Coordinating Discovery In Mass Tort Litigation

In mass tort litigation, such as personal injury suits arising out of airline crashes or product recalls, the sheer volume of individual suits can present significant challenges for defendants in efficiently responding to duplicative and overlapping discovery. Defendants may be faced with responding to overlapping written discovery and depositions in numerous separate lawsuits involving separate sets of attorneys. The options to address these issues depend on whether the case is pending in federal or state court. Federal multidistrict litigation (MDL) procedure enables effective consolidation and coordination of related cases. Florida allows consolidation within a judicial circuit, but state court procedures lack a similar mechanism for coordination of related litigation throughout the state.