On March 28th I attended the Joint Panel on Multi-District Litigation (JPML) hearing in Federal Court in Washington D.C. Most significant on the docket were the arguments for a Multi-District Litigation (MDL) involving alleged defects with 3M CombatArms® Earplugs. 
It is anticipated that there will be hundreds of thousands of claims. An MDL is often formed in product liability litigation when a large group of plaintiffs are filing cases against a common defendant(s) and they share common issues. These cases are consolidated for Judicial economy and for efficiency purposes for the both the defense and the plaintiffs.
There were twenty arguments pushing for different jurisdictions (18 made by the plaintiff, 2 by the defense). It is anticipated that the JPML will rule in the coming weeks.