BP, Transocean, Halliburton and other defendants in hundreds of lawsuits brought in the wake of the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history must litigate those suits in Federal court in Louisiana, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation has decided.  Multidistrict litigation is a special federal procedural means of handling a multitude of separate cases which share one or more common factual issues, but are pending in different districts.  The process is intended to streamline the discovery of evidence, resolve common issues of fact, avoid duplication of effort, and prevent inconsistent judicial rulings.  Once pretrial proceedings are concluded, the separate… Read more