Senior U.S. District Judge Terrell Hodges spoke to the Federal Bar Association Tuesday at the Omni about the inner workings of the Multi-District Litigation Panel.
Created in 1968, the panel’s function is to prevent duplication of efforts by the courts when numerous cases of similar nature are filed. Consisting of 25 members operating out of Washington, D.C., the panel’s staff can pull civil actions and transfer them to a different district for coordinated proceedings in SEC investigations, product liability and anti-trust cases, overlapping class actions and other common disaster instances. Roughly 7,000 of these suits are being actively litigated.