failed to state a claim that defendant violated Colorado ’ s consumer protection statute. The defendant also moved to strike the plaintiff ’ s class allegations. Id. at *7. The defendant relied on Colorado case law precedent to argue that the plaintiff was required to plead that he did not misuse the product. The court disagreed. It noted that the case law the defendant cited addressed an “innocent seller” provision of Colorado ’ s products liability statute, which was distinguishable. Id. at *8. With respect to attack on the class allegations, the defendant advanced an argument that the purchaser class was not ascertainable due to being overbroad. The purchaser class the plaintiff advanced encompassed all persons who purchased the defendant ’ s rock climbing equipment. Reasoning that the class was overbroad, the court recognized the putative class did not distinguish between those who purchased a defective product and those that did not. Additionally, the defendants attacked the injury class on the grounds the claims were fundamentally personal injury claims for which the class action procedural mechanism would not be the superior method to address. Thus, the crux of the defendant ’ s argument against the injury class was that it would make little sense to adjudicate individual personal injury claims on a class-wide basis. The court agreed. It reasoned that striking class allegations at the pleading stage is an extreme remedy, but nonetheless it did so because the defendants met their high burden showing that the amended complaint failed to meet the superiority requirement of Rule 23(b)(3). V. Mass Torts And Multidistrict Litigation The plaintiffs’ bar typically pursues mass tort claims where the class action procedural device is not the most effective way to manage the litigation. Usually, this is because the plaintiff is claiming an injury which is often a highly individualized inquiry that is either not common across the class, is not typical across the class, or both. Claims for personal injuries often fail to satisfy the predominance requirement as well. Even though the class action procedural device is rarely used in this space, mass torts and multidistrict litigation encompass many of these types of claims. Generally, mass torts are akin to class actions insofar as that the litigation is vast and can involve hundreds of thousands of plaintiffs, but in a multidistrict litigation or mass tort each plaintiff ’ s case stands on its own, and the court generally coordinates all the actions for purposes of pretrial discovery, depositions, experts, pre-trial motions. However, each plaintiff in a mass tort bears the burden of proving his or her own claims as opposed to each class member being represented by a named plaintiff. The 2023 the Judicial Panel on Multi-District Litigation report indicates a total of 172 MDLs across the country. Thirty-seven of those involve more than 1,000 actions, and even more staggering, those 37 MDLs actually encompass 491,181 total pending actions. MDLs still make up roughly half of all federal dockets in terms of pending cases. Litigation of mass torts grows each year. One example of a prominent 2023 mass tort proceeding is the C-8 MDL. First formed in 2013, the C-8 MDL consists of over 3,500 currently pending cases that involve claims of wrongful death or personal injury resulting from each individual ’ s alleged ingestion of drinking water that is allegedly contaminated with substances known as PFAS. The C-8 MDL plaintiffs allege that they suffered from at least one of six diseases that have a probable link to PFAS exposure. The largest MDL is still the 3M Combat Earplug Litigation. Recently, this litigation reached a $6 billion settlement in August 2023, which is to be administered by the firm Archer Systems LLC. Scammers started to get wind of the these numbers, and fraudulent actions were impersonating Archer Systems’ employees and engaged in unsolicited cold calls to claimants attempting to extract personal identifying information including social security numbers. As a result, the Court informed the FBI, and even issued an Order directing claimants to reach out to their counsel if they were contact by someone stating they worked for Archer Systems. The C-8 MDL also involves 3M. In additional the earplug litigation, 3M also reached a settlement in the PFAS litigation where it agreed to pay up to $10.3 billion over 13 years to help public water suppliers that
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Duane Morris Product Liability And Mass Torts Class Action Review – 2024
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