The coming months will involve a massive shift in focus. Waves of individual cases—500 at a time—are proceeding with plaintiff-specific discovery and complete work up for trial. This Court will adjudicate all case-specific Daubert and summary judgment motions in each Wave, and thereafter, the cases that remain will be remanded to their transferor courts for trial. An enormous amount of time and resources will be required to accomplish this endeavor, not just from this Court but from the entire federal judiciary. As of June 10, 2022, there were 233,883 plaintiffs in the MDL, down from 282,902 at its height in September 2021. That averages to approximately 2,500 cases being remanded for trial to each of the 94 districts nationwide, though in all likelihood, some districts will receive many fewer cases and other districts many more, depending on the appropriate venue for individual plaintiffs. Still, likely no district will be spared the burden. In any event, the amount of judicial resources required to handle this number of cases is staggering.
Against this backdrop, and before federal district court dockets around the country are flooded with CAEv2 cases, the Court concludes it is appropriate to require the parties to engage in serious and good-faith efforts to resolve as many cases as possible.
Order [ECF 3188].