Multi-District Litigation (MDL)

Multi-district litigation is a federal procedural mechanism under 28 U.S.C. § 1407 that consolidates civil actions sharing common questions of fact before a single transferee judge for coordinated pretrial proceedings. MDL does not merge the underlying cases — each plaintiff's claim remains legally distinct — but it centralizes discovery, expert testimony, and dispositive motion practice to eliminate duplicative effort across federal courts. For litigation funders, MDL consolidation is a threshold structural event: it determines the forum, the judge, and the pace of the entire docket, each of which materially affects deployment timelines and recovery probabilities. Funders evaluating MDL investments must assess the transferee court's historical resolution speed and the MDL Panel's assignment patterns, since forum selection at this stage is largely non-negotiable.

Because MDL consolidation determines the forum and the judge for the entire docket, and that assignment is effectively non-negotiable once made, funders treat the transferee court's identity as a threshold underwriting fact rather than a variable they can influence. A docket assigned to a judge with a track record of aggressive bellwether scheduling and plaintiff-favorable evidentiary rulings is priced very differently than an identical fact pattern sitting before a slower, more defense-receptive court.