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107 Calif. L. Rev. 1713 (2019)
Party Preferences in Multidistrict Litigation

handle is hein.journals/calr107 and id is 1749 raw text is: Party Preferences in Multidistrict Litigation Zachary D. Clopton & Andrew D. Bradt* Perhaps the two most salient trends in complex litigation have been the rise of multidistrict litigation (MDL) and the fall of aggregation on plaintiffs' terms. According to recent statistics, more than one third of federal cases are consolidated within MDLs- meaning that they are being litigated before judges handpicked by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (the JPML or the Panel), which itselfwas handpicked by the ChiefJustice. Meanwhile, decisions on personal jurisdiction, class actions, and other topics have dramatically reduced plaint iffs' ability to select their preferred forum for complex cases. These trends intersect when jurists and scholars suggest that MDL provides a backstop for aggregate litigation because it is not constrained by rules on personal jurisdiction and class certification. The ultimate choice of the forum in which large-scale cases will be litigated seems to be increasingly in the unconstrained hands of the Panel, and not the plaintiffs. This reliance on MDL as the primary vehicle for aggregation makes it particularly important to know how plaintiffs and defendants fare before the Panel when they argue over where and before whom a new MDL should be heard. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15779/Z38TT4FT52 Copyright © 2019 California Law Review, Inc. California Law Review, Inc. (CLR) is a California nonprofit corporation. CLR and the authors are solely responsible for the content of their publications. * Professor of Law, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law; Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall). Thank you to Steve Burbank, Dawn Chutkow, Kevin Clermont, Scott Dodson, Maggie Gardner, William Hubbard, Sam Issacharoff, Linda Mullenix, Jeff Rachlinski, and participants in the Federal Courts Workshop and the NYU Center on Civil Justice Symposium. Thanks also to Melissa Decker, Rohini Tashima, and Doug Wagner for superb research assistance, and to the California Law Review for all of their excellent work on this Article. 1713

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