Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation — Judicial Business 2019
The United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation acted on 49,042 civil actions pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1407 during 2019.
The Panel transferred 5,589 cases that had been pending in 91 district courts to 51 transferee districts for inclusion in coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings with 43,453 actions initiated in the transferee districts. The Panel did not order transfer for 133 actions that were the subjects of 22 motions for centralization.
The Panel centralized 49 new multidistrict litigation (MDL) dockets. Twenty dockets were split among eight products liability dockets, four antitrust dockets, four intellectual property dockets, three “miscellaneous” litigation dockets (two of them involving customer data security breaches), and one marketing and sales practices docket.
Since its creation in 1968, the Panel has centralized 722,146 civil actions for pretrial proceedings. By the end of fiscal year 2019, a total of 16,918 actions had been remanded for trial, 570,766 actions had been terminated in the transferee courts, and 134,462 actions were pending throughout 51 transferee district courts.
Tables S-19 and S-20 provide statistics on the cases transferred since the Panel was created, presenting data on the flow of cases into and out of the districts during the current fiscal year and cumulative since 1968.