The Need for Non-Discretionary Interlocutory Appellate Review in Multidistrict Litigation

Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) is a tool for managing complex litigation by transferring cases with common questions of fact to a single judge for coordinated pretrial proceedings. The subject matter of the cases can run the gamut from airplane crashes to securities fraud to environmental disasters, such as the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Today, about a third of all pending civil cases in federal court are part of the MDL system. A single judge renders all the important legal decisions in each MDL, exerting outsized impact on the parties and on the evolution of the law—and does so with virtually no scrutiny from other judges. This power centralization promotes efficient case management, but it can be an anathema to our conception of decentralized justice. One instance of unreviewable pretrial error can have immediate and sweeping impact on thousands of cases in one fell swoop. It is time to restore the balance of judicial power. This Article argues for an expansion of non-discretionary interlocutory appellate jurisdiction over certain legal rulings rendered in MDL cases. Any opportunity to appeal before the end of the case reflects an inherent value judgment that the immediate rights at stake outweigh the burdens that interlocutory review imposes on the courts. The discretionary approach to interlocutory appellate jurisdiction has proven generally adequate. But it is not adequate in the context of MDL proceedings, where the risks and consequences of legal error are heightened considerably. Ultimately, MDL cases tend to settle rather than proceed to final judgment, so the appellate courts rarely have an opportunity to clarify the law, and the settlements are often mispriced as a result of the uncertainty. The absence of appellate review also deprives our jurisprudence of one of its central features—the back-and-forth negotiation of legal principles that occurs when multiple jurists grapple with the same legal questions. Certain interlocutory MDL orders, then, warrant mandatory appellate jurisdiction. To qualify, the order should involve a pure issue of law in an unsettled area or in contravention of established precedent, and immediate appellate review should potentially be dispositive of a significant number of cases in the MDL. The guaranteed availability of immediate review in these circumstances would not come without costs, but the benefits would far outweigh them. Indeed, the right of immediate appeal would ensure the integrity of the MDL process on which our legal system has come so heavily to depend

Safety evaluation of low level light therapy on cancer cells

OBJECTIVE: Low level light therapy (LLLT) is being widely used in wound healing and pain relief, and its use is expected to be expanded rapidly to treatment of other disorders as well in a foreseeable future. However, before its expansion, the fear that LLLT could initiate or promote metastasis must be addressed thoroughly. As an initial effort towards this end, the current study evaluates the safety of LLLT in vitro using two different human cancer cell lines (Michigan Cancer Foundation-7 (MCF-7) and Jurkat E6-1) by determining the viability of cells after low level light (LLL) application while treatment under anti-cancer chemotherapeutic drugs (5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and cisplatin) separately on each cell line. METHODS: Two human cancer cell lines (MCF-7 and Jurkat E6-1) were cultured throughout the experiments. Two different anti-cancer chemotherapeutic drugs (5-FU and cisplatin) were used to treat both cell lines. The half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) of each drug on each cell line was determined by treating each cell line with varying concentrations of each drug. A total of 3 or 4 trials were done for each cell line with each drug, and the range of concentration was narrowed closer to the IC50 value at each successive trial. Once the IC50 concentrations were determined, each cell line was treated with 808 nm LLL at varying energy densities in a single dose using a light emitting diode (LED) source both in the absence and the presence of each drug at one IC50. A total of 3 or 5 trials were done for each cell line with each drug, and for each trial, six different energy densities ranging from 0 J/cm2 (control) to 10 J/cm2 were applied. The energy densities were varied for each trial with control always being used. After application of LLL, the viability of cells was determined, and three different 1-way ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) analyses were done to compare the viability of cells at each energy density to that of control. RESULTS: The IC50 of 5-FU in MCF-7 and Jurkat E6-1 cells was determined as 70 µM and 20 µM respectively. The IC50 of cisplatin in MCF-7 and Jurkat E6-1 cells was determined as 17 µM and 7 µM respectively. No significant difference (P > 0.05) in the viability of MCF-7 cells was observed between each group treated with different energy density of LLL and control group (0 J/cm2) both in the absence and the presence of 5-FU at IC50 (70 µM). No significant difference (P > 0.05) in the viability of MCF-7 cells was observed between each group treated with different energy density of LLL and control group (0 J/cm2) both in the absence and the presence of cisplatin at IC50 (17 µM). No significant difference (P > 0.05) in the viability of Jurkat E6-1 cells was observed between each group treated with different energy density of LLL and control group (0 J/cm2) both in the absence and the presence of 5-FU at IC50 (20 µM). However, a significant increase (0.01 < P < 0.05) in the viability of cells was observed when treating Jurkat E6-1 cells with 10 J/cm2 of LLL in the presence of cisplatin at IC50 (7 µM) compared to control group (0 J/cm2). Except for the comparison mentioned previously, no significant difference in the viability of Jurkat E6-1 cells was observed between each group treated with different energy density of LLL and control group (0 J/cm2) both in the absence and the presence of cisplatin at IC50 (7 µM). No definite trend in the viability of cells was observed with increasing energy density of LLL for each cell line either in the absence of the presence of each drug at IC50. CONCLUSIONS: The application of LLL at 808 nm with energy densities ranging from 0.1 J/cm2 to 10 J/cm2 under an LED source did not induce cell proliferation or death compared to control (0 J/cm2) for each cell line in the absence or the presence of each drug, and no definite trend was observed with increasing energy density. The study suggests that LLLT at these parameters may be safe to use on cancer patients, but further studies on different cancer cell lines and animal models with different parameters (wavelength, energy density, dosage) of LLL are warranted

Uniformity, Universality, and Computability Theory

We prove a number of results motivated by global questions of uniformity in computability theory, and universality of countable Borel equivalence relations. Our main technical tool is a game for constructing functions on free products of countable groups. We begin by investigating the notion of uniform universality, first proposed by Montalb\'an, Reimann and Slaman. This notion is a strengthened form of a countable Borel equivalence relation being universal, which we conjecture is equivalent to the usual notion. With this additional uniformity hypothesis, we can answer many questions concerning how countable groups, probability measures, the subset relation, and increasing unions interact with universality. For many natural classes of countable Borel equivalence relations, we can also classify exactly which are uniformly universal. We also show the existence of refinements of Martin's ultrafilter on Turing invariant Borel sets to the invariant Borel sets of equivalence relations that are much finer than Turing equivalence. For example, we construct such an ultrafilter for the orbit equivalence relation of the shift action of the free group on countably many generators. These ultrafilters imply a number of structural properties for these equivalence relations.Comment: 61 Page