• During the 1980s and 1990s, mass-tort defendants began using settlement classes as a means of foreclosing claims by some unknown number of existing and future claimants. See, e.g., Amchem Prods., Inc. v. Windsor, 521 U.S. 591, 117 S.Ct. 2231 (1997).
settlement class
Numerous similarly situated people for whom a claimant’s representative and an adversary propose a contract specifying the payment terms for the class members’ claims in exchange for the release of all claims against the adversary.
