Today’s decision is not from a drug or device case but raises an interesting MDL procedural issue we see from time to time:  Plaintiffs trying to jump the queue and avoid the MDL process. In re Paraquat Prods. Liab. Litig., No. 3:23-pq-02887, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12392 (S.D. Ill. Jan. 23, 2025).

The case arrived in the MDL in an unusual way.  It was filed in state court and included a nondiverse defendant.  In state court, the parties “substantially completed” fact and expert discovery, including a compulsory medical exam of the plaintiff, exchange of expert interrogatories, and depositions of fact and expert witnesses.  Id. at *11.  After all of that, Plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed the nondiverse defendant, and the case was removed to federal court.  Into the MDL it went.

But that was where the case’s uniqueness ended.  There was nothing unusual about the case’s substantive legal theories or operative facts.  Nevertheless, Plaintiffs requested that the MDL court enter a scheduling order and trial setting just for their individual case because of its advanced procedural posture.  The MDL court did not go for it.  “[P]rioritizing one case over thousands of others, when an expedited dispositive briefing and trial schedule benefits only the clients of one law firm as opposed to the broader Plaintiff pool, would be inconsistent with the goal of consolidation and coordination under 28 U.S.C. § 1407.”  Id. at *10.

Things are moving along in the Paraquat MDL, as these things go.  The first bellwether cases were resolved on summary judgment in the spring of 2024.  Over the summer, the court identified another set of cases for limited case-specific discovery; that was done by the end of the year; and the cases are now set for more discovery and “aggressive” scheduling orders for summary judgment and Rule 702 briefing and trial.  Id. at 7.  The first bellwether trial is scheduled for October 14 of this year. Against this backdrop, the MDL court was disinclined to disrupt the process by letting one case leapfrog ahead. 

Plaintiffs cited cases for the general proposition that the MDL court has the authority to advance cases on different tracks.  But just because the court can doesn’t mean it must or should.  Given the posture of the MDL, the court was “reluctant to overhaul a carefully crafted case management process so that one out of more than 6,000 cases can race to trial.”  Id. at *8. The only decision Plaintiffs cited allowing a single case to go on its own track presented a unique legal theory, something lacking here.

The court recognized its responsibility “to manage the MDL to the benefit of all Plaintiffs and Defendants (not just those named in this case).”  Id. at *11.  Given that duty, the court could not divert resources from the bellwether cases, which are “intended to be representative of their peers . . . serving as the common springboard from which Court decisions on substance . . . , procedure, and discovery can then apply to like cases and claims.” Id. (citation omitted).  Frustrated though they may be, these plaintiffs will have to wait their turn.