## Facts

- Numerous personal-injury, wrongful-death, and economic-loss actions concerning defective ignition switches in certain General Motors vehicles were centralized in an MDL in the Southern District of New York.
- The court appointed Robert C. Hilliard as lead counsel for the personal-injury and wrongful-death plaintiffs and established procedures for non-lead attorneys to raise concerns with the court.
- The parties selected six bellwether cases for early trial settings; the first bellwether involved one of Hilliard’s clients.
- The first bellwether case collapsed after the plaintiff admitted to providing false testimony under oath and withdrew or abandoned the claim.
- The day after the bellwether collapse, Lance Cooper (a plaintiffs’ attorney) moved to remove Hilliard as lead counsel.
- Cooper alleged that Hilliard mismanaged the MDL and engaged in professional misconduct, including manipulating bellwether sequencing to advance Hilliard’s financial interests and pressure other plaintiffs’ lawyers in fee-sharing disputes, allegedly to the detriment of a client of another lawyer.

## Issues

1. Whether the court should remove or disqualify court-appointed MDL lead counsel based on allegations of mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and misconduct connected to bellwether selection and sequencing.
2. What showing is required for a court to intervene in, restructure, or replace plaintiffs’ leadership in a complex MDL.

## Decision

- The court denied the motion to remove Hilliard as lead counsel.
- The court found the request for removal extraordinary and not supported by a sufficiently substantiated record of serious conflict, dereliction, or conduct threatening the integrity of the MDL.
- The court declined to treat the collapse of the first bellwether—caused by the plaintiff’s perjury—as proof that lead counsel was unfit to serve.
- The court emphasized continued judicial oversight and the availability of MDL mechanisms to address fee disputes and alleged misconduct without disrupting leadership.

## Legal Principles

- MDL courts have broad discretion to appoint and remove lead counsel to manage complex litigation efficiently and fairly.
- Removing or disqualifying court-appointed lead counsel is an exceptional remedy requiring a strong showing of serious, non-speculative conflict, clear breach of duty to the plaintiff group, or conduct that materially threatens the integrity of the proceedings.
- Disputes among plaintiffs’ lawyers about strategy, bellwether sequencing, and financial arrangements generally do not justify removal absent clear evidence of resulting prejudice to plaintiffs or compromised proceedings.
- Courts may prefer less disruptive tools—supervision of common-benefit work and fees, targeted adjustments to leadership, and sanctions—over wholesale replacement of lead counsel.

## Conclusion

The court exercised its managerial discretion to preserve MDL leadership, holding that contested allegations about bellwether strategy and fee-related motives, together with an isolated bellwether collapse attributable to a plaintiff’s perjury, did not warrant the extraordinary step of removing court-appointed lead counsel.


In re General Motors LLC Ignition Switch Litig., 2016 WL 1441804 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 12, 2016)