Anthony J. Casey

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Volume 90.3
In Defense of Chapter 11 for Mass Torts
Anthony J. Casey
Anthony J. Casey is the Donald M. Ephraim Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School, and Faculty Director of the Center on Law and Finance. In the interest of disclosure, Casey has worked as a consultant in one of the matters discussed in this Essay: Casey was retained by a law firm representing various plaintiffs with claims against 3M Company and its affiliates.
Joshua C. Macey
Joshua C. Macey is Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Law School.

This research is funded by the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago. The Richard Weil Faculty Research Fund and the Paul H. Leffmann Fund also provided generous support. We thank Adam Badawi, Douglas Baird, Vince Buccola, Zach Clopton, Judge Robert Drain, Jared Elias, Michael Francus, Abbe Gluck, Brook Gotberg, William Hubbard, Alexandra Lahav, Jonathan Lipson, Jonathan Macey, Eric Posner, Adriana Robertson, Jonathan Seymour, Zenichi Shishido, Robert Stark, and Wataru Tanaka for helpful comments. We also thank Arielle Ambra-Juarez, Avery Broome, Ryan Fane, Rachel Kessler, Virginia Robinson, and Dania Siddiqi for their excellent research assistance.

This Essay argues that bankruptcy proceedings are well-suited to resolving mass tort claims. Mass tort cases create a collective action problem that encourages claimants who are worried about available recoveries to race to the courthouse to collect ahead of others. This race can destroy going concern value and lead to the dismemberment of valuable firms. Coordination among claimants is difficult as each one seeks to maximize its own recoveries. These are the very collective action and holdout problems that bankruptcy proceedings are designed to solve. As such, bankruptcy proceedings are appropriate means of resolving mass torts as long as they leave tort victims no worse off than they would have otherwise been.

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The Hertz Maneuver (and the Limits of Bankruptcy Law)
Anthony J. Casey
Professor, The University of Chicago School of Law.
Joshua C. Macey
Assistant Professor, The University of Chicago School of Law.

We wish to thank Ken Ayotte, Vince Buccola, Douglas Baird, Jared Ellias, Saul Levmore, Alan Schwartz, and David Skeel for helpful comments. We also thank Julian Gale, Silvia Moreno, and Leonor Suarez for excellent research assistance. The Richard Weil Faculty Research Fund and the Paul H. Leffmann Fund provided generous support.

On June 11, 2020, the Hertz Corporation introduced a new strategy for bankruptcy financing.

Absolute Priority Bankruptcy Bankruptcy Financing Equity Hertz Relative Priority SEC
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86.2
A Framework for the New Personalization of Law
Anthony J. Casey
Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School.

I am grateful for research support from the Richard Weil Faculty Research Fund and the Paul H. Leffman Fund. Stephanie Xiao and Courtney Block provided excellent research assistance.

Anthony Niblett
Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Law, Economics, & Innovation, University of Toronto Faculty of Law. In the interests of full disclosure, Professor Niblett is also a cofounder of Blue J Legal, a start-up bringing machine learning to the law.

Personalized law is an old concept. The idea that the law should be tailored to better fit the relevant context to which it applies is obvious and has been around as long as the idea of law itself.

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78.3
The Creditors’ Bargain and Option-Preservation Priority in Chapter 11
Anthony J. Casey
Assistant Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School

I thank Daniel Abebe, Barry E. Adler, Kenneth Ayotte, Adam B. Badawi, Douglas G. Baird, Omri Ben-Shahar, Erin M. Casey, Stephen Choi, Lee Anne Fennell, Joseph A. Grundfest, M. Todd Henderson, William Hubbard, Mitchell Kane, Ashley Keller, Randall L. Klein, Saul Levmore, Douglas Lichtman, Anup Malani, Troy McKenzie, Jon D. Michaels, Anthony Niblett, Randal C. Picker, Eric Posner, Robert K. Rasmussen, Andres Sawicki, Naomi Schoenbaum, Julia Simon-Kerr, Richard Squire, Lior Strahilevitz, Matthew Tokson, George G. Triantis, Noah Zatz, participants at the Annual Meeting of the American Law and Economics Association, participants at the Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Law and Economics Association, participants at the University of Chicago Law School Faculty Works-in-Progress Workshop, participants at the University of Southern California Center in Law, Economics, and Organization Workshop, and the faculties of Columbia Law School, Cornell Law School, Emory Law School, Marquette University Law School, Stanford Law School, the University of Alabama School of Law, University of California Irvine School of Law, the University of Chicago Law School, University of Colorado Law School, University of Georgia Law School, the University of Minnesota Law School, and Vanderbilt University Law School for helpful comments and discussion.

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