"In my view," Justice Ginsburg said, "the court's majority messed up the federal rules" governing civil litigation.
These are the same people whom Representative Thomas J. Bliley Jr., Republican of Virginia, characterized as the perpetrators of a "national tragedy" in 1995 during debate on changes in the laws governing securities litigation.
Right now, the rules governing patent litigation are so imbalanced that they invite bad actors to abuse the system.
A 1995 law governing private securities litigation was intended to ensure that a lead plaintiff, ideally an institutional investor, would select lead counsel, he said.
"Some realistic expectation as to what you hope to get out of either litigation or settling would, in large measure, govern the sort of costs that a client would be expected to pay," Mr. Johnson said.
Protection from product liability lawsuits, in the form of an immunity from such litigation, may come from satisfying the federal regulations that govern the design and the manufacture of, along with the warnings to be provided with, medical products.
This is a case where the rules that Apple uses to govern its store have to take into account the probable byproducts of litigation or legal ramifications, not just current complaints.
The cases have been greeted with muted glee by corporations and trade groups, some of which have warned of the excesses of plaintiffs' lawyers and have made the overhaul of rules governing shareholder and tort litigation a cause célèbre.
