The goal for the other side in MDL litigation is to file as many complaints as possible and after that do as little work as possible – while waiting around for the almost inevitable settlement, be it large or small. Thus, MDL plaintiffs want only one-way discovery. Their side gets to discover the living daylights out of our clients, and drive up our expenses to the maximum extent possible. But our side doesn’t get anything more than pieces of paper called “questionnaires” or “fact sheets.”
And even there, plaintiffs cheat. Sometimes it’s just the desire to do as little work as possible; sometimes it’s deliberate, to preserve pathetically weak cases so everyone can feed at the settlement trough. Either way, the result is the same. Occasionally, however, there’s a judge who goes behind the Potemkin village of the MDL “fact sheet.” The late Judge Bechtle nailed the plaintiffs for phony questionnaires in Bone Screw...
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