The Philadelphia decision comes as courts nationwide take a more skeptical approach to massive settlements negotiated by plaintiff lawyers in asbestos, securities and toxic-tort cases.

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One possible new territory where preemption is not a big problem is litigation over environmental debacles. (Witness the recent extraction of money from gasoline refiners who damaged groundwater with a federally approved additive.) The tort mavens also talked about switching to securities law, a field not especially starving for practitioners.

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On June 20, 2011 a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision demonstrating the way in which the U.S. legal system continues to struggle with the digital revolution, a revolution that is undermining securities regulation, intellectual property law, and even the basics of tort law.

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