Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: Francis McGovern was a legend.He deserved to be.He was a legend with judges.He was a legend with lawyers.He was even a legend with law professors.As one who has been deeply involved in American complex litigation for nearly 40 years, I can say that Francis got there first and made more of a difference than anyone else in the American legal academy.Francis could take an academic perspective.He was, for example, the person who invented the idea of "mature mass tort litigation" that has become so central to so much of the contemporary American legal scene. 1 But far beyond that, he could dig in, get his hands dirty, and make a positive contribution to resolving these impossible-to-resolve cases.That's certainly why judges will mourn his passing, for he could work magic to untangle the gordian knots they encountered too often.But lawyers will probably miss him even more, since they were the ones entangled even more than the judges in the gordian knots Francis could unravel.For the folks (like me) on the sidelines in academia, the loss is of a different sort, but a similar dimension.Francis was one (perhaps the only one) academic who could actually play a productive role with the judges and the lawyers, but who also spoke our language and knew about the scholarly things we hold dear.He will be missed.2 This immediate reaction may strike some as over the top, but I hope this Article can justify it.Some may think Ken Feinberg could claim primacy as a mass tort resolution master, 3 and surely Feinberg has earned his eminence.And he is hardly alone.Over recent decades, a highly talented group of at least several
Author: Richard L. Marcus
Institution: University of California Hastings College of the Law
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3193675524