What are Mass Torts?

A tort is when somebody is injured by the negligence or willful conduct of another person. A mass tort is when the same injury happens to a large group of people by the same party; so for example, a drug company makes a defective drug millions of people take that drug thousands of those millions of people sustain injuries either the same or substantially similar injuries each and every one of those individuals may have a claim against the manufacturer of the drug, but instead of a class action they have their own lawsuit. And when there’s hundreds or thousands of lawsuits against the same defendant for the same product we call that a mass tort. Now it may not have to be a drug it could be something different for example a spray for weeds to kill weeds or a powder that people put on their body but the point is the same. In this example a large number of people have been been injured by the same product manufactured by a company and they will all have their own individual claims and as a sea of claimants. Those claims go forward together and there is strength in numbers and instead of it just being one David versus Goliath there’s a whole bunch of people together fighting with a common cause and it won’t just be one law firm with all the claimants there will be law firms all across the country with similarly situated plaintiffs and the courts recognize that this is a serious case because there are so many of them. There will still be legal challenges that we have to deal with in terms of litigating those cases but it’s always better to have many other folks with you sharing a common cause going against the company for the same or substantially similar injury.