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.
Jefferson City is the capital of the U.S. state of Missouri and the county seat of Cole County. Located in Callaway and Cole counties, it is the principal city of the Jefferson City metropolitan area, which encompasses the entirety of both counties. As of 2008, the population was 40,771. Jefferson City was named after Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States of America. Jefferson City is on the northern edge of the Ozark Plateau on the southern side of the Missouri River near the geographic center of the state, in a region known as Mid-Missouri. It is at the western edge of the Missouri Rhineland, a wine-producing region. The city is dominated by the domed Capitol, rising from a bluff overlooking the Missouri River to the north. Lewis and Clark passed beneath that bluff on their historic expedition upriver before Europeans established any settlement there.