## Facts

- Numerous plaintiffs alleged “repetitive stress injuries” (e.g., carpal tunnel syndrome and related conditions) arising from use of office and electronic equipment in varied workplaces.
- Defendants were many unrelated manufacturers and distributors of different products (e.g., keyboards, display terminals, typewriters, cash registers, telecommunications devices).
- Plaintiffs filed 44 separate actions in the Eastern District of New York.
- The district court ordered consolidation of the 44 actions and extended the arrangement to include all future repetitive-stress-injury filings in the district for coordinated pretrial and trial proceedings.
- Defendants objected that the cases involved different products, defendants, work environments, exposure histories, and governing state laws, and that consolidation would increase costs and create settlement pressure.
- Defendants filed interlocutory appeals; plaintiffs moved to dismiss for lack of appellate jurisdiction.

## Issues

1. Whether the consolidation orders were immediately appealable under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 via the collateral-order doctrine.
2. If not appealable, whether the court of appeals could treat the notices of appeal as petitions for writs of mandamus.
3. Whether consolidating 44 RSI actions (and all future RSI actions filed in the district) under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 42(a) was an abuse of discretion given limited commonality and potential prejudice.

## Decision

- The court dismissed the appeals for lack of jurisdiction because consolidation orders are not final decisions and did not qualify under the collateral-order doctrine.
- The court treated the appeals as petitions for writs of mandamus.
- The court granted mandamus and vacated the consolidation orders.
- The case was remanded for further proceedings consistent with the opinion.

## Legal Principles

- Consolidation under Fed. R. Civ. P. 42(a) requires a demonstrated showing of genuine common questions of law or fact; similarity in claimed injury categories alone is insufficient.
- The party seeking consolidation bears the burden to establish the requisite commonality and to justify the scope of consolidation on an adequate record.
- Open-ended, sweeping consolidation that aggregates heterogeneous claims and purports to capture future cases without case-specific analysis may constitute a clear abuse of discretion correctable by mandamus.
- Docket-management and efficiency considerations cannot justify consolidation that risks unfair prejudice to defendants, including undue litigation costs and settlement pressure disconnected from the merits.
- Consolidation orders are generally not immediately appealable under § 1291; extraordinary review, when warranted, proceeds through mandamus rather than interlocutory appeal.

## Conclusion

The Second Circuit held that the RSI consolidation orders were not immediately appealable, but vacated them through mandamus because the district court consolidated diverse, weakly related cases—including future filings—without an adequate showing of common questions, creating undue burdens and prejudice inconsistent with Rule 42(a).


In re Repetitive Stress Injury Litigation, 11 F.3d 368 (2d Cir. 1993)