Today’s post is not from the Reed Smith side of the blog.

We remember a time years ago when the phrase “Lone Pine order” was not widely understood. That has long since changed, and now it’s tough to imagine anyone who practices in mass torts not being familiar with it. Indeed, we’ve posted repeatedly about courts entering Lone Pine orders in certain litigation.  We also have a cheat sheet of favorable Lone Pine orders. But as we posted a year ago, the term “Lone Pine” carries a lot of baggage, and we suggested it might be time to stop using the name of a 1986 New Jersey case to refer to a case management procedure for requiring plaintiffs to establish the factual bases for their claims. Terms like “Threshold Evidence Orders” or “Case Vetting Orders” seem more appropriate, and dropping the Lone Pine description might generate less resistance from plaintiffs’ counsel and courts.   

Terminology preferences notwithstanding, today’s opinion from the long-running Thalidomide litigation (which we posted about here and here) expressly entered a Lone Pine order.  Johnson v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., No. 11-5782, slip op. at 1 (E.D. Pa. May 27, 2026). The defendant proposed the order in response to the court’s inquiry about how to handle the remaining claims in the litigation. The defendants had been trying since 2011 to learn whether plaintiffs had evidence that the defendants’ products caused their injuries and whether the claims were time-barred. The court and a special master previously addressed “repeated attempts” by plaintiffs’ counsel “to evade providing answers to these questions that go to the heart of the products actions,” and the court noted that plaintiffs’ counsel’s prior actions included  “grossly inadequate presuit investigations,” “discovery obstructions,” and “false and baseless allegations intended to toll the limitations clock.” Id. at 1-2.

Plaintiffs offered two arguments in opposition to entry of the order: (1) the Third Circuit authorizes Lone Pine orders only in MDL litigation and as a tool during preliminary discovery; and (2) the order would violate plaintiffs’ due process rights.  The court squarely rejected both arguments. The court cited Conklin v. Corteva, Inc., 782 F. Supp. 3d 268, 277 (E.D.N.C. 2025) (which we blogged about here) to show that courts have issued Lone Pine orders in cases “involving as few as 15 plaintiffs,” and the court noted that Lone Pine orders were issued in advanced stages of the Vioxx and Zostavax litigation (both of which are addressed in our cheat sheet). Plaintiffs did not explain how the proposed order would violate their due process rights, and the court held that the order required “only that Plaintiffs provide information that should have been obtained before suit was filed, and to verify allegations in their Complaints.” Id. at 2. Instead of explaining their argument or proposing an alternative process for addressing the remaining claims in the litigation, plaintiffs’ counsel sought “further to delay this decades-long litigation.” Id.  

The court granted the defendants’ motion and entered the order. Notable components of the order require production of the following information in a sworn declaration within 90 days:

• a verified statement identifying the plaintiff’s injuries allegedly caused by Thalidomide;
• a verified statement that the declarant has a good faith basis, in accordance with Rule 11, to assert exposure in utero to Thalidomide, including a summary of the facts supporting that assertion;
• a verified statement that the declarant reviewed specific decisions of the court applying statutes of limitations in the Thalidomide litigation and the Third Circuit’s affirmance and, considering those decisions, that the declarant has a good faith basis under Rule 11 to claim that plaintiff’s claims are not time barred; and
• an expert declaration including an affirmation that the expert reviewed the plaintiff’s medical records and testimony by plaintiff and fact witnesses, and that the expert can state to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that (1) the plaintiff was exposed in utero to Thalidomide, and (2) that such exposure caused the specific injuries identified by the expert.

Id. at 3-5.  Failure to comply with any of these requirements will result in dismissal of the claims with prejudice. For those plaintiffs who comply with the order, the defendants are to move for summary judgment on those claims within 90 days of service of the information.

Whatever you call it – Lone Pine, Threshold Evidence, or Case Vetting – we’ll take it. In the “build it and they will come” world of mass torts, these orders are a necessary tool to weed out meritless claims. We’d of course like to see that weeding occur as early as possible, but even in cases where the order enters over a decade after the litigation began, it is still a tool for eliminating cases that lack factual support.