Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation — Judicial Business 2021

The Panel transferred 3,152 cases that were pending in 91 district courts to 45 transferee districts for inclusion in coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings with 99,913 actions initiated in the transferee districts. The Panel did not order transfer for 230 actions that were the subjects of 14 motions for centralization.

Forty-six motions to centralize were filed with the Panel, and 27 of those led to the creation of new multidistrict litigation (MDL) dockets. One show cause order and 26 dockets were split among 12 “miscellaneous” litigation dockets (2 of them involving customer data security breaches), 6 antitrust dockets, 5 product liability dockets, 2 marketing and sales practices dockets, 1 intellectual property docket, and 1 contract docket.

Since its creation in 1968, the Panel has centralized 1,056,706 civil actions for pretrial proceedings. By the end of fiscal year 2021, a total of 17,357 actions had been remanded for trial, 647,396 actions had been terminated in the transferee courts, and 391,953 actions were pending throughout 45 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.