Duane Morris Class Action Review - 2023 - Report - Page 282
CHAPTER 17
Product Liability & Mass Tort Class Actions
I.
Executive Summary
As a general matter, product liability can be divided into two categories, including claims
that a product causes an injury, and claims that the label or advertising of a product is
inaccurate or misleading.
The first category usually is best suited to mass tort actions, and the second category
often leads to class actions.
Mass tort actions often cannot satisfy the evidentiary requirements of Rule 23, or similar
state procedural laws, because the claim of injury involves individualized issues and
plaintiff-specific circumstances, requiring individual proof of injury. For example, a mass
tort claim may allege that ingestion of medication caused the plaintiffs to develop
various types of cancer. The individual claims of different types of cancer would prevent
class certification.
Product injury cases are highly susceptible to opposition to class certification because
of the individualized nature of the injury. Despite this, such lawsuits can lend
themselves to multi-district litigation and other coordinated proceedings that involve the
same product, a similar set of operative facts, and the same defendants.
One example is the nationwide opioid litigation, which was consolidated into MDL No.
2804 in 2017 in the U.S. District Court for the Norther District of Ohio. Other similar
consolidated proceedings involve prescription medication, over-the-counter medication,
and allegedly defective products.
Claims regarding labeling, however, often involve the exact same label across a broad
range of individuals, and the injury claimed is identical. Labeling-related cases often
involve claims of consumer fraud.
For example, a class of consumers may claim they paid more because a product label
stated “organic,” where the class claims the product failed to meet the standards to be
labeled organic. In this example, the class of consumers all claim to rely on the same
organic label and allegedly suffer from the same financial harm.
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Duane Morris Class Action Review – 2023
