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.
Hawley is a town in Clay County, Minnesota, United States, along the Buffalo River. The population was 1,882 at the 2000 census. The town went through six quick name changes after 1871 until, in 1872, it was finally named after Thomas Hawley Canfield, an officer in the Northern Pacific Railway, which laid out the town. General Custer visited the town in 1876. In 2007 the town started an ad campaign called "Hawley Would". The campaign focuses on both the small-town atmosphere of Hawley and its proximity to the Fargo-Moorhead metropolitan area; Hawley is just 22 miles from downtown Fargo.