{"id":5108,"date":"2026-05-11T22:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T22:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/?p=5108"},"modified":"2026-05-11T22:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T22:36:12","slug":"mdl-strikes-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/2026\/05\/11\/mdl-strikes-back\/","title":{"rendered":"MDL Strikes Back"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>One of the crucial insights of the judges responsible for the Multidistrict Litigation Act was that no one could opt out. Indeed, the whole idea of MDL is that everyone is stuck there, required to participate in pretrial proceedings until the litigation is resolved or the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) decides it\u2019s time for remand.1 MDL has, one might say, an imperial quality. But what if there\u2019s an escape hatch to exit an MDL that\u2019s not going your way? Well, some defendants in high-profile mass-tort MDLs seem to think they have found one: bankruptcy court. Even if the liability threatened in the MDL would not render the defendant corporation insolvent, some creative lawyers believe they have devised an escape pod to get their cases out of MDL and into the supposedly friendlier confines of bankruptcy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To read this Essay, please click here: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/05\/Bradt-et-al.-essay-final.pdf\">MDL Strikes Back<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the crucial insights of the judges responsible for the Multidistrict Litigation Act was that no one could opt out. Indeed, the whole idea of MDL is that everyone is stuck there, required to participate in pretrial proceedings until the litigation is resolved or the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) decides it\u2019s time&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,694,23,25,26,28,693,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-63","category-clr-print-volume-110","category-current-clr-print-vol","category-current-print-issue","category-essay","category-issue","category-issue-7-clr-print-volume-109","category-print"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5108"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5126,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5108\/revisions\/5126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}