“A number of people have contributed to the long, hard work on 16.1,” U.S. District Judge Robin L. Rosenberg, who chairs the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules and famously obliterated a major MDL involving the heartburn drug Zantac, said at Tuesday’s meeting. “We heard from attorneys and others on both sides of the V, and from mass torts and class action attorneys, [and] each had their own positions and ideas.”
Those positions and ideas ultimately came together into a largely optional guide for MDL management, and lawyers for both corporations and consumers characterized it Tuesday as a sensible compromise.
“I am impressed by the balance the committee tried to strike,” Elizabeth J. Cabraser of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP, a panel member and one of the plaintiffs bar’s top attorneys for MDLs, said at Tuesday’s meeting. “I don’t think it could ever be perfect … but I think it’s sufficient in terms of trying to be flexible.”
Sue Steinman, senior policy director at the American Association for Justice, which advocates for trial lawyers, echoed that comment, telling Law360 that the rule “prioritizes important MDL management issues,” and that the AAJ “applauds the balance of flexibility and structure provided by Rule 16.1.”
