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ARTICLE · 18 OCTOBER 2017

MDL Direct Filing & Personal Jurisdiction

Reed Smith
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Bexis gave a talk the other day at the Washington Legal Foundation on personal jurisdiction after last term's United States Supreme Court decisions in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court, ...

United StatesLitigation, Mediation & Arbitration
James Beck
James Beck
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Bexis gave a talk the other day at the Washington Legal Foundation on personal jurisdiction after last term's United States Supreme Court decisions in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court, 137 S. Ct. 1773 (2017) ("BMS"), and BNSF Railway Co. v. Tyrrell, 137 S. Ct. 1549 (2017) ("BNSF"). One of the highlighted areas of emerging jurisdictional issues was MDL practice – specifically the MDL practice of allowing plaintiffs anywhere in the country to "direct file" actions into the MDL after it has been established – thereby bypassing the provisions of the MDL statute, 28 U.S.C. §1407(a) that "transfers shall be made by the judicial panel on multidistrict litigation."

We thought we'd examine that a bit today.

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