Most of the Heparin cases have been either filed in or removed to federal court. The federal court system has jurisdiction over the cases because of diversity of citizenship between the Plaintiffs and Defendants.

A motion has been filed to consolidate all of the federal cases into a single case for purposes of discovery and related proceedings. This motion will be heard on May 29, 2008 before a special panel of federal judges who will sit in Asheville, North Carolina.

The Judicial Panel on Multi-District Litigation ("MDL") has two issues to decide. First, they must decide if the cases should all be consolidated. It is highly probably that they will agree that the cases should be consolidated. In fact no one has opposed the motion to consolidate so far.

The second issue for the Panel to decide is to which District the cases should be sent. So far there have been a number of options presented to the panel. Baxter and SPL have argued that the cases should be decided in the home districts of Baxter, namely, New Jersey or Illinois. We have argued that the cases should be sent to the Northern District of Ohio. At the hearing I will present the argument for Ohio while other attorneys will request the panel to send the cases to Pennsylvania, Florida or Puerto Rico.

I expect that the panel will act quickly on this matter. I do believe there is a fair chance that the cases will be sent to our district.

Once the cases are assigned to a particular judge the parties will begin the discovery process. This involves obtaining copies of all relevant documents and taking the depositions of the Baxter and SPL employees and officers, as well as experts in the relevant fields of specialty.

Other MDL's have resulted in settlements. For example, we have recently worked on the Vioxx and Sulzer Hip MDLs which resulted in negotiation of a universal settlement. At this stage, though, the primary goal is to lock in the liability of SPL and Baxter for this tragedy. Once the evidence has established their irrevocable responsibility we can start to focus on the other issues.

Labels: Baxter, Heparin, heparin attorney, Heparin Class Action, heparin lawsuit, heparin lawyer, MDL, MDL; Multi-District Litigation, OSCS, over sulfated chondroitin sulfate