History of Mass Torts
What is Mass Tort Subrogation? Why is Mass Tort Subrogation Important?
Subrogation is a centuries-old legal doctrine that reduces the price of insurance by shifting the costs of a tortious act toward the wrongdoer who committed the act and away from the victim’s insurer. After an insurer covers the cost of treating an injured party’s injuries, subrogation allows the insurer to “stand in the shoes” of the injured party and sue the wrongdoer who caused the injury. Any recovery reduces the insured’s claims experience and benefits future premium payers by helping the insurer to maintain affordable rates.
A mass tort is a consolidated legal proceeding typically involving the manufacturer of a defective drug or medical device and hundreds or thousands of patients whom the manufacturer injured. Most of these plaintiffs will have had health coverage through a private health plan when they were injured. Mass tort subrogation allows health plans that covered the cost of treating those patients’ tort-related injuries to recover that cost from the mass tort defendant.
Over the last quarter century, Rawlings & Associates (“Rawlings”) has recovered billions of dollars in mass tort cases, helping our health plan clients contain health care premiums.
Rawlings and Associates Pioneered Mass Tort Subrogation
In the mid-1990s, Rawlings filed the first subrogation claim in a mass tort case in the silicone gel breast implant litigation against Dow Corning. See in re Silicone Gel Breast Implant Prods. Liab. Litig., 2:92-cv-10000 (N.D. Ala.). When Dow’s $4 billion global settlement purported to bar subrogation claims, Rawlings, which represented dozens of major national health plans, challenged the constitutionality of the subrogation bar. After years of litigation, health plans recovered more than $90 million in subrogation claims.
In the thirty years since then, Rawlings has represented the majority of the nation’s health plans in the pursuit of mass tort subrogation recoveries in every significant mass tort, including asbestos, Fen-Phen, Vioxx, Avandia, Actos, pelvic mesh, Roundup, and Camp LeJeune.
Rawlings and Associates’ Industry-Leading Innovation
In 2010, Rawlings and Associates negotiated the now-industry-standard settlement structure in the Vioxx litigation. See In re Vioxx Marketing, Sales Practices and Prods. Liab. Litig., 2:05-md-1657 (E.D. La.) (MDL 1657). After years of litigation, Rawlings negotiated a settlement that sets an orderly, fair process to identify, quantify, and resolve subrogation claims in mass tort cases. That process—known as a Lien Resolution Program—is now the preferred settlement structure adopted by plaintiffs, defendants, and health plans in nearly all mass torts.