On April 23, 2025, Rule 16.1 was transmitted to Congress by the U.S. Supreme Court and will take effect on December 1, 2025, unless Congress takes action to stop it, which is not anticipated. This is the first MDL-focused Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (FRCP), and it seeks to address the need for transparent, rules-based practices and procedures applicable to MDLs. It responds to growing concerns that existing FRCP provisions that should apply to all federal civil cases, are now commonly bypassed in MDLs—where the vast majority of civil cases reside. 

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Multidistrict litigation (MDL) is a special procedure where cases that share some common issues of fact are consolidated before one federal district court judge for the purpose of coordinating or consolidating discovery and other pre-trial proceedings. 

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As of the end of fiscal year 2024, MDL cases constituted 67.8 percent of the pending federal civil caseload*, continuing a multi-year trend of cases in MDLs dominating the federal civil docket. An MDL proceeding today can have hundreds or even tens of thousands of individual claims, making certain aspects of the FRCP difficult or even impossible to apply. Although the FRCP are supposed to “govern the procedure in all civil actions and proceedings,” many judges handling MDL cases attempt to make up for the FRCP’s deficiencies by improvising with ad hoc practices, many of which lack the clarity, uniformity, and predictability that the FRCP are supposed to provide. New Rule 16.1 should help.

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In 1937, the United States Supreme Court adopted the FRCP, which govern all civil actions and proceedings in the United States district courts. The purpose and intention of the Rules is “to secure the just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action and proceeding.”

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LCJ advocated for an MDL-specific rule that would prevent meritless claims from being asserted in the first place, resulting in more transparency and balance. 
 

*As calculated using the Duke methodology.