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.
Carrboro is a town in Orange County in the U.S. state of North Carolina. The population was 18,162 at the 2008 census. The town, which is part of the Durham-Chapel Hill metropolitan statistical area, was named after North Carolina industrialist Julian Shakespeare Carr. Located near Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina, Carrboro has a reputation as one of the most liberal communities in the Southern United States. It was the first municipality in North Carolina to elect an openly gay mayor, Mike Nelson, in 1995 and the first municipality in the state to grant domestic-partner benefits to same-sex couples. In October 2002, Carrboro was among the first municipalities in the South to adopt resolutions opposing the Iraq War and the USA PATRIOT Act.