The Tulane Law Review is hosting the first national conference devoted to MDL.  It will be February 15-16, 2008, at Tulane Law School, New Orleans, Louisiana.  You can go down a day early and celebrate Valentine’s Day on Bourbon Street.

There have been big developments in the consolidation of similar multidistrict cases since the federal Panel on MDL was created in 1968.  The conference will address whether MDL is replacing the class action as the favored procedure for resolving multiple multistate cases, providing a solution to overlapping and competing cases, a device for global settlement of both federal and state cases (as in the Vioxx settlement), and a model for consolidating very different cases all arising out of disasters (as in the Katrina litigation).

-Two panel members (Chair Judge John Heyburn and Judge Kathryn Vratil) will talk about federal developments. 

-The judges in charge of MDL’s in New Jersey (Judge Carol Higbee) and Texas (Judge Mark Davidson) will talk about the revolutionary work of new state MDL panels. 

-Four other federal judges will talk about current issues in transferring and administering MDL cases. 

-The judge and principal lawyers in the Vioxx MDL Litigation will recount the use of bellwether trials and settlement devices and the ethics of the recent Vioxx global settlement. 

-Top MDL experts (lawyers, academics, and case administrators) will examine attorney strategies in the emerging form of MDL litigation and discuss what we can expect in the future.

For conference schedule click here or go to http://www.law.tulane.edu/lawreview/