The Yamaha Rhino UTV litigation continues to progress in federal and state courts. Currently, there are nearly 300 individual lawsuits pending in the federal MDL court in Kentucky as well as approximately 130 cases filed in consolidated state court proceedings in Georgia and 174 cases in California.

All of the cases pending in the federal court system were transferred to Judge Jennifer B. Coffman in February 2009, after the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation determined that central coordination of the cases would be in the best interest of the court system as well as the parties.

This multi-district litigation (or MDL) process is a common method for dealing with a large number of individual lawsuits pertaining to the same defective product or disaster. Prior to establishment of this MDL (No. 2016), there were 55 individual lawsuits pending before 33 different federal court judges around the country. This diversity of geography and judicial resources proved to be causing significant administrative inefficiencies and permitted the manufacturers multiple opportunities to delay cases and avoid disclosure of critical evidence.

Judge Coffman in Kentucky continues to preside over the federal MDL cases. The first trial in federal court was initially scheduled for October of 2010, but that date has now been postponed to January of 2011. The other 8 federal trials should occur in 2011, after completion of the first trial.

The first trial is part of the MDL “bellwether trial process,” which will allow the judge and the parties to refine a number of generic issues relating to the sufficiency of expert testimony, admissibility of evidence, and resolution of a number of generic legal issues, which will have an impact on all the pending cases. The first cases scheduled for trial were selected from those filed long before 2009. Discovery efforts, including production of documents and the completion of depositions of fact and expert witnesses, continue as well.

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Utility vehicles are used in many rural and suburban areas for transportation and recreation, with families trusting manufacturers to keep their loved ones safe while riding on these devices. However, there are currently several hundred individual lawsuits pending against manufacturer Yamaha for their Rhino ATV product that is the “poster child” for instability and rollovers under normal usage; resulting in serious crush injuries.

These several hundred cases filed against Yamaha, relating to injuries suffered as a result of the Rhino’s instability. These cases are currently pending in federal court in Kentucky, as well as in state courts in California and Georgia. Cases filed in federal court have now been transferred to a multidistrict litigation (MDL) system which is designed to deal with large numbers of individual lawsuits regarding a specific defective product or disaster.

Currently, work is being done to prepare a number of cases for trials later this year.  These cases are known as “bellwether cases” and the trials will be conducted by the MDL judge in Kentucky as a way of resolving issues common to all cases currently filed, as well as streamlining the work that will need to be done by other federal judges to whom individual lawsuits will be referred for trial settings once the MDL’s work is complete. Judge Jennifer B. Coffman is in charge of the MDL and has scheduled a number of trials this year and next, so it is doubtful that the other cases pending in the MDL will be ripe for remands to local federal courts for quite some time.

Yamaha and its retailers are currently defending themselves in these cases with the argument that the vehicles have been misused and that drivers and passengers have ignored warnings and failed to exercise common sense while driving. We have previously written about the Rhino and why the claims of the manufacturer that consumers “misused” the vehicle are simply “smoke and mirrors” and a typical way for product manufacturers to try and delay resolving righteous claims.

A verdict was recently rendered by a jury in Gwinnett County, Georgia in the amount of $317,000 in favor of a plaintiff who suffered a serious leg injury after his Yamaha Rhino flipped over.  A previous case in another state court was lost by the injured plaintiff.  Additional cases are scheduled to be tried later this year in various state courts where the parties were able to obtain jurisdiction over the manufacturer.

Multidistrict litigation proceedings against Matrixx Initiatives, Inc., the manufacturer of the over-the-counter cold product Zicam, are heating up.

This is a process known as multi-district litigation (or an MDL) and is often utilized in mass torts cases where a number of claimants have been injured in a similar fashion by a drug, medical device, other product, airline crash, etc. MDL cases often include class action claims, but are generally aimed at managing a large number of individual lawsuits filed by Plaintiffs who have all suffered harm due to the same general conduct of the Defendants.

Currently, there are more than 300 MDL cases pending in federal court jurisdictions all over the country involving a number of different products, corporate fraud and other wrongdoing, and accidents, such as:

• Chantix (MDL No. 2092 in Birmingham);
• Prempro (MDL No. 1507 in Little Rock);
• Air Crash in Madrid on August 20, 2008 (MDL No. 2135 pending in California);
• Chinese-Manufactured Drywall Products (MDL No. 2047 in New Orleans);
• Gadolinium-Based Contrast Agents (MDL No. 1909 in Cleveland);
• Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2002 (MDL No. 1570 in New York City);
• Yasmin and Yaz (MDL No. 2100 in East St. Louis);
• General Motors Vehicle Plan (MDL No. 1392 in Illinois).

In November of 2009, the Judicial Panel for Multi-District Litigation assigned all of the Zicam cases to Judge Frederick Martone in Phoenix, who will oversee pre-trial proceedings, discovery and the bellwether trial process for all of the lawsuits pending in the federal court system.

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The United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation issued its order on October 1, 2009, establishing MDL No. 2100 for individual lawsuits filed by women who have been injured or died as a result of their ingestion of Yasmin and Yaz oral contraceptive products.  All of the cases pending in federal courts will be transferred to Judge David R. Herndon in the Southern District of Illinois.  The initial transfer order includes 32 cases that have been filed by patients in California, Georgia, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, and Wisconsin.

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