The Digitek MDL judge earlier this month issued a pretrial order regarding multi-plaintiff complaints. In Pretrial Order No. 7, the court ordered the severance of most multi-plaintiff cases (other than spouses). In Re: Digitek Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 1968 (S.D. W.Va.). The court noted that several complaints in this MDL action join multiple plaintiffs whose only apparent connection with one another is that they allegedly ingested the drug at issue. Other MDL judges have noted the case management, tracking, and other difficulties often accompanying that joinder practice, citing Vioxx and diet drugs.

No later than December 31, 2008, plaintiffs’ Co-Lead Counsel are to submit to the court a report identifying multi-plaintiff actions docketed prior to this Order that are subject to severance, and submit on that same date a suitable proposed severance order. One of the reasons plaintiffs resist such severance is the need to pay separate filing fees for all the separate claims filed, but the Order requires the fees.

MassTortDefense has posted on this MDL.  Defendant initiated a nationwide recall of Digitek products, saying tablets with double the appropriate dosage may have been released to the public, with possible side effects. More than 50 Digitek product liability cases were transferred to Chief Judge Joseph R. Goodwin of the Southern District of West Virginia in August.

Consolidated trials are something most mass tort defendants may want to oppose. The pre-trial severance of multi-plaintiff actions here is without prejudice to any party’s right under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 42 to request consolidation of severed actions upon future remand to a transferor court for trial. But better that plaintiffs have the burden of putting cases together than defendant have to overcome the “inertia” of cases that have been consolidated since day one.