Paraquat
The Paraquat MDL was centralized in June 2021 to coordinate claims that long-term agricultural and occupational exposure to the herbicide paraquat is associated with an increased risk of developing Parkinson's disease, a progressive neurodegenerative condition. With 6,666 actions pending, this is one of the larger active products-liability dockets, reflecting the herbicide's widespread historical agricultural use and the extended latency period characteristic of neurodegenerative-disease claims, which allows exposure from years or decades earlier to continue generating new diagnoses and filings.
The docket's procedural history illustrates a distinctive resolution pathway: rather than proceeding through a bellwether trial to verdict, the litigation moved through extensive bellwether selection and trial-preparation activity — with a slate of cases chosen for trial — before the parties reached a negotiated settlement agreement in advance of the first scheduled trial date. That sequence, settlement displacing a scheduled bellwether trial rather than following one, is itself a meaningful structural signal: it suggests both sides developed enough clarity through pretrial expert discovery on general causation to value the litigation without needing a jury verdict to set the benchmark, which is a different resolution pattern than dockets that only reach comprehensive settlement after one or more bellwether verdicts establish a track record.
What continues to shape resolution risk for claims not resolved through that settlement activity is the same general-causation question that shaped the bellwether-preparation phase: the epidemiological and toxicological strength of the link between paraquat exposure and Parkinson's disease, evaluated against exposure-history and diagnosis-timing evidence specific to each claimant.
Criterica Intelligence tracks pre-verdict settlement activity — where negotiated resolution displaces a scheduled bellwether trial — as a distinct structural pattern from post-verdict settlement, since it reflects a different information environment shaping the parties' valuation, and surfaces that distinction across the active MDL landscape.
It consolidates claims that long-term agricultural and occupational exposure to the herbicide paraquat is linked to an increased risk of Parkinson's disease, a progressive neurodegenerative condition.
A bellwether trial is a representative case tried to test how the docket's core evidence plays out; in this docket, a slate of bellwether cases was selected and trial-preparation proceeded extensively before a negotiated settlement displaced the need for that first trial to go to verdict.
The extensive pretrial and bellwether-preparation process allowed both sides to develop a clearer view of the general-causation evidence, which can lead parties to value a negotiated resolution over the uncertainty of a jury verdict.
It proceeds toward an individual trial, evaluated on the same general-causation evidence — the epidemiological and toxicological link between paraquat exposure and Parkinson's disease — developed during the docket's bellwether-preparation phase.
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.