What is a Mass Tort?

A mass tort is a civil lawsuit that usually involves multiple injured parties and one, or very few, defendants. Unlike a class-action lawsuit, the plaintiffs in a mass tort are treated individually regarding their lawsuit and compensation, rather than being grouped into a “class”. Mass torts generally involve manufacturers of pharmaceuticals or products that are found to be dangerous and cause adverse side effects and injury in individuals who are exposed to or have used the product. For example, when a pharmaceutical company makes a drug but fails to warn you of the harm it may cause, such as doubling the risk of heart attack, a Mass Tort claim may be instituted. 

Like a class action, a mass tort can represent geographically diverse plaintiffs and help reduce the cost of litigation for the plaintiffs. Seeing that each mass tort claim is an individual claim, the plaintiffs usually can’t put together their resources and litigate all of their claims as one group. However, Multidistrict-Litigation allows plaintiffs firms, like The Cochran Firm, to join with other nationally recognized firms and put together their resources to establish the defendant's fault. Because this allows, if the court approves, law firms to create different committees to work on different portions of the case, it significantly reduces the cost and labor that any one firm would spend litigating individual cases.

The most commonly known mass torts lawsuits include mesothelioma due to exposure to asbestos, dangerous medical products like inferior vena cava (IVC) filters, dangerous drugs like Vioxx, or dangerous products like Roundup weed killer. The Cochran Firm has successfully handled mass tort cases for clients who were negatively affected by a drug such as:

  • Asbestos
  • Baycol
  • Bard IVC Filters
  • Cook IVC Filters
  • The Depuy ASR hip replacement system
  • Guidance Defibrillators
  • Just For Men (hair dye) 
  • Opioids
  • Rebclin
  • Tobacco
  • Transvaginal Mesh
  • Valsartan high blood pressure medicine
  • Vioxx
  • Xarelto
  • 3M Military Earplugs

Types of Mass Torts

There are a large number of mass torts types, but they can generally be categorized as the following:

For example, a manufacturer develops and sells a cosmetic product that contains a toxic ingredient that causes cancer, which leads to the cause of hundreds of cases of cancer. Each individual plaintiff will file their own lawsuit against the manufacturer and is required to commonly prove at least three elements of the case at trial.

  1. The manufacturer was negligent
  2. The negligence was a cause of injury or harm to the victim
  3. The extent of the injury and physical pain and suffering the victim has undergone

Litigating mass tort claims requires an extensive amount of knowledge about complex litigation. To ensure that your lawyers have the amount of knowledge and understanding necessary to handle a mass tort claim, you should choose a firm with the right experience. The Cochran Firm has the knowledge and experience in handling mass torts claim you deserve. With over 30 years of experience in representing mass tort clients from almost every state in the country, ranging from dangerous and defective drugs, defective medical devices, and defective products, we are the firm for you. 
Contact us today for your free, no-obligation consultation.