There are typically hundreds to thousands of individuals that may have been injured by a certain drug or device. Instead of filing these claims in many different courts all over the country, it is common for a Judicial Panel to form an MDL (Multidistrict Litigation) court in order to simplify and speed the process of these complex cases. This way, only one judge presides over the entire litigation and attorneys from all over the country can pool their resources and share expert witnesses.
After the court is formed, next is the pretrial stage, where the court will set pretrial orders informing the attorneys involved of the ground rules, deadlines, and procedures. After the pretrial stage is the discovery process, which is when each party obtains evidence from the other party.
Some cases will be selected to go to trial in what is known as a Bellwether trial. Bellwether trials are where a handful of cases are selected to be tried before a jury to assist the court and the parties in evaluating information and evidence, and evaluate future trends in a larger group of similar cases. These cases are then settled or tried, and the results are used to shape the process for addressing the remaining cases. Sometimes the defendant wants to settle the cases at that point, sometimes they decide to have additional trials.