Faculty, students and members of the community packed the Freud Playhouse on Thursday to hear law Professor Stephen Yeazell present the second Faculty Research Lecture of the academic year.
Yeazell focused his research lecture on the positive and negative aspects of today’s civil legal system.
Each year, departments put forward faculty members they would like to have considered for the award. The nominees usually have to be a major scholar, widely recognized and a good orator, said Susan McClary, professor of musicology and last year’s chair of the Academic Senate committee that chose Yeazell and physiology Professor Ernest Wright for this academic year.
The interdisciplinary committee goes through the files, reads the letters the department chair or dean sends in, and look at Curricula Vitarum, she said. The committee in charge of choosing each year’s two recipients is made up of previous Research Lecturers.
“It’s the highest honor that this university gives to a faculty member. … (It’s) recognition from your peers,” McClary said.
Yeazell has taught at the UCLA School of Law since 1975, and focused his research on the history of the class action and the development of civil procedure and civil litigation.
“Lectures are designed to present to the university community and to the public UCLA’s most distinguished scholars,” said UCLA spokesman Stuart Wolpert.
Many recipients honored in the past 82 years have gone on to win Nobel Prizes, and some are recognizable by the buildings named after them throughout campus, such as Professors Shepherd Franz, Charles Haines, Earle Hedrick and Arnold Schoenberg.
“We choose one from North Campus, one from South Campus (each year). … The competition is usually very tough,” McClary said.
Yeazell was introduced by Interim Chancellor Norman Abrams. “What Steve has … is intellectual excitement,” Abrams said of his colleague at the law school. “His forte is creativity.”
Yeazell said his research over the past 10 years has led him to conclusions that go against the opinions of many people.
Yeazell used clips from the 1982 film “The Verdict,” portraying a prototypical underdog plaintiff fighting for a medical malpractice suit against a huge law firm to illustrate the general perception that the legal system favors large defendants such as insurance companies.
But rather than the typical overly powerful defense and weaker plaintiff, the civil system now has symmetrical resources and knowledge for both sides, he said. The result is a vibrant marketplace for legal claims settled outside of the courtroom, Yeazell said.
“A series of unconnected moves created the condition for an active market of claims,” he said.
Yeazell attributes this recent balance to a change in the way attorneys for plaintiffs do business. By specializing in certain aspects of law, diversifying their risk, and joining together to take on big defendants, plaintiffs are able to match large defendants such as insurance companies, he said.
Indeed, in two-thirds of contract cases and half of tort cases, the plaintiffs win, he said.
But the civil system is not entirely without flaw. The poor are left out because they cannot afford insurance and the defense lawyers that come with it, he said. Another structural problem exists because the private nature of the civil system precludes many cases from being pursued due to lack of funds, he said.
Yeazell joins 101 other Faculty Research Lecturers at UCLA, in a tradition that has existed since 1925.