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.
Barrytown is a hamlet within the town of Red Hook in Dutchess County, New York, United States. It is within the Hudson River Historic District, a National Historic Landmark, and comprises four of the Hudson River Valley estates: Edgewater, Messina, Rokeby, and Sylvania. The Messina Property, at the northern sector of the hamlet was purchased in 1929 by the New York District of the Brothers of the Christian Schools who established on that site the St. Joseph's Normal Institute as a teacher training facility for the Junior and Senior Novices of their Roman Catholic religious congregation. In the early 1970s the property was bought by the Unification Church, where its Unification Theological Seminary is located. The majority of the houses in Barrytown were built in the mid to late nineteenth century, often with the purpose to house workers at the local estates and accompanying farms.