Should I buy mass tort leads or signed retainers?

It tracks criteria difficulty. On torts with clean objective records, buying leads and converting in-house is usually cheaper. On narrow-criteria torts such as GLP-1, buy at the retainer level so the vendor absorbs the qualification risk. Paying more per unit for a signed, records-supported case is frequently the cheaper outcome.

How often does mass tort docket analysis change?

Meaningfully, every month. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation publishes updated pending-action counts monthly, and settlement developments can change a litigation's economics overnight. Any docket analysis more than a quarter old should be treated as history rather than guidance.

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Docket Analysis Updated 10 September 2026 14 min read

Which Mass Torts Are Worth Buying Into Right Now

Q: Is it too late to buy into talc?

For most firms, yes, at least on the basis of a general assumption that talc is large. With a proposed multi-billion-dollar settlement covering roughly 76,000 ovarian claims, the question is not whether the litigation is large but how the settlement treats newly filed claims. That is a question to answer with counsel before spending anything.

Docket size is the worst metric a buyer can use. It records what other firms already acquired — not whether a case bought today will pay. This is a stage-by-stage read of nineteen active litigations, scored on momentum, criteria difficulty and how long your capital stays committed.

205,540 Actions Pending Across all active MDLs, August 2026 JPML report

162 Active MDLs Count held steady month over month

94% In Just 21 Dockets Proceedings with 1,000+ pending actions

64% In The Top Five Where nearly every advertiser is bidding

Michael Taylor Managing Partner, Injury Case Claims · Mass tort plaintiff acquisition since 2009

The Short Answer

Where the acquisition money should go

Sorted by whether buying a claimant today is likely to pay — not by how many cases are already on file. Every call below is explained in the tort-by-tort section.

Attractive Now

Inventory still building, populations largely unworked, procedural structure in place.

Uber sexual assault
Social media addiction
Roblox exploitation
Bard PowerPort
AFFF / PFAS
Suboxone

Buy Selectively

Real opportunity, but only with tight criteria and disciplined screening.

Hair relaxer
GLP-1 / Ozempic
Paraquat
NEC infant formula
Mesothelioma

Late Stage

Settlement posture. Read the terms before you spend a dollar on acquisition.

Talc / J&J
Roundup
Depo-Provera
Bard hernia mesh
Camp Lejeune

Watch Only

Cheap to enter and genuinely uncertain. Money you can afford to write off.

Dupixent
Spinal cord stimulators
Video game addiction

The Core Mistake

Why docket size is the wrong metric

A 20,000-case MDL with shrinking inventory and a 5,000-case MDL that has doubled in a year are not comparable opportunities, even though the first looks four times larger on a chart.

Size is a record of past acquisition. It tells you a lot of firms already found a lot of claimants — which means the easy claimants are gone, the advertising auction is crowded, and the criteria have usually tightened. Momentum tells you what is happening now.

There is a third dimension that matters as much as either: momentum itself accelerates and decelerates. A litigation showing a large twelve-month increase may have surged and already flattened. GLP-1 is the clean example — pending inventory is up roughly 79% over twelve months, but recent growth is materially slower than the earlier part of that window. The headline annual figure describes a wave that has partly passed.

The four questions that actually matter

1. Is inventory still building, and is the rate rising or falling? 2. Where is the litigation in its lifecycle? 3. How hard is it to qualify a claimant? 4. How long will your capital be committed before anything comes back?

Answer those four and the tier board above becomes something you can argue with intelligently, rather than a list to take on faith.

The Lifecycle

Five stages, and what each means for a buyer

Every litigation on this page sits somewhere on this rail. Knowing which stage you are buying into matters more than knowing which tort you are buying.

Pre-consolidation

Filings appearing, no MDL yet. Acquisition is cheap because almost nobody is bidding. The science may not hold and an MDL may never form.

Only with write-off money

MDL formed, building

Leadership appointed, discovery structuring, no bellwether results. Costs still moderate, populations largely unworked, infrastructure exists.

Best risk-adjusted entry

Bellwether phase

Trials scheduled or underway. Costs climb sharply because every firm sees the same signal. A plaintiff verdict can double acquisition cost in weeks.

Viable, but you pay for certainty

Settlement posture

A framework exists or is being negotiated. Criteria tighten hard, registration deadlines appear, and late cases can be worth a fraction — or nothing.

Only if you know the terms

Wind-down

Payments flowing, docket shrinking. There is rarely a good reason to be buying acquisition inventory at this point in a litigation's life.

Do not buy

The expensive version of this mistake

Buying stage 4 inventory at stage 2 enthusiasm. A settlement headline reads like validation. To a buyer it is usually a closing door, because the question stops being “is this litigation real” and becomes “does this specific settlement pay newly filed claims, and on what terms.”

The Docket

Litigation by litigation

Case counts are from the August–September 2026 JPML reporting cycle and change monthly. The stage meter shows where each litigation sits on the five-stage rail above.

Attractive Now

Uber sexual assault

MDL 3084 · N.D. Cal.

Stage 3 · Bellwether

Pending: ~3,000 federal + ~850 CA state
Momentum: Among the fastest-growing dockets on the panel's list. Bellwether jury selection was set for September 2026.
Criteria: Ride records, contemporaneous reports, police reports where they exist.
Acquisition: Rising but not yet saturated.

VerdictAttractive, with a serious operational caveat. Per-case values are expected to be substantial. But this is trauma-informed intake, not a call-centre script — if your team cannot handle these conversations properly you will harm claimants and lose cases, and no replacement policy fixes that. A parallel Lyft proceeding has been anticipated.

Roblox child exploitation

MDL 3166 · N.D. Cal.

Stage 2 · Early, organised

Pending: 170 cases
Momentum: Up 8 month over month as of July 2026. A settlement master has already been appointed — unusual this early. State-level regulatory pressure is adding to the defendant's exposure.
Criteria: Platform records, contemporaneous reports, law enforcement involvement where applicable. Minors throughout.
Acquisition: Low competition. Largely unadvertised relative to the exposure.

VerdictAttractive for firms equipped to handle it. Structurally, this is roughly where Depo-Provera sat in early 2025: small, growing, organised, unadvertised. The intake requirements are demanding and the subject matter is grave. If you are not set up for it, pass rather than improvise.

Bard PowerPort

MDL 3081

Stage 3 · Bellwether

Pending: 3,500+
Momentum: Continued adding meaningful inventory through the most recent six-month period. Bellwether activity running through late 2026.
Criteria: Implant records and device identification. Clean and objective — the device either was implanted or it was not.
Acquisition: Reasonable, with predictable cost per signed case.

VerdictAttractive and underrated. Not glamorous, but record clarity means low rejection rates, which makes the economics far easier to forecast than any pharmaceutical tort on this page.

AFFF / PFAS

MDL 2873 · D.S.C.

Stage 3 · Schedule slipping

Pending: 15,264 personal injury claims
Momentum: Large and active, though a bellwether set for October 2025 came off the calendar. Regulatory pressure on PFAS continues to expand.
Criteria: Exposure documentation is the hard part, not diagnosis. Firefighters, military personnel and residents near contaminated sites need a provable pathway.
Acquisition: Reasonable, genuinely large population.

VerdictAttractive, with the caveat that this timeline has repeatedly moved right. A multi-year capital commitment. Occupational-exposure segments — fire service and military — screen far more cleanly than water-district residents.

Suboxone dental decay

MDL 3092 · N.D. Ohio

Stage 2–3

Pending: 11,000+
Momentum: Substantial docket with comparatively little advertising saturation for its size.
Criteria: Dental records showing decay plus documented film use. More tractable than most pharmaceutical torts because a dentist documents the injury — no specialist imaging required.
Acquisition: Low competition relative to docket size.

VerdictAttractive. One of the better volume-to-competition ratios currently available, and the screening is far simpler than the case count would suggest.

Buy Selectively

Hair relaxer

MDL 3060 · N.D. Ill.

Stage 2–3

Pending: 11,779
Criteria: Uterine or ovarian cancer diagnosis plus documented product use history. The use-history half is where most claimants fail, because it depends on recall going back years.
Acquisition: Moderate. Strong claimant identification within specific demographics makes targeting efficient.

VerdictSelective. Screen hard on use history before paying for anything. The diagnosis half verifies easily; the exposure half is where the money gets wasted.

GLP-1 / Ozempic

MDL 3094 · E.D. Pa.

Stage 2–3 · Decelerating

Pending: ~3,800
Momentum: Up roughly 79% over twelve months, but recent growth is materially slower than earlier in that window — the easy claimants have largely been found.
Criteria: Gastroparesis and related GI injuries need diagnostic confirmation. The exposed population is enormous; the qualifying population is not.
Acquisition: Cheap per lead, expensive per signed case. That gap is wider here than almost anywhere on the docket.

VerdictSelective, and only with retainer-level screening. Buying raw GLP-1 leads is one of the most reliable ways to lose money in mass torts right now.

Paraquat

MDL 3004 · S.D. Ill.

Stage 3 · Regulatory flux

Pending: 6,665
Momentum: Bellwether activity underway with the EPA's position still unsettled after it moved to withdraw a previous interim decision.
Criteria: Parkinson's diagnosis plus documented occupational exposure. Genuinely narrow.
Acquisition: Expensive per signed case — small, agricultural, hard-to-target population.

VerdictSelective. High case value, low volume, difficult targeting. Suits firms with existing agricultural-community reach far better than firms buying cold.

NEC infant formula

MDL 3026 · N.D. Ill.

Stage 3–4

Results: Significant verdict activity including a $495M verdict against Abbott.
Criteria: Among the narrowest on the docket: premature birth, NEC diagnosis, and documented cow's-milk-based formula exposure in a hospital NICU or maternity ward.
Acquisition: Very high cost per signed case, driven by the narrow criteria. Correspondingly high case values.

VerdictSelective. Only worth pursuing with medical-records-verified acquisition. Raw or lightly screened NEC inventory fails at brutal rates.

Mesothelioma & asbestos

Outside the MDL structure

Perpetual

Structure: Operates through established trust and settlement pathways rather than a consolidated MDL.
Criteria: Confirmed diagnosis plus occupational exposure history.
Acquisition: The highest cost per signed case in the industry — routinely five figures, sometimes well beyond. Incidence is low and every firm in the space bids on the same small population.

VerdictSelective and specialist. Case values justify the acquisition cost, but only if your firm is actually built to work asbestos cases. This is not a docket to dabble in.

Late Stage — Read the Terms First

Talc / Johnson & Johnson

MDL 2738 · D.N.J.

Stage 4 · Settlement posture

Pending: 68,914 — largest active MDL
Momentum: Added 479 cases in the August reporting month. A proposed $5.5 billion settlement covering roughly 76,000 ovarian talc claims is on the table, after repeated unsuccessful attempts to route the liability through bankruptcy.
Criteria: Tight. Diagnosis, documented product use history, exposure duration.
Acquisition: Among the most expensive and saturated markets in mass torts. Fifteen years of continuous advertising has worked this population hard.

VerdictLate. The economics only work if you understand exactly how the proposed settlement treats newly filed claims — a question for your co-counsel and the settlement documents, not for a marketing vendor. A big settlement number does not mean every new case gets paid.

Roundup

MDL 2741 · N.D. Cal.

Stage 4–5

Status: A proposed $7.25 billion settlement has been directed to the federal MDL, following Supreme Court activity on the preemption question in mid-2026.
Criteria: Diagnosis plus exposure history.
Acquisition: A mature, exhaustively advertised market.

VerdictLate. Reserved for firms with a specific strategy tied to the settlement structure and to state-court filing considerations, which run on separate timelines from the proposed class deadlines.

Depo-Provera

MDL 3140 · N.D. Fla.

Stage 4 · Settlement in principle

Pending: 6,294
Momentum: Growth exceeding 5,700% since February 2025 — the steepest curve on the docket. Then the parties reported a global settlement in principle in June 2026, the first bellwether was vacated, and the general causation hearing was reset.
Criteria: Imaging-confirmed meningioma plus documented duration of use.
Acquisition: Was the best opportunity on the board twelve months ago. That window has closed.

VerdictLate — and the clearest proof that timing beats size. Firms that bought in early 2025 are positioned extremely well. Buying now means buying into a settlement whose terms you need to read first. If a vendor is still pitching Depo-Provera volume without discussing settlement posture, that tells you something about the vendor.

Bard hernia mesh

MDL 2846 · S.D. Ohio

Stage 4

Pending: 23,000+
Status: Special masters have been working through an intensive process for unresolved claims.
Criteria: Implant records, revision surgery documentation, specific device model identification.
Acquisition: Moderate cost, but the record burden is heavy and rejection rates on poorly screened inventory run high.

VerdictLate. Records-complete cases only. Similar caution to talc.

Camp Lejeune

E.D.N.C. · Camp Lejeune Justice Act

Stalled

Status: No firm Track 1 trial dates as of mid-2026. The government has indicated readiness to try cases once threshold legal issues resolve; plaintiffs keep pressing because delay disproportionately harms elderly claimants.
Criteria: Residency or service at the base within the statutory window plus qualifying diagnosis.
Acquisition: Heavily advertised in 2023–24. Several firms that acquired aggressively have since stopped taking new cases.

VerdictLate and slow. The claim volume is real, but the resolution timeline has repeatedly disappointed. Capital committed here has been committed for a long time.

Watch Only — Write-Off Money

Dupixent

D.N.J. · MDL created June 2026

Stage 1–2

Allegation: That the drug caused, accelerated or masked cutaneous T-cell lymphoma — a rare cancer that can present early on a chart much like eczema or ordinary dermatitis.
The fight: Diagnosis and causation. It will get technical fast.
Acquisition: Cheap to enter.

VerdictWatch. Genuinely uncertain. Brand new MDL with the causation question entirely unresolved.

Spinal cord stimulators

MDL 3181 · C.D. Cal.

Stage 1–2

Scope: Boston Scientific devices only. It does not sweep in Abbott, Medtronic or Nevro claims, though separate proceedings may follow.
Injuries: Shocks, burning, device migration, lead fracture, neurological injury, failed therapy, revision and explant.
Criteria: Product model, implant records, programming logs, imaging, revision findings and the explanted device itself will decide these cases.

VerdictWatch. If you do buy here, screen on manufacturer above everything else — a claimant with a different maker's device does not belong in this MDL, and that is an easy and expensive mistake to make.

Video game addiction

No MDL · JCCP 5363, Los Angeles

Stage 1 · Emerging

Consolidation: The JPML declined, concerned the scope could grow unmanageable across too many defendants and products. The California coordinated proceeding is the main forum.
Viability: Financially unproven — no settlements. Scientifically contested. Estimated time to resolution runs years.
Choke point: Arbitration clauses. Screen for parental consent facts and account setup details, because those determine whether a case stays in court at all.

VerdictWatch. Genuine stage 1 risk. Some firms are right to be here. Most should not be, and none should be here with money they need back.

Screening

What criteria difficulty does to your real cost

Two torts can quote the same price per lead and produce wildly different costs per retained case. The variable is how many people who respond to the ad actually qualify.

Easiest

Bard PowerPort · Bard hernia mesh · Suboxone. An objective record exists. A device was implanted or a film was prescribed. The record either exists or it does not, and you find out fast.

Moderate

Hair relaxer · AFFF · Talc. Diagnosis is clear and verifies cleanly. The exposure half depends on claimant recall and documentation, which is where the failures cluster.

Hard

Depo-Provera · NEC · Paraquat. Narrow medical gating. Imaging-confirmed meningioma plus duration; prematurity plus diagnosis plus specific in-hospital exposure; Parkinson's plus occupational exposure.

Hardest

GLP-1 / Ozempic. Wide response, narrow qualification. Enormous numbers of people have taken these drugs and will respond to an ad. Very few have a qualifying injury. This is the single widest gap between cost per lead and cost per signed case on the docket.

Operationally hard

Uber · Social media · Roblox. The screening questions may be answerable, but the intake requires trained, trauma-informed handling. Minor claimants add consent and parental authority requirements on top of everything else.

The practical consequence

On any tort in the bottom two bands, buying unscreened data is a false economy. Either buy at the retainer level and let the vendor carry the qualification risk, or accept that you are funding a large volume of disqualifications and price it accordingly.

Cash Flow

The capital timeline nobody puts in the pitch deck

A signed mass tort case is not an asset that converts on a predictable schedule. It converts when the MDL says it converts.

Talc has been in litigation for over a decade and is still negotiating. AFFF bellwethers have moved more than once. Camp Lejeune has no firm trial dates years after the statute opened. Even Depo-Provera, which reached settlement in principle with unusual speed, took from February 2025 to June 2026 to get there — and that is regarded as fast.

First implication: match your acquisition pace to your capital position, not to the vendor's available volume. A vendor can always sell you more. Whether you can carry more for four years is a different question entirely.

Second implication: diversify by stage rather than by tort. A book concentrated entirely in stage 2 litigations is a long wait with no cash flow. A book concentrated entirely in stage 4 is short-dated, low-margin and vulnerable to settlement terms that exclude late claims. A deliberate mix across stages produces a docket that pays out on a rolling basis instead of all at once — or never.

Failure Modes

Five mistakes that cost firms real money

Buying the biggest docket

Size is a record of what other firms already acquired. It is the single most misleading number available to you, and it is the one printed at the top of every vendor deck.

Buying because a verdict was in the news

A plaintiff verdict raises acquisition costs immediately, often within days. By the time you have read about it, you are bidding against everyone else who read about it. The verdict is a signal about case value, not an entry point.

Buying without reading the settlement terms

Once a framework exists, whether newly filed or newly signed claims are covered — and on what terms — is the entire economics of the purchase. “There's a big settlement” is not a reason to buy. It may be a reason not to.

Buying volume your intake cannot serve

This applies with particular force to Uber, Roblox and social media. Sensitive intake handled badly does not just underperform — it harms claimants and destroys cases you have already paid for.

Buying from a vendor selling every tort at once

There is no company genuinely strong across all nineteen litigations on this page. Tort-specific screening knowledge takes years to build, and a vendor claiming equal capability everywhere has built it nowhere.

Michael Taylor, Managing Partner of Injury Case Claims

“

There is no perfect company for all mass tort leads. The biggest red flag is a company providing all types of mass tort leads.

We specialise in a handful of mass torts and we have been doing so for the last 15 years. You can find our active campaigns here.

Michael Taylor · Managing Partner, Injury Case Claims

Your Firm

How to decide where your money goes

Work through these in order. If steps 1 to 4 leave you with two or three candidate torts, that is the correct outcome.

What is your capital horizon?

If you need returns inside two years, most of this page is irrelevant to you and you should be looking at faster-turning practice areas such as motor vehicle accident work.

What can your intake actually handle?

Straightforward device screening, or trauma-informed intake for minor claimants? This constrains the list before cost ever does — and it is the constraint firms most often ignore.

What does your existing docket concentrate in?

If you are heavy in one stage 4 tort, your next purchase should probably be stage 2. Stage diversification is what turns a docket into rolling cash flow rather than one distant payday.

Do you have any natural claimant reach?

Existing community relationships, referral sources or geographic concentration change the economics dramatically. Paraquat is expensive to buy cold and cheap to source if you already work with agricultural communities.

What is the cost per retained, viable case?

Not per lead. Run the arithmetic backwards from realistic case value and your own historical conversion rate. A firm that concludes it should be buying into ten litigations at once has not actually done this step.

Questions

Frequently asked

Which mass tort has the best return on acquisition spend right now?

There is no single answer, because it depends on your capital horizon and intake capability. For firms that can carry cases for several years and have trained intake, Uber sexual assault and the platform-harm litigations offer the strongest combination of momentum and unsaturated claimant populations. For firms wanting cleaner screening and more predictable cost per signed case, Bard PowerPort and Suboxone are the better fit.

Is it too late to buy into talc?

For most firms, yes — at least on the basis of a general “talc is big” thesis. With a proposed multi-billion-dollar settlement covering roughly 76,000 ovarian claims, the question is not whether the litigation is large but how the settlement treats newly filed claims. That is a question to answer with counsel before spending anything.

What about Depo-Provera? It was the fastest-growing tort of the cycle.

It was, and that is exactly why the window has narrowed. Growth exceeding 5,700% since February 2025 happened because firms that entered early captured an unworked population. With a global settlement in principle reported in June 2026, new acquisition now needs to be evaluated against the settlement's terms rather than against the growth curve.

How early is too early?

When there is no MDL, no leadership structure and no bellwether pathway, you are funding a hypothesis. Video game addiction is the current example — no federal consolidation, contested science, unresolved arbitration issues and a multi-year horizon. Some firms are right to be there. Most should not be, and none should be there with money they need back.

Should I buy leads or signed retainers?

It tracks criteria difficulty. On torts with clean objective records, buying leads and converting in-house is usually cheaper. On narrow-criteria torts — GLP-1 above all — buy at the retainer level so the vendor absorbs the qualification risk. Paying more per unit for a signed, records-supported case is frequently the cheaper outcome.

How often does this analysis change?

Meaningfully, every month. The JPML publishes updated pending-action counts monthly, and settlement developments can change a tort's economics overnight. Any docket analysis more than a quarter old should be treated as history rather than guidance.

This page is market analysis for law firm marketing planning. It is not legal advice, not a prediction of case outcomes, and not a valuation of any individual claim. Case counts are drawn from public JPML statistics reports and change monthly. Verify current figures and settlement terms with counsel before making acquisition decisions.

The framework outlasts the numbers

The firms that do well in mass torts are not the ones that pick the right tort. They are the ones that enter at the right stage, screen against criteria they have written down, and size acquisition to capital they can actually commit for years. Everything on this page will have moved by the next JPML report. The framework will not.

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