Chapter § 4.01 Introduction to Federal MDL Procedures and Litigation

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Publication year: 2020

§ 4.01 Introduction to Federal MDL Procedures and Litigation

In the early 1960s, federal courts attempted to manage multidistrict litigation on an ad hoc basis by transferring cases or assigning judges between districts. Then came the “Electrical Equipment Cases.” After the criminal prosecutions of multiple electrical equipment manufacturers for price fixing, plaintiffs filed some 2,000 antitrust civil suits in 35 federal districts over a 12-month period.⁶ For the most part, the cases involved many of the same parties and operative facts, and, therefore, massive duplication of pretrial discovery was looming. The Electrical Equipment Cases demonstrated that the procedural devices in existence at the time were inadequate to adjudicate this flood of cases in an effective way.⁷ “Had some procedures not been developed to enable the courts to handle this massive litigation efficiently, these cases could have become so overburdening as to jeopardize the effective administration of the entire federal system.”⁸

To address this threat, in 1962, Chief Justice Earl Warren established a Coordinating Committee for Multiple Litigation of the U.S. District Courts (the “Coordinating Committee”). The Coordinating Committee held frequent conferences with the judges handling the Electrical Equipment Cases and “recommended a national discovery program to replace independent discovery” in the different districts.⁹ The judges successfully achieved consolidated pretrial proceedings through “cooperation and coordination.”¹⁰ While the judges were pleased with this result, the weaknesses of the Coordinating Committee became apparent. The process was inefficient, as often 30 or more district judges had to “coordinate their personal schedules to convene in one location to discuss problems and meet with counsel. In addition, the voluntary process hinged upon complete agreement among the judges.”¹¹ It became clear that informal coordination between judges would not provide a long-term means to administer massive, complex multidistrict litigation.

Accordingly, Congress passed section 1407 to establish formal procedures for the efficient management of multidistrict litigation. A passage from a House Judiciary Committee report on the statute underscores this legislative intent: “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.”¹² The...