ABSTRACT
Over the past 50 years, multidistrict litigation (MDL) has quietly revolutionized civil procedure. MDLs include the largest tort cases in US history, but without the authority of the class-action rule, MDL judges – who formally have only pretrial jurisdiction over individual cases – have resorted to extraordinary procedural exceptionalism to settle cases on a national scale.
Somehow, until now, this has remained below the surface to everyone but MDL insiders. Thanks to the sprawling MDL over the opioid crisis – and unprecedented opposition to it – MDL is finally in public view. State attorneys general have resisted the opioid MDL’s intense nationalism, its relentless drive to global settlement, its wild procedural innovation, its blurring of differences across state law and its dramatic assertions of jurisdictional authority. Opiates is the most extraordinary MDL yet, but most big MDLs share many of its features, and Opiates is already the roadmap for the next mega-cases …
Gluck, Abbe R and Burch, Elizabeth Chamblee, MDL Revolution (October 11, 2020). New York University Law Review, forthcoming.
First posted 2021-02-10 07:19:54
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