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The October Mass Tort Report – From LegalCalls.com By Attorney Jeff Keiser

As we enter the fall season, the mass-tort world feels like a seminar on timing, temperament, and geography—and the judges are handing out grades in real time.

Talc - $966 Million California Verdict

Talc’s headline is substantial: a $966 million California verdict reminding defendants like Johnson & Johnson that juries don’t wait for bankruptcy courts to finish their paperwork. At the same time, the federal MDL in New Jersey stirred back to life, while J&J’s third bankruptcy bid went the way of the first two: down in flames. For plaintiff firms across the country, this is where the right legal marketing partner stops being optional and starts being existential.

Beyond the state court decision, Talc’s federal bellwether clock is finally ticking again. After years of procedural drift, the MDL set a final pretrial conference for November 5, 2025 in the Judkins ovarian-cancer bellwether. Voir dire could begin by late December or spill into early 2026. That’s all happening under the shadow of California’s $966 million thunderclap—a Los Angeles verdict that hit J&J with $16 million in compensatory damages and a staggering $950 million in punitives. Even with an appeal guaranteed, that number has a gravitational pull of its own.

It reinforces California’s role as the plaintiffs’ launchpad and underscores how J&J’s failed bankruptcy gambits have left it fully exposed to jury risk. If Judkins delivers even a modest plaintiff win while those state courts keep posting headline awards, the conversation shifts from whether to settle to how fast. By early 2026, talc won’t just be another MDL on the docket—it’ll be the benchmark for what large-scale liability looks like when the courts, not bankruptcy judges, are running the show.

California - Social Media Addiction

Other big news from California involves the Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act, which was recently upheld by the Ninth Circuit in California. Plaintiff attorneys are looking at this case as a potential template for wider consumer-injury lawsuits against tech platforms. In the Ninth Circuit case, a panel of Judges rejected most of the challenges by a tech trade group whose members include Meta Platforms, Google LLC and Netflix, Inc. on the grounds it had failed to show broad First-Amendment injury.

Attorney General Rob Bonta praised the decision, stating that the law gives families “a choice over the relationship they want with social media” rather than corporations’ profit-driven design. Plaintiff-based commentators have seized on the ruling as evidence that states can regulate algorithmic design and user-interface features in ways once thought immune to tort liability.

Attorneys are now adjusting their intake criteria, asking “Does the platform design matter?” rather than simply “Was the device defective?” The case may not produce direct mass-tort leads tomorrow, but it elevates design-risk theory and gives plaintiffs a new statutory and regulatory backdrop to use when arguing liability. Stay tuned.  

GLP-1 Litigation

If there’s another docket that could dominate 2026, it’s the GLP-1 litigation. The Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro cases now consolidated as MDL 3094 in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania under Judge Karen Marston. Daubert hearings are scheduled for early 2026, and it will decide the shape of the entire litigation.

The causation battlefield is still developing: gastroparesis and gastrointestinal paralysis on one side, newer theories about NAION (optic nerve damage and sudden vision loss) on the other. If Marston allows both to survive general causation, plaintiffs suddenly have a multidimensional tort with huge value potential. If she narrows the scope to the core GI injuries, the case stays big but loses its blockbuster shine. Either way, the first half of 2026 will be spent arguing over enzymes, motility, and mechanistic plausibility.

The early chatter among plaintiff firms pegs severe gastroparesis cases somewhere between mid-six and low-seven figures, but that’s educated guesswork until we see how broad the causation window stays. This MDL has all the right ingredients to become the next mass-tort juggernaut—massive exposure population, celebrity drug name recognition, and a scientific story that can either collapse or catch fire depending on a few expert reports. If you had to bet on one litigation to shape the entire 2026 landscape, this is the one to clear your calendar for.

Hair Relaxer

Hair relaxer is the quiet giant of the mass-tort world—an MDL that doesn’t need headlines to make defense counsel sweat. More than ten thousand cases are now on the docket. Much like GLP-1, the upcoming “science day” in January 2026 is the opening salvo to everything that matters—causation, Daubert, and eventually, trial selection, with the first federal bellwethers expected in late 2026 or early 2027. In my experience, these estimates are likely to be pushed – they always are – but I could be surprised.  

NEC Litigation

The infant-formula NEC litigation (MDL 3026) in the Northern District of Illinois has shifted its bellwether schedule from August and November 2025 to sometime in 2026. As noted, this is normal and always happens. That outcome will matter far more than the split decisions out of Missouri, where one jury delivered a blockbuster award and another cleared the defense before lunch. The MDL’s first verdict will set the national tone.

Depo-Provera

Depo-Provera (MDL 3140) is quietly becoming the bellwether of how modern MDL management meets classic preemption law. On September 29, 2025, the court held Pfizer’s preemption hearing, a make-or-break moment that will determine whether the FDA’s label history shields the company or opens the gate to thousands of claims. If the Court rejects preemption, expect Daubert hearings and bellwether selections, with the first trials likely by early 2027.

Camp Lejeune

Camp Lejeune deserves its own paragraph because it’s operating under a statute—and a climate—all its own. The Eastern District of North Carolina has a four-judge rotation overseeing the docket, and, thanks to the quirks of the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, every trial will be a bench trial. No juries, no drama, just judges parsing decades of exposure science. The court’s appointed settlement leadership has made clear that the only way to price this universe is to try cases, so discovery has been marching steadily through 2025.

The expectation now is that the first bench verdicts will land in 2026, grouped by injury category, with each decision helping to set the tone and the valuation benchmarks for those that follow. The settlement curve won’t truly bend until two or three of those categories are decided—but when it does, it will finally give this sprawling docket a market value instead of a mystery.

Outside the Dockets

Outside the active dockets we’re dealing with every day, law firm business sometimes deserves mention.  In Texas, the ghost of McClenny Moseley & Associates is still making noise from the bankruptcy crypt. The once-prolific mass tort factory convinced a federal judge to bless the sale of more than 6,000 cases to repay its litigation funders, who will pocket a tidy 75 percent of the proceeds with a guaranteed floor. It’s a first-of-its-kind garage sale for lawsuits, and it has every ethics professor in America questioning whether the deal passes muster.

The deal leaves open thorny questions about who actually owns the claims, whether clients ever consented to being “assets,” and how those assignments survive when they bump into state-court judges who still believe in personal representation. With the FBI and state bars sniffing around, the MMA saga feels less like a post-mortem and more like a trailer for the next big thing in mass-tort

If 2025 was the year everyone claimed to be “waiting for the dust to settle,” 2026 is when we’ll find out whether that dust was asbestos, talc, or PFAS. The JPML has stocked the shelves, the judges have sharpened their pencils, and the first bellwethers are lining up like the world’s most expensive game of dominoes. The lesson? Keep your experts pre-vetted, your clients patient, and your caffeine supply non-negotiable.

This next year won’t reward the loudest firms—it’ll reward the ones who actually read the case management orders. The mass tort world is about to get loud again, but if you’re watching the calendars, following the judges, and hedging across the right dockets, you won’t just float—you’ll ride the wave.

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Craig H. Alinder, Vice President

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