Briana Rosenbaum, a University of Tennessee College of Law associate professor, recently spoke to Law360 about Chevron Corp.’s recent victory over attorney Steven Donziger under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which was originally designed to prosecute members of the mafia.
In the interview, Rosenbaum said that, “There’s a danger of painting class action and mass action lawyers as mobsters. If such RICO litigation becomes the new normal it absolutely threatens to further an exceedingly negative narrative of the plaintiffs’ bar.”
Later in the article, Rosenbaum suggests that, “Companies consider less severe remedies: for example, state tort claims for malicious prosecution or abuse of process, requests for so-called Rule 11 sanctions from the federal court, or referrals to state bar groups for discipline.”
Rosenbaum’s scholarship is heavily concerned with RICO, mass actions, and class actions. Her latest article, “The RICO Trend in Class Action Warfare,” will be published by the end of the year in the Iowa Law Review.