Managing Consolidated Trial Risk in Drug and Device Litigation

Product liability and mass torts partners Tarifa Laddon and Patrick Reilly, with associate Theodore O’Reilly, co-authored an article for For the Defense titled “Managing Consolidated Trial Risk in Drug and Device Litigation.”

The authors assert that, in the current environment, consolidated, multi-plaintiff trials seem to be an inherent risk — an important source of leverage for plaintiffs’ counsel. For this reason, defense counsel may sometimes find themselves resigned to the possibility that trial could involve a multi-plaintiff cacophony with a potentially outsized verdict from a confused jury. But if consolidated trials mean leverage for plaintiffs in mass tort drug and device litigation, that means single plaintiff trials are leverage for defendants. The authors offer a few guiding principles for defense-side litigators that consider how individual cases affect each other and can be leveraged from the outset of mass tort litigation.