MDL Case Management and Bellwether Checklist: A Practical Checklist

Summary. This checklist runs a multidistrict litigation from the JPML petition through settlement administration and remand, with separate tracks for leadership counsel, individual inventory counsel, and defense counsel. It covers the transfer stage, the case management orders that constitute the real procedural law of the proceeding, the intake vetting that determines whether an inventory survives, fact sheet and registry compliance, the general causation and bellwether stages, and the settlement participation process including the individual informed consent obligations.

What this checklist is for. Managing cases inside an MDL. For the framework, see Multidistrict Litigation and Mass Torts. For the operational detail, see Practicing in an MDL.

Phase 1 — Transfer

Identify all related actions and their districts.
Decide whether to support or oppose centralization, and why — a defendant with scattered filings usually wants it; a defendant facing a few strong cases usually does not.
Prepare the 28 U.S.C. § 1407 motion or opposition within the Panel's page limits.
Argue the district and the judge specifically — concentration of cases, location of the defendant and evidence, judicial experience, docket conditions.
Calendar the deadline to oppose a conditional transfer order for any tag-along case; it is short.
Preserve any pending remand motion — it generally travels to the transferee judge.
Confirm whether counsel of record are automatically admitted in the transferee district.
Get on the electronic service list immediately.

Phase 2 — Leadership and structure

Decide whether to apply for leadership, a committee seat, or neither.
Application content: comparable MDL roles with judges named; inventory size and origin; lawyers, staff, and capital committed; willingness to be bound by common benefit protocols; a specific proposed contribution.
Assess honestly whether the firm can fund multi-year common expenses without reimbursement.
Read the common benefit order: assessment percentage, scope (including state-court cases), qualifying work categories, submission format and deadlines, and audit process.
Set up contemporaneous time recording in the required format and task codes if holding a role.
Never submit individual-client work as common benefit.

Phase 3 — Read every case management order

Pull all CMOs from the court's MDL page and read them in order.
Direct filing order — is direct filing permitted, and what transferor district must be designated? This drives choice of law and remand venue.
Master and short-form complaint requirements.
Plaintiff fact sheet order — form, deadline, authorizations, deficiency and cure process.
Defendant fact sheet order, where applicable.
Census or registry order — filed and unfiled claims, required proof, deadline.
Records collection protocol — which records, from whom, in what format.
Protective order — confidentiality tiers and what may be shared with clients.
ESI protocol and any Rule 502(d) order.
Tolling agreement, if any, and its termination provisions.
Show-cause procedures for deficient cases.
Build a deadline matrix applying every CMO date to every case in the inventory.

Phase 4 — Intake vetting (do this before filing)

Four screens. Each is far cheaper before signing than after.

Product identification documented — pharmacy record, implant card, operative report, purchase record, insurance claim history. "The client says so" is not product identification.
Qualifying injury established by a medical record and within the litigation's covered categories.
Timing — plausible latency, and within the transferor state's limitations period, which governs regardless of where the case is filed.
Alternative causes identified and assessed — smoking, prior surgery, family history, a competing product.
Close failing cases in writing, advising the client of the limitations consequences and to consult other counsel promptly.

Phase 5 — The compliance engine

Authorizations signed at intake in the CMO's required form.
Records requests sent within seventy-two hours; follow-ups at thirty and sixty days; subpoenas where authorizations fail.
A records log per case: provider, date requested, date received, completeness.
A case management database with, per case: filing date, MDL number, transferor designation, product ID status and source, injury category, fact sheet due/served, deficiency notices and cure dates, registry status, lien types, settlement status.
Fact sheets served on time, complete, with no blank fields.
Every deficiency notice cured within its window.
Registry submissions completed for filed and unfiled claims.
Quarterly written client updates, with a record that each was sent.

Phase 6 — General causation

Assemble the literature — both sides litigate from the same body of studies for years.
Plaintiffs: epidemiology with adequate power and controlled confounders; dose-response; mechanism and biological plausibility; animal and in vitro data with a stated basis for extrapolation; Bradford Hill applied explicitly; experts whose methodology predates the litigation.
Defense: methodology developed for litigation; selective reliance on the literature; unaddressed confounders; unjustified extrapolation; relative risk below the jurisdiction's threshold; and — post-2023 — failure to reliably apply the methodology to the facts under Fed. R. Evid. 702 and Daubert.
Prepare for science day — an informal tutorial, no ruling made, and the court's first real education.
Brief preemption in parallel where a regulatory approval regime applies.
Plan for a split ruling by injury category; identify which inventory cases fall where.

Phase 7 — Bellwethers

Advocate for the selection method that suits the position: random (representative), party picks (outliers), stratified (comparative data), or court selection.
Define the discovery pool size and the case-specific discovery scope.
Complete case-specific discovery: plaintiff and family depositions, treating physician depositions, specific causation experts.
File and oppose case-specific Rule 702 and summary judgment motions.
Decide deliberately on a Lexecon waiver — trial in the MDL court versus remand for trial. See Lexecon Inc. v. Milberg Weiss, 523 U.S. 26 (1998).
Prepare the client for the reality that their individual verdict prices the whole litigation.
Track verdicts, remittiturs, and appeals as valuation data.

Phase 8 — Settlement

Read the structure, not just the number: matrix and point values; eligibility criteria and required proof; participation threshold and the defendant's walk-away right; the appeal mechanism from a claims administrator; the lien resolution program; common benefit holdback; payment timing; and the release scope, including unfiled and unknown claims.
Model the net to a real client: matrix award, less assessment, less the (possibly court-capped) fee, less costs, less liens.
Confirm the qualified settlement fund structure and its tax treatment.
Aggregate settlement rule compliance — Model Rule 1.8(g):
- Disclose to each client the total settlement, the matrix, their allocation, and how others are treated.
- Obtain individual informed consent in a writing signed by the client.
- Do not agree in advance to recommend the settlement to all clients.
- Do not accept provisions requiring withdrawal from non-participating clients.
- Document the disclosure and consent for every case.
Plan capacity for the consent surge — several hundred individual conversations in a compressed period.
Plan for clients who decline: their cases continue and you remain their counsel.

Phase 9 — Liens and distribution

Identify lien types at intake, not at settlement: Medicare, Medicaid, ERISA, TRICARE, VA, workers' compensation, hospital liens, letters of protection.
Open the Medicare conditional payment file early — 42 U.S.C. § 1395y(b) — and assess whether a set-aside is required.
Apply Ahlborn, Wos, and Gallardo to Medicaid recovery, and plan the allocation accordingly.
Apply McCutchen and Montanile to ERISA plan reimbursement.
Screen for means-tested benefits; consider a special needs trust.
Provide each client a written closing statement: gross award, assessment, fee, itemized costs, each lien with the negotiated reduction shown, and net.

Phase 10 — Remand

Confirm case-specific discovery is complete.
Confirm specific causation experts are disclosed and defensible under the transferor circuit's law, which may differ.
Verify the transferor district designation from the direct filing order is correct.
Preserve the common discovery record and the rulings that travel with the case.
Understand that a credible remand posture is what gives an individual plaintiff leverage against the matrix.