ABSTRACT
With all eyes on criminal justice reform, multidistrict litigation (MDL) has quietly reshaped civil justice, undermining fundamental tenets of due process, procedural justice, attorney ethics, and tort law along the way. In 2020, the MDL caseload tripled that of the federal criminal caseload, one out of every two cases filed in federal civil court was an MDL case, and 97% of those were products liability like opioids, talc, and Roundup.
Ordinarily, civil procedure puts tort plaintiffs in the driver’s seat, allowing them to choose who and where to sue, and what claims to bring. Procedural justice tells courts to ensure plaintiffs can present evidence, participate, and tell their story – or risk inaccurate outcomes and judicial illegitimacy. But MDL’s efficiency mantra trumps all, transferring plaintiffs with related facts away from their preferred venue, centralizing their cases with hundreds of others before a judge in a faraway forum, replacing their chosen attorneys with a judicially selected roster of lead lawyers, depersonalizing plaintiffs’ narratives, and settling their cases en masse. Though MDL makes them feel like ‘just another number’, one-shot plaintiffs can say little in response: many are sick, bankrupt, and silenced by private settlements’ confidentiality provisions …
Burch, Elizabeth Chamblee and Williams, Margaret S, Perceptions of Justice in Multidistrict Litigation: Voices from the Crowd (August 6, 2021). Cornell Law Review, forthcoming.
First posted 2021-11-05 14:00:06
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