Coordinating Discovery In Mass Tort Litigation

In mass tort litigation, such as personal injury suits arising out of airline crashes or product recalls, the sheer volume of individual suits can present significant challenges for defendants in efficiently responding to duplicative and overlapping discovery. Defendants may be faced with responding to overlapping written discovery and depositions in numerous separate lawsuits involving separate sets of attorneys. The options to address these issues depend on whether the case is pending in federal or state court. Federal multidistrict litigation (MDL) procedure enables effective consolidation and coordination of related cases. Florida allows consolidation within a judicial circuit, but state court procedures lack a similar mechanism for coordination of related litigation throughout the state. While each lawsuit arising out of a mass tort presents certain individualized issues, the lawsuits also involve common issues. For example, in product liability litigation, written discovery to the defendants on issues such as the design and manufacture of the product at issue and communications with regulators will be duplicative across cases. Similarly, depositions of the manufacturer defendants' fact and corporate representative witnesses will address the same or overlapping issues in each case. Coordination of these types of overlapping discovery among individual cases makes the litigation more efficient for the parties and the judicial system. Federal MDL procedure addresses this situation and allows for consolidation and coordination of discovery and other pretrial proceedings in related federal litigation throughout the country. MDLs are authorized under federal statute providing that: "when civil actions involving one or more common questions of fact are pending in different districts, such actions may be transferred to any district of coordination or consolidated pretrial procedures." 28 U.S.C. § 1407(a). The goals of the MDL process are "to avoid duplication of discovery, to prevent inconsistent pretrial rulings, and to conserve the resources of the parties, their counsel and the judiciary." See http://www.jpml.uscourts.gov/panel-info/overview-panel. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML), a panel of seven sitting federal judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States, is authorized to create MDLs upon application by a party. See http://www.jpml.uscourts.gov/panel-info/overview-panel and Rules of Procedure of the...