Mass-Tort MDL
Rabiej Litigation Law Center
The Center’s predecessor was the first to examine statistics from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts together with the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation and found that the number of actions pending in MDLs consisted of appoximately a majority of the entire pending civil caseload of the federal courts. Remarkably, more than 95% of the pending cases in MDLs are contained in fewer than 25 mass-tort MDLs. The Center closely monitors mass-tort MDL filings, providing regular updates on case volume and duration for MDLs containing 1,000 or more individual actions.
The Center maintains several data tables designed to monitor current activity and identify emerging trends within mass-tort MDL filings. The 2025 update of the annual direct and tag-along filings in MDLs reveals a dramatic decline from 75,570 in 2024 to 37,735 in 2025. Although MDL filings maintained a steady average of approximately 22% of all federal civil case filings over the last five years, they now account for only 12.4% of the federal civil case filings in 2025.
From 1999 to 2013, pending civil cases moved in tandem with new filings. This ‘lockstep’ trend indicates that the judiciary successfully disposed of cases at a rate sufficient to keep pace with the growing workload. The trend broke in 2014. From that point on, MDLs maintained a filing share of over 12%, and the time needed to close these cases continued to rise.
The data is contained in the Center’s “Updated 2025 annual number of individual actions filed in MDLs; proportion of all civil case filings” statistical table (No. 4).
The reasons behind this significant decline are currently under review as the Center explores several likely contributing factors.
- List of Common-Benefit Assessments in Mass-Tort MDLs (Download)
- Tables on Open Active Actions in Mass-Tort MDLs Five or More Years Old (July 1, 2025) (link)
- Excel Spreadsheet (July 1, 2025) — Number of Pending and Historical Actions in 84 Separate Product Liability MDLs, which Consist of or Had Consisted of 1,000 or More Actions, Antitrust MDLs, and Security-Data Breach MDLs Since 2012; Rabiej Litigation Law Center (link)
- Updated 2025 annual number of individual actions filed in MDLs; proportion of all civil case filings and pending caseload (link)
- Duration Tables (July 4, 2022) (link) – Three statistical tables showing percentages of pending cases remaining in MDLs
- More than One Million Discovery Documents Produced in Mass-Tort MDLs (September 14, 2025) (link)
- Chart Comparing Three Mass-Tort Resolution Models (September 14, 2025) (link)
- Checklist of Claims Administrator’s Potential Functions (link)