Bert Huang, ‘Overlapping Remedies’

ABSTRACT
When many parallel lawsuits arise from the same event, they create the risk of overlapping remedies – multiple redundant awards of punitive damages, for example, or conflicting injunctions issued by different courts. The standard response is to aspire to once-and-for-all resolution, relying on procedures that aggregate claims and preclude further litigation. This chapter examines why two such procedural devices – class actions and multidistrict litigation (MDL) – do not generally rule out overlapping remedies. It then reviews proposals for an alternative approach, one based on the concept of ‘concurrent remedies’. This approach can deflate redundant punitive damages and avoid a clash of injunctions in contexts where parallel litigation is unavoidable – including where the standard procedural devices fall short.

Huang, Bert I, Overlapping Remedies (August 10, 2022) in Research Handbook on Corporate Liability (Martin Petrin and Christian Witting, eds, Edward Elgar Publishing 2023).

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