A mass tort is a civil action involving numerous plaintiffs against one or a few corporate defendants. The tort may involve, for example, personal injuries suffered by numerous plaintiffs as a result of a defective product, or a mass disaster in which there were many injured persons, such as an airplane crash, or exposure of a large group of people to toxic chemicals or pharmaceuticals.
Bessemer is a Birmingham suburb in Jefferson County, Alabama, United States eight miles west of Hoover. The population was 29,672 at the 2000, but by the 2005 U.S. Census estimates, the city had fallen to a population of 28,641.