## Facts

- Over 3,000 plaintiffs alleged personal injury, wrongful death, and property-damage claims from contamination in the Kennedy Heights subdivision in Houston, Texas.
- Plaintiffs alleged the subdivision was built on land used in the 1920s as a crude-oil storage waste pit and that hazardous substances later migrated into the environment and local drinking water.
- Related state and federal suits were consolidated in the Southern District of Texas.
- To manage the litigation, the district court entered a trial plan providing for selection of 30 bellwether plaintiffs (15 chosen by plaintiffs and 15 by Chevron).
- The plan contemplated a unitary proceeding trying “general liability or causation” for the remaining plaintiffs while also trying individual causation and damages for the 30 selected plaintiffs.
- Chevron objected that party-selected bellwethers would not be representative and that the plan sought to use the bellwether outcomes to bind the remaining plaintiffs and Chevron through issue or claim preclusion.
- After the district court declined to certify an interlocutory appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b), Chevron petitioned for a writ of mandamus.

## Issues

1. Whether mandamus should issue to stop the scheduled bellwether trials of the 30 selected plaintiffs.
2. Whether mandamus should issue to prevent the district court from using bellwether trial results for issue or claim preclusion against parties whose claims were not tried.

## Decision

- The Fifth Circuit denied mandamus to the extent Chevron sought to prevent the bellwether trials from going forward.
- The Fifth Circuit granted mandamus to the extent the trial plan would use bellwether verdicts for issue or claim preclusion as to the remaining, untried plaintiffs.
- The court reasoned that bellwether trials may serve case-management and settlement-evaluation purposes, but a non-representative sample cannot be used to bind others through preclusion.
- The court found the selection method (each side choosing its preferred cases) lacked safeguards to ensure a statistically representative sample necessary for fair extrapolation.

## Legal Principles

- Mandamus is an extraordinary remedy, available only where the petitioner shows a clear and indisputable right to relief and no adequate alternative remedy.
- District courts have substantial discretion to manage complex litigation, including use of bellwether trials as an informational tool.
- Bellwether outcomes may not be given issue-preclusive or claim-preclusive effect for untried claims absent procedures that satisfy due process.
- If bellwether results are to be generalized beyond tried cases, the sample must be statistically representative of the larger group, with appropriate methodological safeguards.

## Conclusion

The Fifth Circuit permitted the district court to conduct bellwether trials but prohibited using verdicts from a party-selected, non-representative bellwether group to impose issue or claim preclusion on thousands of untried claims, granting mandamus to protect due process.


In re Chevron U.S.A., Inc., 109 F.3d 1016 (5th Cir. 1997)