Venue

Venue in Mass Torts

Related to jurisdictional questions about a court’s power is the question of which court should hear a dispute when multiple options are available. The venue question is complicated in mass torts, which on the federal level aggregate cases from multiple states and judicial districts. The Lexecon doctrine is a core mass-tort venue consideration. It establishes that a federal court supervising multidistrict litigation may not assign to itself for trial cases transferred from other jurisdictions. Federal courts overseeing multidistrict litigation continue to flesh out the contours of this doctrine.

Under the general federal venue statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1391, venue of a product liability case is proper in one of three places: (1) the district where a defendant resides, but only if all defendants are residents of the state encompassing that district; (2) the district where a substantial part of the acts or omissions giving rise to the claim occurred; or, if neither (1) nor (2) apply, (3) any district where any defendant is subject to personal jurisdiction.[1] Practically speaking, then, federal venue lies where the defendant resides or where the events underlying the claim took place.

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[1]           28 U.S.C. § 1391(b).