What is Multidistrict Litigation (MDL)?
Multi-district litigation, abbreviated as MDL, is a federal legal procedure designed to increase efficiencies by handling pretrial proceedings and discovery collectively. MDL cases can span from product liability to antitrust to security.
What are Mass Tort MDLs?
A mass tort involves a type of injury that multiple plaintiffs allege. The injury is typically health-related, but it can also be an economic injury. MDL refers to the federal procedures that approved the lawsuits for centralization in front of one court for purposes of discovery.
In a mass tort MDL, each plaintiff has a unique set of circumstances that led up to their alleged injury. It could be a unique health history, unique contributing risk factors, or different levels of exposure to the product at issue. What makes mass tort MDLs unique is the need to provide proof of injury and proof of use of the product at issue.
MDL Statistics: July 2024
- About 177 MDLs are pending
- About 38% of those pending cases [68 of the 177] are product liability
- Over 417,000 product liability litigants currently pending making up 70% of total district court pending actions
Within product liability mass tort cases, there are subcategories such as:
- Appellate
- Asbestos
- Construction
- Consumer Products
- Manufacturing
- Pharmaceutical & Medical Device
4 Challenges Commonly Faced with Mass Tort MDLs
1. Large number of parties and determining merit or liability
One of the largest complexities that can arise is the number of parties involved. The issues for plaintiff firms can be determining whether a plaintiff’s case should be filed due to the expenses associated with discovery. Weeding through cases to determine whether to file the case can be extremely challenging. From a defendant’s perspective, there can also be issues with determining potential liability with multiple defendants.
2. Coordination between federal and state courts
Federal and state courts have different rules, different legal standards, and different case management preferences. Challenges include duplicating efforts in discovery and pretrial proceedings which can cost exorbitant amounts of time and money.
3. Discovery data in an MDL
The massive amount of data associated with the discovery process with large litigation presents many challenges. The avenues to collect the data, ways to analyze the data, and how to maintain the integrity of the data for reliable reporting and analytics.
4. Potential duration of the MDL
There are many parties, plaintiffs, defendants, and law firms involved in mass tort MDLs. This is a lot of information to analyze and coordinate, so it can take some time to get to resolution. When focusing on the case logistics in MDLs, the negotiation of orders to get rules established between plaintiff and defense can take time. It can take months or even years before a plaintiff’s story is heard or resolution takes place.
Mass Tort MDL Discovery Process: Types of Data Collected
Plaintiff Data Collection
From the plaintiff's perspective, there's a multitude of information that is generally collected from the individual plaintiffs and on behalf of the plaintiffs as a whole. In MDLs, plaintiff counsel commonly utilizes forms called plaintiff fact sheets or plaintiff profile forms to collect information from individuals. It's part of the MDL tool case to create a questionnaire that is applied to every plaintiff across the entire population. These questionnaires are often a specific set of questions that may ask for information regarding demographics, product use, product exposure, injuries, and documentation to support those injuries.
Defense Data Collection
Defendants are asked to produce information such as emails, sales literature, and product databases. They may have a defendant fact sheet to complete or have depositions of company management, company researchers, and sales representatives aiming to demonstrate the evolution of product development. The goal is to determine if there was any awareness of potential adverse events, injuries, or risks and if those were known by key individuals at specific points in time.
Technology Tools Commonly Used for Data Collection & Analysis in Mass Tort Litigation
Online Fact Sheets
Online centralized platforms can be used by plaintiffs or plaintiff counsel to complete interrogatories such as plaintiff fact sheets or plaintiff profile forms. These platforms have the forms set up in a manner that is designed to capture data points and not just information. This allows for powerful insights into visual dashboards and reports to look at categories of data across large volumes of plaintiffs.
Until the last 5-10 years, completing these interrogatories was a manual process. These forms were completed by pen and paper, or within a PDF document that firms would have to manually review. The review process was also manual and time-intensive.
Deficiency Reviews
Online centralized platforms may also have tools that allow for deficiency review among submitted forms. For example, if a form isn't completed fully, or is completed erroneously, it can help to identify potential deficiencies in the information by identifying where a question wasn't completed fully, or a blank was left.
Dual Representation Identification
Additionally, online centralized platforms may offer dual representation identification. The platform will identify duplicated instances or individuals who are represented by more than one law firm. Identifying the duplicated individuals early in the process keeps plaintiff counsel organized and increases the integrity of the data.
The rising use of third-party lead generators has led to an increased demand for this service. Third-party lead generators are entities that collect individuals who may have a case or a claim against one or more defendants. They conduct advertising campaigns to gather certain amounts of information about potential litigants or claimants and create an inventory that they may sell off to a plaintiff law firm or multiple plaintiff law firms. An issue that can arise is signing the same plaintiff up multiple times with the same law firm or across multiple law firms.
What Roles Do Litigation Support Partners Play in Mass Tort MDLs?
Litigation support partners provide support from e-discovery to document review, record collection, analysis of medical records, settlement support, and more. Many host technology platforms to help better capture data in ways that can be utilized for reporting and analytics providing early insight into the litigation. These early insights help glean trends and help the parties, judges, special masters, and magistrates understand the volume of information and potential structure of a settlement, or trajectories on how the litigation may proceed to get to resolution faster.
Litigation support partners bring diverse expertise and can fulfill various roles, but their greatest value is realized when they function as an extension of your team. By integrating into the discovery team, they collaborate closely with clients to achieve faster, more efficient, and cost-effective resolutions.
At LMI, we partner with clients to deliver proactive, strategic, collaborative service that helps you gain clarity and navigate the complexity of litigation with peace of mind. Our automated, fine-tuned, and time-tested processes, delivered with a human touch, allow us to deliver quality work with ease and efficiency.
Podcast: Dive deeper into the world of multidistrict litigation and how data management has evolved and continues to evolve.
Click below to listen to our podcast episode with Megan Pizor, LMI’s General Counsel and Chief Data Officer, and Angela Browning, LMI’s Chief Strategy Officer, distinguished legal professionals with extensive experience in mass tort litigation, as they dive into the challenges of managing mass tort MDLs and strategies to streamline efficiency and contain discovery costs.