MDLs
comprise an increasingly significant portion of the federal docket, and account
for much of the growth in the civil side of the docket in the last few years.
Trial court judges to whom the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation
transfers cases, operating with little guidance from the MDL statute or the
federal rules, have improvised ways to appoint counsel to leadership positions;
control pleading, motion practice and discovery; and resolve mass torts via
trial or aggregate settlements in a system expressly designed for pretrial
purposes only. Though creative, their solutions raise a number of concerns
regarding litigant autonomy, agency costs, and the role of federal court judges
in litigation. This program explores the MDL phenomenon and the problems it
poses for our civil litigation system.
Papers from the program will be published in
The Review of Litigation.Business meeting at program conclusion.