Whether nonmutual offensive collateral estoppel can be applied to make the results of a handful of unrepresentative bellwether trials binding on the defendant in all pending and future cases in an MDL

QUESTION PRESENTED This case arises from a long-running multidistrict litigation (“MDL”) in which thousands of plaintiffs claimed injuries from permitted chemical releases from one of petitioners plants. Some plaintiffs lived near the plant, while others lived tens of miles away; some claimed exposure via discharges to water, others via air emissions; and the claimed dates of exposure varied widely. Because of such differences, these damages claims proceeded in an MDL rather than a class action. As is common in MDLs, a few cases were selected for informational, expressly non-binding “bellwether trials.” After three trials resulted in plaintiff verdicts—in cases not designed to be representative of all the MDL cases, and despite the court’s assurances that the verdicts would be non-binding—the district court invoked nonmutual offensive collateral estoppel to preclude petitioner from disputing the key issues of duty, breach, and foreseeability here and across the MDL. The Sixth Circuit affirmed in a sharply divided decision, with the panel majority embracing the district court’s novel application of nonmutual offensive collateral estoppel to bellwether trials and rejecting any representativeness requirement. Judge Batchelder dissented, explaining that the decision conflicted with other circuits and would spell the end of bellwether trials in MDLs. The question presented is: Whether nonmutual offensive collateral estoppel can be applied to make the results of a handful of unrepresentative bellwether trials binding on the defendant in all pending and future cases in an MDL.