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.
Athens-Clarke County is a unified city-county in Georgia, U.S. , in the northeastern part of the state. The University of Georgia is located in this college town and is responsible for the initial creation of Athens and its subsequent growth. In 1991, after a vote the preceding year, the original city abandoned its charter in order to form a unified government with Clarke County, referred to collectively as Athens-Clarke County. As of the 2000 census, the consolidated city-county (including all of Athens-Clarke County except Winterville and a part of Bogart) had a total population of 100,266. However, the most recent US Census estimate (2008) placed the population at 113,398. Athens-Clarke County is the fifth-largest city in Georgia and the principal city of the Athens-Clarke County, Georgia Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had a population of 189,264 as of the 2008 Census Bureau estimate.