space to continue the formulation of the query. This paper provides a formal definition and characterization of VR queries, describes what database operators are applicable under the different interaction paradigms, and investigates how VR queries can be transformed into other types of queries, so that they can be utilized as part of a progressive querying system.

Firstly an extensive summary of the diagnostic power and limits in renal glomerular pathology of light microscopy even corroborated by all the special histochemical stains is made. Secondly a complete list of all those renal glomerular diseases in which electron microscopy is unanimously considered necessary for the diagnosis is given as well as the main and most updated references pertinent to those rare and recently recognized pathological entities in which EM proved as a fundamental diagnostic tool are provided. Thirdly the authors focus on the importance of immunohistochemistry (IIC) in the diagnosis of immune-mediated renal glomerular diseases. The advantages and disadvantages of immunofluorescence microscopy (IF) and immunoperoxidase method (I-perox) are respectively discussed. The value of I-perox staining method applied to sections from paraffin blocks is emphasized and some technical suggestions in order to optimize results are given. Among the latter the choice of the used fixative for the purpose of preserving antigenicity of immunoglobulins and complement fractions, the timing of tissue fixation as well as the quantitation of enzymatic pretreatment relative to the duration of fixation, and the repeated washings with phosphate-buffer saline to minimize background staining. Ultimately the authors report on their preliminary personal results with the use of I-perox staining on sections from paraffin embedded renal core biopsies. Although if is their favourite diagnostic microscopy for evaluating renal immunopathology the authors underline I-perox method as a helpful tool to rely on at least in those circumstances when frozen material for IF is not available due to the scarcity of core biopsy, when glomeruli are absent in frozen sections, or when due to a technical lab accident the frozen tissue devoted to IF has been ruined or lost, and the only available material is the one which lies embedded in paraffin. The LSAB ("labelled streptavidin biotin") complex and PAP ("peroxidase-antiperoxidase") working procedures are provided in detail.

Results from an investigation to determine the low-speed tumbling characteristics of twelve generic flying-wing models are summarized. There is a concern that airplanes with flying-wing planforms could inadvertently enter an out-of-control tumbling motion under certain conditions. The objectives of this investigation were to: 1) identify the geometric and mass-related parameters that cause flying wings to be capable of sustained tumbling, 2) analyze some of the driving mechanisms that cause tumbling, and 3) determine the feasibility of using computer simulations to predict the tumbling characteristics of flying wings. Free-tumble and free-to-pitch tests were conducted with dynamically-scaled, generic flying wing models. The use of computer simulations as a predictive tool for tumbling was explored. Results indicated that center-of-gravity location, mass distribution, and geometric aspect ratio strongly affected the tumbling characteristics of the models tested and that positive static stability did not necessarily preclude tumbling. The magnitude of dynamic effects were found to be of the same order as static effects for the models undergoing autorotation-in-pitch. The simulations indicated that the dynamic terms in the equations of motion used to predict tumbling must be obtained using experimental methods that account for the large amplitude/high pitch-rate environment that characterizes tumbling.

Paratesticular mesotheliomas are rare tumors with 223 cases described so far. The sole plausible causative factor so far ascertained in the pathogenesis of these tumors is asbestos, which however is found in only around 30% to 40% of such cases. The age range of affected individuals is wide, mostly adults and the elderly, but also includes young people and children. The most common presenting symptom is either hydrocele of unknown origin or intrascrotal mass. When hydrocele is the presenting symptom, these tumors are often clinically overlooked and the diagnosis is delayed. Most paratesticular mesotheliomas arise in the tunica vaginalis, but primary tumors of the spermatic cord and epididymis are also on record. Tumors arising from the peritoneal mesothelium of a hernia sac are excluded from this group. The correct diagnosis is almost always made after histologic examination of the operative specimen. Immunohistochemistry and electron microscopy are always helpful and sometimes necessary tools for diagnosis. So far very few cases have been identified or suspected preoperatively on cytologic examination. Three clinicopathologic types of malignant mesotheliomas of the male genital tract are recognized: diffuse tubulo-papillary mesothelioma, well-differentiated papillary mesothelioma, and multicystic mesothelioma. The histologic subtypes are almost always pure epithelial or biphasic. The differential diagnosis is mainly with serous papillary tumors arising from Mullerian vestiges, but several diverse primary or secondary tumors also need to be considered. A clinicopathologic evaluation of a case of tunical diffuse mesothelioma in a 74-year-old male from the AMR Series is the starting point for this general review.