Plaintiffs sometimes treat an MDL like a long layover—stretch their legs, grab a coffee, and assume that once they board the flight back to their home court, the airport rules no longer apply. Surprise! The TSA of civil procedure has a long memory, and your boarding pass still has the MDL stamp on it. Procedural orders entered in an MDL simply don’t evaporate when a case is remanded or transferred for trial. They follow the case home. And if they’re ignored, trial courts can—and do—dismiss cases for failure to comply.
Of all the things plaintiffs’ counsel need to track, there is one item that really should not fall through the cracks—whether their clients are still alive. This is not gallows humor. It’s basic federal civil procedure. Rule 25 requires a motion to substitute a proper party-plaintiff within ninety days of the filing of a suggestion of death. But Rule 25 does not set a deadline for the filing of a suggestion of death. Unfortunately, in MDLs with hundreds or thousands of cases it becomes dangerously easy for individual plaintiffs to become names on a spreadsheet rather than people whose status needs monitoring. Then months (or even years) go by before counsel and the court learn that the MDL inventory is full of deceased plaintiffs and procedurally defective cases. And since that can distort settlement metrics, bellwether pools, and case valuations, some MDL courts enter additional requirements to force plaintiffs’ counsel to keep track of their clients.
Such a pretrial order (PTO) was entered in the Bair Hugger MDL. In addition to Rule 25, it required plaintiffs’ counsel to file suggestions of death within ninety days of the death of a plaintiff or risk dismissal with prejudice. The MDL court, in fact, dismissed several plaintiffs for failing to file timely suggestions of death. See post here. But the plaintiff in Robinson v. 3M Company, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 263427 (M.D. Fla. Dec. 22, 2025), apparently thought that because the MDL judge didn’t personally dismiss their case before transferring it out of the MDL, the slate must be clean. That’s a bold strategy, Cotton.
Plaintiff Robinson passed away on June 4, 2025. So, to comply with the MDL PTO, plaintiff needed to file a suggestion of death by September 2, 2025. They did not, despite learning of the death on August 22nd. Instead, defendants filed a suggestion of death on September 16th upon independently learning of the death and then moved to dismiss the case. Id. at *3-4.
Plaintiff’s main argument against dismissal was that the MDL PTO did not apply to remanded cases. However, that ignores that the Robinson case was not remanded. Because it was directly filed in the MDL, it was “transferred” to Florida for trial, not “remanded.” The PTO itself explicitly stated that it applied to all directly filed cases and the order transferring the case explicitly incorporated “Selected Orders” filed in the MDL, including the order regarding suggestions of death. Id. at *5-7.
Therefore, a suggestion of death should have been filed within 90 days of plaintiff’s death—and not, as plaintiff argued within 90 days of plaintiff’s counsel learning of the death. “The strict deadline is intended to ensure the timely progression of litigation and to prevent delays arising from counsel’s lack of diligence or communication.” Id. at *7. Plaintiff offered no excuse for not having a procedure in place to communicate with their clients at least every ninety days which would have enabled them to comply with the PTO. Nor was plaintiff entitled to ninety days from the filing of the suggestion of death to file a motion to substitute. Having failed to comply with the PTO’s threshold requirement, defendant was entitled to move to dismiss. Id. at *8-9.
But here is where the transferor court cut the tardy plaintiff a little slack. The MDL PTO called for a dismissal with prejudice, but Eleventh Circuit precedent favored a without prejudice dismissal in this situation. So that is what the court ordered. Id. at *10-11.
While the distinction between remand and transfer played a role here, nobody should assume that in either scenario the case reboots to Level One. The receiving trial court inherits the case as it stands and courts routinely hold that MDL orders remain binding post-remand/transfer. Think of it less like a reset and more like a baton pass. MDL courts issue real orders with real consequences. And when your case goes home, those orders pack their bags and come with you. So don’t be shocked when a trial court enforces them. The only surprising thing would be if it didn’t.