by Sandra Rodriguez
Mass litigation, particularly in the area of products liability, poses unique challenges for defendants. A defendant at the center of mass litigation may quickly find itself facing duplicate demands for discovery and depositions and conflicting hearing and trial schedules. Additionally, with many cases involving similar issues of fact and law, counsel may find themselves having to argue the same issues repeatedly before many different courts. The potential for conflicting rulings is real.
The federal court system addresses these problems by allowing the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to order similar cases transferred to a single federal judge and consolidated for pretrial purposes. In our Texas state court system, Rule 11 of the Texas Rules of Judicial Administration, adopted in 1997 by the Texas Supreme Court, allows the Presiding Judge in each of the nine Administrative Judicial Regions to appoint one or more active district judges to
