Multidistrict Litigation

About Multidistrict Litigation

In the early 1960s, 2000 private civil antitrust suits involving over 25,000 claims were filed in dozens of federal courts relating to fixing in the electrical equipment industry.[1] This heretofore unprecedented wave of litigation led Chief Justice Warrant to appoint a Coordinating Committee for Multiple Litigation for the U.S. District Courts to attempt to handle this onslaught

The Multidistrict Litigation Statute

Ultimately, Congress passed “An Act to provide for the temporary transfer to a single district for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings of civil actions pending in different districts which involve one or more common questions of fact, and for other purposes,” which was and remains codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1407.[2] As the House Judicial Committee’s report explained:

The objective of the legislation is to provide centralized management under court supervision of pretrial proceedings of multidistrict litigation to assure the “just and efficient conduct” of such actions. The committee believes that the possibility for conflict and duplication in discovery and other pretrial procedures in related cases can be avoided or minimized by such centralized management. To accomplish this objective the bill provides for the transfer of venue for the limited purpose of, conducting coordinated pretrial proceedings.[3]

Within a few years, some were already calling for the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation “to reevaluate and redefine the future use of section 1407.”[4] To date, however, the only Congressional modification of 28 U.S.C. 1407 has been the addition of a section relating to state-attorney-general antitrust actions.[5]

The first modern MDL came in 1970 with the consolidation of a number of actions concerning a cholesterol-lowering drug, the MER/29 litigation.

---

[1]           See S. Rep. No. 454, 90th Cong., 1st Sess. (1967); Stanley J. Levy, Complex Multidistrict Litigation and the Federal Courts, 40 Fordham L. Rev. 41, 41 (1971).

[2]           Pub. L. No. 90-296.        

[3]           H.R. Rep. No. 1130, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. 2 to 3 (1968). A bill that would only have allowed transfer of certain claims or transfer only for limited purposes was considered and rejected. See Hearings Before the Senate Subcommittee on Improvements in Judicial Machinery, Oct. 20–21, 1966.

[4]           Levy, supra at 66.

[5]           Pub L. No. 94-435, § 303, 90 Stat. 1383 (1976).