The unwieldy and sometimes unfair nature of multidistrict litigation has become a recurring theme on the DDL Blog. We have long commented on the “if you build it, they will come” dynamic that leads to hundreds or thousands of cases gathered, filed, and then parked in an MDL—all hoping to do as little
We have long lamented the apparent relaxation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in multidistrict litigation, and it happened again recently in the Zostavax MDL. We understand that the purpose of MDLs is to conduct coordinated pretrial proceedings, and we understand an MDL judge’s inclination to take a broader view of case management. But
MDL defendants in prescription medical product liability MDLs have been complaining for years about thousands of cases being brought without the slightest pre-filing vetting – “plaintiffs” who cannot establish that they ever actually used the products of the defendant(s) they have sued and/or who similarly have no proof that they suffered the injury(ies) as to
We have long thought that “direct filing” procedures in multidistrict litigation were a solution in search of a problem. We also think direct filing procedures in MDLs pose significant waiver risks without a corresponding upside. Alas, our inclinations were confirmed recently when the Seventh Circuit ruled that a mass tort defendant’s acquiescence to complaints filed
By now our beef with Multidistrict Litigations has become monotonous: plaintiff lawyers assemble enormous inventories of weak cases, then contort the bellwether pool to ensure that only their best cases go to trial. We remember an oral argument in front of an MDL judge in which we employed statistics to show that a representative MDL
Few things raise our blood pressure as much as the MDL process. MDL stands for Multi-District Litigation, but the M might as well stand for Mutilating and the D for Distorting. One-sided discovery, wholesale parking of ‘shotgun’ complaints, made-up spoliation issues, and bellwether trial programs that produce results representative of nothing other than plaintiff lawyer