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Practice Tip: Filing 'Direct' Cases in an MDL

By Larry Goldhirsch

Once a case has been assigned by the Judicial Panel on Multi-District Litigation (JPML) to a particular court, the judge to whom it is assigned will generally try to have all cases in the 50 states filed there directly. This saves time and money because if the new cases are first filed in federal district court or in state court and are removed, they will immediately be transferred to the MDL court. So, why not take advantage of this valuable vehicle to save time and file directly with the designated district court that is the MDL court?

A stipulation between counsel or a Case Management Order (CMO) that permits such cases to be filed directly in the MDL district without objection by the defendant(s) to the venue are what is needed to file. The stipulation will usually permit any counsel not admitted to that court to appear, so long as counsel is admitted to some federal court in the United States. This would also permit a firm that does a lot of mass tort work to file its cases in one jurisdiction without having to split up its filings among what would otherwise be numerous, different district courts with different substantive laws. It also obviates the necessity of retaining local counsel in each of those courts if the mass tort firm is not practicing in that jurisdiction.

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