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Recognizing and Managing Serial Litigation

By John L. Tate
March 01, 2004

Among the challenges facing product manufacturers in the 21st century are recognizing and managing the legal threat posed by multiple, individual product liability lawsuits in multiple jurisdictions.

In the context of this article, “multiple product liability lawsuits” is not synonymous with mass torts, class actions, multidistrict litigation, or the other varieties of aggregated claims permitted by civil joinder and interpleader rules. Most defendant manufacturers have no difficulty identifying aggregated claims as potential bet-the-company threats deserving special attention and resources, and the management of aggregated claims has become a high art in nearly every quarter of the legal community.

Serial litigation, however ' involving smaller numbers of plaintiffs asserting unaggregated claims ' is potentially just as threatening to a product manufacturer as the high profile class action or Multidistrict Litigation (MDL). In part because of serial litigation's lower profile, and in part because mismanagement of multiple claims can balloon into a class action, serial litigation can inflict significant legal and economic damage on a manufacturer unless the nature of the danger is fully understood as soon as possible and managed to an optimal conclusion.

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