Given common questions of fact and law raised in lawsuits filed throughout the federal court system, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) established a Bard PowerPort lawsuit MDL in August 2023, which centralized the litigation before U.S. District Judge David G. Campbell in the District of Arizona for coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings.
As part of the management of the litigation, Judge Campbell is scheduled to meet with lawyers today for a Bard PowerPort lawsuit status conference, to review the growth of the litigation and progress with common issue discovery, as well as case-specific discovery in a small group of bellwether claims.
According to a joint memorandum (PDF) submitted by the parties on December 2, there are currently at least 879 cases pending in the MDL, with another 64 cases pending in New Jersey state court and 7 cases pending in the Superior Court of Maricopa County, Arizona.
This represents a sharp increase from the 467 Bard PowerPort lawsuits the parties reported were pending in August 2024, and the pace of new filings does not appear to be slowing.
Bard PowerPort Lawsuit Bellwether Selections Will Be Narrowed
Early in the centralized pretrial proceedings, Judge Campbell directed the parties to select 24 Bard PowerPort bellwether cases, which each involve allegations representative of other claims in the litigation. Since July 2024, the parties have been engaged in written discovery in these cases, including the exchange of comprehensive fact sheets containing details about each lawsuit.
On December 10, the parties will each exchange a list of five bellwether cases that they designate for automatic inclusion in a Discovery Group, according to the joint status report submitted yesterday. Lawyers will then meet and confer to jointly identify another five cases, and submit a memorandum by December 18, 2024, confirming the total of 15 cases selected to continue further case-specific discovery.
According to a Case Management Order #10 (PDF) issued by Judge Campbell in November 2023, those 15 Discovery Group cases will later be narrowed down further to a final group of six claims in March 2025, which will be eligible to go before federal juries, to help gauge the average Bard PowerPort lawsuit payouts that may be awarded.
While the outcomes of these early bellwether trials will not have any binding impact on other claims pending in the MDL or state courts, they are expected to have a major impact on future Bard PowerPort lawsuit settlement negotiations, which will be necessary to avoid hundreds of individual claims being set for trial in the coming years.