Bexis recently attended the “Emerging Issues in Mass-Tort MDLs Conference” sponsored by Duke Law School (those of us from Philly remember Duke as part of “Black Saturday” back in 1979).  Several panels discussed various issues relating to MDLs including using early, issue-specific fact sheets, which Bexis advocated be considered amended pleadings subject to Rule 8 and TwIqbal, as a winnowing tool against the hordes of meritless plaintiffs that persist for years in MDLs involving prescription medical products.  Another discussion, about Lone Pine orders, produced (among other things) a great deal of disagreement as to what exactly a “Lone Pine order” actually requires.

By the end of it all, Bexis was moved to make a modest proposal. A lot of the problem – both with the use of plaintiff questionnaires/fact sheets and with Lone Pine orders – is definitional.  There is no set standard for either of these supplemental discovery procedures.  What’s really needed is the type of clarity that can only be brought about by an actual rule of civil procedure.  Thus, Bexis proposed (and proposes here) creation of a new Federal Rule of Civil Procedure governing “optional discovery methods” that allow judges to use defined procedures for party questionnaires/fact sheets (not necessarily plaintiffs in all cases) and Lone Pine orders would set standards, as well as several other discovery techniques that we think should be defined and allowed by a formal rule.

The other techniques Bexis would include in a new rule are: (1) authorizations for release and production of medical and other relevant records in the hands of third-parties; (2) informal interviews with treating physicians; (3) predictive coding in ediscovery; and (4) provision of blood or tissue sampling for genetic testing.  The first two are traditional discovery techniques that suffer (like Lone Pine and questionnaires) from wildly divergent standards and could benefit from the uniformity imposed by a rule – as well as a leveling of the plaintiff/defendant playing field.  The latter two are innovative discovery techniques that are driven by technological advances.  Predictive coding (as we discussed in the links above) could both cheapen and sharpen electronic discovery.  Genetic testing, reliant on DNA and other molecular sequencing techniques that have become dramatically cheaper and more accurate over the past decade, will become more and more necessary in toxic exposure cases of all kinds as causation of more and more medical conditions, such as mesothelioma and other cancers, is determined to vary by individualized genetic differences (also discussed in our prior link).

As illustrious as the attendees of the (invitation only) Duke Conference are, that is not the forum for actually amending the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. That honor goes to Discovery Subcommittee of the Federal Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure.  Having successfully completed its project on scope and sanctions that resulted in the amendments that became final in December, 2015, that Subcommittee might be looking for something else to do.  Maybe it could see fit to take up some or all of Bexis’ modest proposal.