TRENTON, N.J. (Legal Newsline) – Facing a massive pile of hearing loss lawsuits, 3M is again hoping to find out exactly where all these plaintiffs came from.
A recent motion to quash in New Jersey federal court shows 3M is trying to pry information from Season 4, a company that operates classaction.org. The site connects potential plaintiffs with lawyers with experience handling their types of claims.
In a multidistrict litigation proceeding in Florida federal court, 3M is fighting somewhere between 13,000 and 230,000 lawsuits by servicemembers who blame their hearing loss on allegedly defective ear plugs.
Season 4 is claiming the requested info – communications between it and lawyers – are protected by privilege. It was an argument that failed when 3M sent a subpoena to the operator of a site called Top Class Actions.
“The problem for MDL Plaintiffs is that the nature of the ‘common interest’ between the advertising attorneys and TCA was solely commercial, not legal,” Judge Casey Rodgers wrote earlier this year when she denied TCA’s attempt to block the subpoena.
“That is, TCA’s role was to advertise for paying attorneys, not to assist them in litigation against the MDL Defendants. TCA does not have any legal interest in the MDL Plaintiffs’ litigation, and the MDL Defendants are not an adversary to TCA.”
TCA doesn’t review the content of the form submissions and is not in position to discuss litigation strategy, Rodgers added.
Potential plaintiffs expected their communications with Season 4 and lawyers to be protected, Season 4 argued Sept. 3.
3M says it is facing around 13,000 lawsuits, even though the MDL has been called the largest in the country. An administrative docket listing names of potential plaintiffs produces the 230,000-plaintiff figure cited by their lawyers.
“It is not a docket full of verified claims,” Eric Rucker, internal counsel for 3M in charge of the Combat Arms litigation, previously told Legal Newsline. “It’s a docket full of unverified and unfiled claims.”
Judge Rodgers has held three bellwether trials so far to test plaintiff theories and defenses, ending with inconclusive results. Plaintiffs won the first trial involving three claimants, with the jury ruling 3M’s earplugs were defective and awarding each plaintiff several hundred thousand dollars in compensation and $2.1 million in punitive damages.
3M won the second trial, with the jury rejecting all claims, and in the third trial the jury rejected claims the Combat Arms earplugs were defective but awarded the plaintiff about $700,000 for failure to warn.
More trials are set for the fall and next year.