Hair Relaxer
Centralized before Judge Mary M. Rowland in the Northern District of Illinois in February 2023, the Hair Relaxer litigation consolidates federal claims that long-term use of chemical hair-straightening products caused uterine cancer, ovarian cancer, and other gynecological injuries, with plaintiffs alleging the manufacturers knew or should have known of the cancer risk associated with certain chemical ingredients and failed to warn users. At over 12,000 actions pending against a total of more than 16,500 filed, this is among the highest-volume active dockets in the federal MDL system, a scale that itself shapes how the litigation must be structured procedurally to remain manageable.
The docket's duration and resolution risk currently turn almost entirely on bellwether design and sequencing. Judge Rowland's court selected an initial pool of 32 bellwether discovery cases in 2025, with fact discovery for that pool set to close in February 2026 and a narrowing to three trial-preparation cases shortly after; general-causation-related Daubert practice is not expected to conclude until early 2027, and no first trial date has yet been set. Because general causation for the products and chemical exposures at issue has not yet been tested before a jury in this MDL, the litigation remains in the phase where the central open question is scientific and evidentiary rather than about individualized damages.
Given the scale of the claim population, how this bellwether process resolves — and whether it produces verdicts that make a global resolution framework more attractive to the parties than continued individual litigation — will likely determine whether the bulk of this docket's tens of thousands of claims move toward a coordinated settlement program or toward a longer period of individual trials following remand. Criterica Intelligence's platform tracks this kind of bellwether-sequencing signal across every active MDL, providing a structural read on pace and posture without predicting a specific causation finding or verdict outcome.
A bellwether trial tests representative claims before a jury to gauge how the broader claim pool is likely to be received. This docket's initial 32-case bellwether pool is still completing discovery ahead of eventual trial-preparation cases.
General causation has not yet been tested before a jury in this MDL. Fact discovery on the initial bellwether pool was set to conclude in February 2026, with Daubert practice expected to run into early 2027 before any first trial.
Absent a global resolution, individual cases are generally remanded to their originating federal districts for further pretrial proceedings and trial once centralized bellwether and Daubert work concludes.
Scale shapes procedure significantly — with tens of thousands of claims, courts typically rely on a structured bellwether process to test causation and damages theories before considering any coordinated resolution framework.
Statistics shown reflect historical or illustrative model outputs derived from real case data. They are not predictions or guarantees of any individual outcome. Litigation results depend on facts, jurisdiction, judge, and counsel, and vary case by case. Model accuracy is subject to selection effects and changing legal dynamics.