General Motors recently moved in Pennsylvania state court to to have discovery in an ignition defect lawsuit coordinated with the discovery in the 150+ cases in a federal multi-district litigation. In re General Motors LLC Ignition Switch Litigation, MDL No. 2543 (JPML June 9, 2014).

In many mass torts, plaintiffs have tactical options about choice of forum, including state vs. federal court.  Defendants have limited ability to impact these choices, including through removal to federal court of appropriate cases, and enforcement of venue rules and the forum non conveniens doctrine. It is not unusual for a federal MDL to be operating in parallel to a number of suits progressing in state courts, raising the same essential issues.

Such a posture raises a number of challenges regarding judicial administration, economy of judicial resources, efficiency for the parties, cost, and consistency (such as on protective orders).  While there is no mechanism for mandatory coordination of state and federal cases in this context, voluntary coordination is often utilized to reduce costs, delay, and the duplication of efforts. E.g., Dunlavey v. Takeda Pharm. Am., Inc., 2012 U.S. Dist. Lexis 120897 (W.D. La. Aug. 23, 2012). Many commentators encourage such coordination and cooperation.  E.g., Manual for Complex Litigation §§20.31, 22.4 (4th ed. 2004); The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation & The Federal Judicial Center, Ten Steps to Better Case Management: A Guide for Multidistrict Litigation Transferee Judges (2009); See the Multi-jurisdiction Litigation Guide.

The defense motion here does a nice job of explaining why such coordination is essential and wise in the context of a product liability dispute. The MDL court had entered a Joint Coordination Order to prevent duplication of discovery, avoid undue burden on the courts and parties, save costs, and conserve judicial resources.  Some 13 state courts already adopted a similar order to govern the overlapping issues.

Such coordination does not prevent a plaintiff from seeking necessary case-specific discovery, either through consent or through a motion. But more than 4 million pages of documents have already been produced in this MDL and it makes no sense to ignore that fact and have state court plaintiffs start discovery afresh. And it is impractical and unfair to expect a defendant to produce key company witnesses for deposition hundreds of time for every individual case, as opposed to allowing state court plaintiffs, through the coordination Orders, to meaningfully participate in the master MDL deposition of the key witnesses.

Plaintiffs oppose the motion.