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.
Schaumburg is a village located in Cook County in northeastern Illinois. Schaumburg is located just under 30 miles (48 km) northwest of downtown Chicago and approximately 8 miles (13 km) northwest of O'Hare International Airport. As of the 2000 census, the village had a total population of 75,386. As of 2005, the population dropped slightly to 72,690, according to the Census Bureau. A special census conducted by Schaumburg in 2007 determines it had actually increased to 75,936. The city contains the world headquarters of Motorola and one of only two IKEA stores in Illinois. It contains the Woodfield Mall, the third-largest mall in America, which at most times has over 300 stores (however Woodfield has more recently also begun including strange services, such as a Currency Exchange and an optical area, which are counted towards this total). The city is also the home of the Schaumburg Flyers, a Northern League baseball team whose home is located near the Elgin O'Hare Expressway. Schaumburg's transition from a rural community to that of a suburban metropolis began with Alfred Campanelli's first large scale suburban-style development in 1959 and Woodfield Mall's opening on September 9, 1971. The dinner theater chain, Medieval Times, has one of its nine locations in America in Schaumburg. Examples of large suburbs similar to Schaumburg, IL include Lake Forest, CA and Framingham, MA, in terms of both population and suburban location.