Pennsylvania’s federal district courts administer 14 of the approximately 171 currently active MDL dockets—a little more than 8% of the nationwide total. Four of those involve products liability cases, which historically represent a significant portion of the overall MDL proceeding types and the category with the largest overall number of individual claims, both in the commonwealth and nationwide.
However, Pennsylvania’s MDLs are aging and have overall fewer cases pending in comparison to other MDLs. When looking at individual case statistics published by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML), Pennsylvania’s overall share of individual actions in MDL proceedings is less than one percent of the nearly 400,000 individual MDL claims nationwide. And those same statistics show that one MDL—In re Avandia pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania—has zero individual cases currently pending. As Pennsylvania’s MDLs age and the number of petitions to consolidate fall, will Pennsylvania maintain its share of MDL proceedings?
