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.
Paducah is the largest city in Kentucky's Jackson Purchase Region and the county seat of McCracken County, Kentucky, United States. It is located at the confluence of the Tennessee River and the Ohio River. The population was 26,307 at the 2000 census. Twenty blocks of Downtown Paducah have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is the hub for the Paducah Micropolitan Area and the western Kentucky region, the Paducah micropolitan area includes McCracken, Ballard and Livingston counties in Kentucky and Massac County in Illinois. Paducah and Chillicothe, Missouri are the only two cities named in the world-famous song "Hooray for Hollywood", which opens the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards yearly (the Oscars). (Both cities' names were misspelled in the original lyrics to the song.)