Court Opinion

ID: 9490134
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:33:58.67207+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:55.093672
License: Public Domain

EDITH H. JONES, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I agree with Judge Parker’s conclusions that mandamus must be granted in this case, that the district judge’s method of selecting “bellwether” cases is fatally flawed, and that the most expeditious remedy is, without interfering with the setting of these cases, to deprive them of preclusive consequences. I believe, however, that we must elaborate further the basis for the grant of mandamus, lest we risk being consumed by petitions for similar relief and routine trial management problems. I also have serious doubts about the major premise of Judge Parker’s opinion, i.e., his confidence that a bellwether trial of representative cases is permissible to extrapolate findings relevant to and somehow preclusive upon a larger group of eases.
This court has a duty not only to encant the proper standard of review applicable to the extraordinary remedy of mandamus, but also to show why that remedy is appropriate in the circumstances before us. The explanation must demonstrate why the facts here are so unique as to warrant mandamus and must reinforce that the remedy is only to be used sparingly and with utmost care. Mandamus is not a substitute for appeal in due course; consequently, the writ should only be invoked if the challenged district court order is not effectively reviewable on appeal. As the Seventh Circuit cautioned, the challenged order must inflict irreparable harm. Matter of Rhone-Poulenc Rover Inc., 51 F.3d 1293, 1295 (7th Cir.1995). Moreover, the order “must so far exceed the proper bounds of discretion as to be legitimately considered usurpative in character, or in violation of a clear and indisputable legal right.” Id. See *1022also In re: Fibreboard Corp., 893 F.2d 706, 707-08 (5th Cir.1990).
In this case, I am persuaded that these stringent criteria are satisfied. First, this is not one ease but 3,000 cases filed individually, not as a class action, and aggregated for trial management. The number of cases in which there are 3,000 plaintiffs is, even in these days of frenzied tort litigation, extremely rare. Further, because the cases concern alleged exposure over long periods of time to varying quantities of toxics, the individual circumstances of each plaintiffs claim defy easy aggregated treatment. The district court’s selection of 30 “bellwether” cases, whose results would bind all 3,000 plaintiffs on the issues of general liability or causation, is probably not effectively renewable after trial. The pressure on the parties to settle in fear of the result of a perhaps all- or-nothing “bellwether” trial is enormous.
Second, as Judge Parker’s opinion notes, this is an “immature” mass tort action, in which the defendant’s liability has not even been tested, much yet firmly established. The use of innovative judicial techniques particularly to resolve immature mass tort actions has been disfavored. For instance, this Court in Castano v. American Tobacco Company, 84 F.3d 734 (5th Cir.1996), refused to certify an immature tort class action brought on behalf of tobacco users. Likewise, in Matter of Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, Inc., the Seventh Circuit granted mandamus to vacate the class certification of hemophiliacs who had contracted the AIDS virus through contaminated blood transfusions. Both opinions note the potentially devastating impact of a class certification decision and its tendency to force defendants to settle even when they might have meritorious defenses. Conducting an imperfect bellwether trial in this ease threatens a similar effect. An imperfectly designed bellwether group cannot yield a statistically reliable set of verdicts. Nevertheless, once in place, the verdicts would create enormous momentum for settlement. There would then be nothing to review on appeal and no realistic opportunity for Chevron to appeal.
The lack of correlation here between the bellwether plaintiffs selected and the need for a representative verdict suggests why the court’s order represents a usurpation of power. Even if a bellwether trial is an appropriate vehicle for the resolution of mass tort eases, a point I question below, the results cannot serve their function of guaranteeing reliability unless the cases selected are statistically representative of the group of 3,000 plaintiffs. The court made no effort here to assure representativeness. Moreover, as Judge Parker’s opinion notes, the determination of rehable representative plaintiffs is difficult in a toxic exposure case. The process involves such questions as quantity, geographic proximity, and temporal exposure to the toxic substance, comparative lifestyles, and physical manifestations of exposure, none of which were explored by the trial judge. The judge allowed the parties to pick faces from the crowd of plaintiffs, and his order forces the parties to expend huge resources preparing for a trial whose results cannot possibly fairly be extrapolated to cover the rest of the crowd. As a “bellwether”, the exercise is pointless. Appellate courts can surely remedy the misdirection of resources and the almost guaranteed unfair outcome of a nonrepresentative bellwether trial. For these reasons, I think the compelling circumstances surrounding this extraordinarily large and complex case permit our considering the grant of mandamus relief.
Mandamus relief would also and more emphatically be compelled if the federal courts are not authorized to permit binding verdicts to be rendered against non-parties to bellwether trials or against a defendant with respect to plaintiffs whose eases were not tried in the bellwether group. Although Judge Parker need not have reached this larger question, he appears to have done so, asserting that the notion of a bellwether trial “is a sound one that has achieved general acceptance by both bench and bar.” He further asserts that common issues or even general liability may be resolved in a bellwether context in appropriate cases. I have serious doubts about the procedure even where, as here, Chevron agreed to use of a statistically sound bellwether trial process.
The only case cited in the Manual for Complex Litigation concerning a bellwether *1023strategy was tried by Judge Parker when he sat on the district court. Cimino v. Raymark, 751 F.Supp. 649, 653, 664—65 (E.D.Tex. 1990), cited in Manual for Complex Litigation § 33.27-28 (3d Ed.1995). One other recent case, affirmed in a split verdict of the Ninth Circuit, also used a bellwether technique. Hilao v. Estate of Marcos, 103 F.3d 767 (9th Cir.1996). These are not necessarily the only examples of bellwether trials, but they appear to be most unusual.
The use of statistical sampling as a means to identify and resolve common issues in tort litigation has, however, been severely criticized. See In re: Fibreboard Corp., supra; Hilao, supra at 787-88 (Rymer, Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part). Among other things, the technique may deprive nonparties of their Seventh Amendment jury trial right. In Matter of RhonePoulenc Rarer Inc., Judge Posner observed that bifurcating liability and causation questions may require the same issue to be reexamined by different juries. That is, even if the bellwether jury found liability on the part of Chevron, later juries could be called upon to reassess that decision when faced with questions of comparative causation or comparative negligence. That all the plaintiffs are here represented by a single set of attorneys does not, in my view, alleviate Seventh Amendment concerns; to the contrary, it compounds them with potential ethical problems. Additionally, as Judge Higginbotham cautioned in In re Fibreboard Corp., there is a fine line between deriving results from trials based on statistical sampling and pure legislation. Judges must be sensitive to stay within our proper bounds of adjudicating individual disputes. We are not authorized by the Constitution or statutes to legislate solutions to cases in pursuit of efficiency and expeditiousness. Essential to due process for litigants, including both the plaintiffs and Chevron in this non-class action context, is their right to the opportunity for an individual assessment of liability and damages in each ease. Nowhere did the district court explain how it was authorized to make the results of this bellwether trial unitary for any purposes concerning the 2,970 other plaintiffs’ cases pending before him. In sum, I simply do not share Judge Parker’s confidence that bellwether trials can be used to resolve mass tort controversies.
On the narrow basis that the court’s adoption of non-bellwether methods for conducting a bellwether trial is uniquely harmful and unauthorized, I concur with the majority’s award of mandamus relief.