Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation
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The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation is a special body within the United States federal court system, established by Congress in 1968, that has the power to transfer similar pending lawsuits brought in multiple districts to a single judge in a single jurisdiction.
The Chief Justice of the United States appoints the members of the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, which is composed of seven district or appeals court judges, each of whom must be from a different judicial circuit. The concurrence of four members is required for any Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation action.
The Panel’s office is located in Washington, D.C., and it convenes in various locations around the country to facilitate the participation of parties and witnesses and to accommodate its members, who continue to serve as judges for the courts to which they were originally appointed.
As of September 30, 2001, the Panel had transferred more than 150,000 lawsuits in more than 800 multidistrict litigations. The subject of these litigations included airplane crashes, products liability, patent infringements, and securities fraud.
[edit] Current Composition of the Panel
| Name | Court |
|---|---|
| William Terrell Hodges (Chairman) | Middle District of Florida |
| D. Lowell Jensen | Northern District of California |
| Kathryn H. Vratil | District of Kansas |
| J. Frederick Motz | District of Maryland |
| David R. Hansen | Eighth Circuit |
| Robert L. Miller, Jr. | Northern District of Indiana |
| Anthony J. Scirica | Third Circuit |
