Litigation, Co-Sponsored by Torts and Compensation Systems

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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.