According to a Product Liability Litigation Report released on Sept. 14 by Lex Machina, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois saw the highest number of product liability cases filed from 2018 to 2022 with District Judge Nancy Rosenstengel presiding over the most claims.
The report examined trends in product liability litigation in federal district courts and appellate courts, surveying trends in case filings, venues, judges, law firms, parties, timing metrics, case resolutions, findings and damages. The report excludes cases associated with multidistrict litigation (MDL).
Ron Porter, Lex Machina’s product liability legal data expert and editor of the report, said the report reveals two key trends.
“One, product liability cases are generally increasing over recent years. Two, spikes and dips in cases can generally be correlated with specific large-scale litigation events, which are discussed in more detail in the report. By analyzing the data, it’s possible to gain crucial data-driven insights on the evolving landscape of product liability litigation.”
Lex Machina reports that there have been 757,514 product liability cases filed in federal district courts since 2013 with the most filed in 2022. That year, 5,826 cases were filed - an increase of 89% from the lowest number of cases in 2015. Additionally, 4,052 product liability cases have been appealed to federal circuit courts from 2013 to 2022.
The report notes that there was an overall increasing trend in product liability cases filed in federal district courts since 2017, with a dip in 2021 likely due to the global COVID-19 pandemic “and its effects on product liability litigation (both from the side of court process interruptions as well as from the side of plaintiffs’ willingness to file cases).”
Of those cases during the period of 2018-2022, the Southern District of Illinois saw 3,197 cases filed, or 12.4% of the total cases filed in five years.
“A large proportion of these cases filed in this district involved claims related to the use of the drug Depakote during pregnancy, and claims related to exposure to agricultural herbicide Paraquat,” the report states.
However, Lex Machina notes that many of the Paraquat cases may be categorized as MDL associated cases as additional data is received and examined.
Rosenstengel was the most active district judge, with 2,659 cases filed before her from 2018 to 2022. Most of the cases involved claims that exposure to the agricultural herbicide Paraquat caused plaintiffs to develop Parkinson’s disease. She also presides over a “significant proportion” of claims related to the drug Depakote.
“Interestingly, even with a total number of cases that was over three times as many as the second most active judge, Judge Rosenstengel still only presided over less than one percent of the total number of cases,” the report states.
The second most active judge was also from the Southern District of Illinois. Judge David Herndon, who retired in 2019, presided over 838 cases filed in 2018. All of his cases involved medical device/pharmaceutical claims related to Depakote.
Considering Paraquat claims are associated with a significant number of product liability cases, it comes as no surprise that Syngenta was the most active defendant in product liability cases from 2018 to 2022.
Syngenta AG defended against 2,029 cases in three districts, Syngenta Crop Protection LLC defended against 2,021 cases in five districts, and Chevron Corporation defended against 1,799 cases in 15 districts during the five-year period. Chevron was included as a defendant in many cases filed against Syngenta.
Medical device/pharmaceutical cases are the most common types of product liability claims, followed by vehicle cases. Johnson & Johnson was the most active defendant in medical device/pharmaceutical claims related to talcum powder, and Ford Motor Company was the most active defendant in vehicle-related cases.
Over the last 10 years, medical device/pharmaceutical cases remained steady with elevated filings from 2018 to 2020.
“The elevated numbers of cases in 2018, 2019, and 2020 were driven by groups of cases filed in single courts against manufacturers of particular products. In 2018, it was the cases filed against Abbott Labs in the Southern District of Illinois for the drug Depakote,” the report states.
As for the most active law firms, the report states that Meyers & Flowers of Chicago represented plaintiffs in the highest number of product liability cases with 2,072 cases in 17 districts. Walkup Melodia Kelly & Schoenberger of San Francisco was the second most active firm with 2,027 cases in four districts. It was followed by Nachawati Law Group of Dallas with 1,231 cases in 74 districts.
On the other hand, Kirkland & Ellis of Chicago represented the highest number of defendants in product liability cases with 3,069 cases in 24 districts.
Belleville firm Donovan Rose Nester represented the second highest number of cases overall with 2,028 cases in just the Southern District of Illinois. It was followed by Husch Blackwell in St. Louis with 1,853 cases in 35 districts.
“The four law firms that defended their clients against the highest number of cases were at the top of the list of the most active defendants' firms largely due to the high number of cases they defended against Syngenta in 2022 involving the herbicide Paraquat,” the report states.
The median time it took for all product liability cases examined in the report to be terminated, or resolved, was two years. However, when MDL associated cases were excluded, the median time to termination was nine months.
According to the report, court rulings favored defendants more than plaintiffs, primarily on summary judgment. Trial results were more evenly divided between claimants and defendants.
The vast majority of the cases, or 94%, were resolved with a settlement agreement or on procedural grounds- including cases remanded back to state court.
“Looking at the cases that resolved on substantive grounds, claim defendants won over five times as often as claimants (997 cases to 193), primarily on judgment on the pleadings and summary judgment,” the report states.
Product liability damages were awarded in about 20-50 cases per year nationwide, and the total amount awarded has been below $300,000 for every year except 2016 and 2017 due to compensatory and punitive damages in the DePuy Orthopedics Pinnacle Hip Implant Product Liability Litigation.
The highest amount of damages awarded to plaintiffs from 2018 to 2022 was $214 million in approved class action settlements in 10 cases. Additionally, $201 million were awarded as punitive damages in 17 cases, primarily by verdict.
The highest number of claimant wins was at trial, according to the report.
“While it is perhaps somewhat expected that nationwide case resolutions tend to favor the large corporation defendants, it is interesting that for cases that resolved at trial, the results were much more even (77 cases in favor of claimants compared to 97 cases in favor of claim defendants),” the report states.
“One possible explanation for this result is that for the bulk of the cases resolved in favor of claim defendants, they were mostly adjudicated on pleadings — perhaps the cases that proceeded to trial were cases in which the plaintiffs presented stronger claims. In addition, it is possible that jurors may have been more sympathetic to an injured plaintiff’s case than a judge deciding a case on summary judgment,” it continues.