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.
Council Bluffs is a city in and the county seat of Pottawattamie County, Iowa, United States and is on the east bank of the Missouri River. The population was 58,268 at the 2000 census. Along with neighboring Omaha, Council Bluffs is part of the 60th-largest metropolitan area in the United States in 2000, with an estimated population of 837,925 residing in the eight counties of the Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area. Council Bluffs is several decades older than its significantly larger neighbor across the river, Omaha, which was founded by Council Bluffs businessmen and speculators in 1854 following the Kansas-Nebraska Act.