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.
Kingsport is a city in Hawkins and Sullivan counties in the U.S. state of Tennessee. The majority of the city lies in Sullivan County. The population was 44,095 at the 2000 census. The name is a simplification of "King's Port," originally referring to the area around Ross's Landing. Kingsport is a principal city of the Kingsport–Bristol–Bristol, TN-VA Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), which had a population of 302,451 as of 2006. The Metropolitan Statistical Area is a component of the Johnson City–Kingsport–Bristol, TN-VA Combined Statistical Area – commonly known as the "Tri-Cities" region. It is also commonly included in what is known as the "Mountain Empire," which includes a portion of southwest Virginia and the mountainous counties in Tennessee to the east.