Case Management: the stepchild of mass claim dispute resolution

This article explores the phenomenon of judicial case management and its potential to lead to a more uniform practice in the handling of mass disputes. Due to globalization and industrialization, mass disputes increasingly occur in developed and developing economies. Mass disputes are disputes involving a large number of victims that seek remedies from another party, usually a corporation, for alleged infringements of their rights. One will find mass disputes in various substantive fields of law. Numbers pose a specific set of issues on the individuals or institutions dealing with these infringements, varying from challenges related to the logistics of the resolution to more fundamental issues and due process concerns such as equal treatment of the equally situated, preserving equality of arms, preventing contradictory rulings on identical questions of law, developing resolution and compensation schemes that meet established due process and procedural fairness standards, and therefore enhancing the trust in the functioning of legal systems.