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.
Germanton is an unincorporated community in Forsyth and Stokes counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina, primarily in Stokes County. It is located approximately ten miles south-southwest of the Stokes County seat of Danbury, on North Carolina State Highway 65 at an altitude of 662 feet. Germanton was the county seat of Stokes County prior to Forsyth County being created from southern Stokes. Germanton was then centrally located in the middle of Stokes. Germanton was established in 1790 and is the oldest settlement in Stokes County. The town's 23 original acres were part of a 700-acre (2.8 km) tract that was granted to Jacob Lash by the Earl of Granville in 1762. American Revolutionary War Major Joseph Winston and later U.S. Congressman was a famous Germanton resident with a plantation nearby. Coal was mined in the Germanton area but was of low quality.