MDL Statistics October 2026: Talc Holds 69,340 Cases as Uber's Docket Jumps by 328 in a Month

The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation's MDL statistics for October 2026, in a report dated 1 October, list 162 pending dockets, and Johnson & Johnson's talcum powder litigation is still the largest with 69,340 pending actions. The month's biggest mover among the major mass torts was Uber's passenger sexual assault MDL, which grew by 328 cases to 4,916 even as its third federal bellwether settled. Federal hair relaxer claims rose 252 to 12,381, while the Depo-Provera and GLP-1 dockets were nearly flat.

The report is the federal judiciary's official monthly census of every pending Multidistrict Litigation (MDL), and it is the number that plaintiffs' firms, defense counsel, litigation funders and insurers cite when they size a mass tort. This analysis sets the October figures against the 1 September 2026 report, ties each major docket to where it actually stands procedurally (a Rule 702 ruling pending, a bellwether date, a settlement program), and explains what the numbers can and cannot tell a practitioner.

MDL statistics October 2026: what the JPML report shows

The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) publishes its pending-MDL reports on the first business day of each month, a schedule it adopted from 1 January 2024. Each edition is issued in several sorts (by district, by MDL number, by docket type, and by actions pending), and the actions-pending version ranks every open docket from largest to smallest. The October edition carries a report date of 1 October 2026.

Its summary block records three headline numbers:

• 162 MDL dockets pending, down from 166 on 1 September 2026, a net loss of four.
• 50 transferee districts hosting those dockets, unchanged from September.
• 141 transferee judges, one fewer than the 142 recorded a month earlier.

The September report counted 206,182 pending actions across its 166 dockets, a net gain of only 642 over August and the smallest monthly increase of 2026 to that point. Behind that pending figure sat another 509,939 actions that had been filed into the same dockets and since closed, for a lifetime total of 716,121. The aggregate pending figure for October did not appear in any source this desk could verify at publication, so the comparison below works docket by docket rather than from a single national total.

The docket count falling while several big dockets grew is the main structural point of the October MDL statistics. Federal mass tort volume is not spreading across more proceedings. It is collecting in a short list of very large ones, and a few long-running dockets that have finished their work are being closed out.

What is the largest MDL in October 2026?

The largest MDL in October 2026 is In re: Johnson & Johnson Talcum Powder Products Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2738, in the District of New Jersey, with 69,340 pending actions out of 72,024 ever filed. It is three times the size of the next-largest docket and, measured against September's national total, holds roughly a third of every pending action in the federal MDL system.

The top five by pending actions on 1 October 2026:

Rank	MDL No.	Litigation	District	Pending actions	History total	Pending as share of history
1	2738	Johnson & Johnson talcum powder	D.N.J.	69,340	72,024	96.3%
2	2846	Davol / C.R. Bard polypropylene hernia mesh	S.D. Ohio	23,324	25,217	92.5%
3	2873	Aqueous film-forming foams (AFFF)	D.S.C.	15,264	not reported in sources verified	—
4	3060	Hair relaxer marketing, sales practices and products liability	N.D. Ill.	12,381	16,828	73.6%
5	2789	Proton-pump inhibitor products liability	D.N.J.	11,404	18,755	60.8%

Together the top five hold 131,713 pending actions. Two of them, talc and the proton-pump inhibitor docket, sit in the District of New Jersey, which is why that single district accounted for about 41 percent of all pending MDL actions in the September report.

The "pending as share of history" column is not something the JPML prints, but it is a useful derived figure. A docket where almost every case ever filed is still open, as in talc and hernia mesh, is one where very little has yet been resolved by dismissal, remand or settlement. A docket where the share has fallen well below 100 percent, as in proton-pump inhibitors at about 61 percent, has already shed a large volume of cases through some combination of settlement, voluntary dismissal and orders enforcing case-specific requirements.

Talc's size reflects its procedural history rather than recent filing velocity. The docket added only 90 actions between the September and October reports (69,250 to 69,340), after adding 336 the month before. Johnson & Johnson announced a proposed $5.5 billion resolution of roughly 76,000 ovarian cancer talc claims on 27 July 2026, and a pending settlement process of that kind tends to slow new federal filings, because claimants and their counsel wait to see the participation terms before paying to file.

Which MDLs grew the most between September and October 2026?

Among the major personal injury dockets for which both months' figures can be verified, Uber's sexual assault MDL grew the most between September and October 2026, adding 328 pending actions. Hair relaxer was second with 252. Talc added 90, Depo-Provera nine, and the GLP-1 docket three.

MDL No.	Litigation	Pending 1 Sept 2026	Pending 1 Oct 2026	Change	Procedural stage in October 2026
3084	Uber passenger sexual assault	4,588	4,916	+328	Third federal bellwether settled 2 Oct 2026
3060	Hair relaxer	12,129	12,381	+252	First bellwether trial set for 7 Sept 2027; Rule 702 motion undecided
2738	J&J talc	69,250	69,340	+90	Proposed $5.5 billion ovarian settlement announced 27 July 2026
3140	Depo-Provera	6,403	6,412	+9	Master settlement signed 21 July 2026; registration expected November 2026
3094	GLP-1 receptor agonists	4,022	4,025	+3	Rule 702 general causation hearing held 10–18 Sept 2026; ruling pending

Three different stories sit behind that table. The first is a litigation still in active intake, where trials and verdicts are generating publicity and the claimant pool is not yet capped by any program (Uber, hair relaxer). The second is a docket where a settlement framework exists, so the economics of filing a new federal case have changed (talc, Depo-Provera). The third is a docket frozen by a gatekeeping ruling that could end it (GLP-1). Monthly MDL case counts are best read with that procedural stage in mind; a raw increase means little without it.

How many Uber sexual assault lawsuits are pending in MDL 3084?

The JPML's 1 October 2026 report lists 4,916 pending actions in MDL No. 3084, In re: Uber Technologies, Inc., Passenger Sexual Assault Litigation, before Judge Charles R. Breyer in the Northern District of California, out of 5,221 filed since the docket was created. That is up from 4,588 on 1 September 2026.

The 328-case jump is well above September's gain of 191, and it arrived in a month in which the litigation was unusually visible. A third federal bellwether, Jane Doe QLF 001, was set for trial in the Western District of Texas with Judge Breyer presiding; a jury was seated days before the scheduled openings, and the case settled on confidential terms, announced on 2 October 2026, before opening statements set for 5 October. Uber had stipulated during jury selection that it would not contest that the 2020 assault occurred.

Two earlier federal bellwethers produced verdicts that bracket the docket's valuation problem: $8.5 million for the plaintiff in the Dean trial in February 2026 and $5,000 in the Mensing trial on 20 April 2026. Uber told the court in late July 2026 that 972 federal claims and 379 California state-court claims were subject to pending settlement agreements. No global settlement has been announced.

Two cautions apply to the Uber count. First, cases subject to an inventory settlement stay "pending" on the JPML report until they are actually dismissed, so the 4,916 figure includes claims that may already be resolved on paper. Second, a large number of Uber claims are pending in the California Judicial Council Coordination Proceeding rather than the federal MDL, and the JPML report does not count them at all.

How many Depo-Provera lawsuits are pending in October 2026?

MDL No. 3140, In re: Depo-Provera (Depot Medroxyprogesterone Acetate) Products Liability Litigation, in the Northern District of Florida, held 6,412 pending actions on 1 October 2026, out of 6,524 filed. The docket grew by only nine cases in the month, after adding 109 between August and September.

The slowdown has a clear cause. Pfizer and MDL plaintiffs' leadership announced a settlement in principle on 15 June 2026 covering a majority of meningioma claims in the federal MDL and in New York state court, and a Master Settlement Agreement followed on 21 July 2026. Terms are confidential. Published reports say registration is expected to open in November 2026 and that the parties estimate roughly 80 percent of eligible plaintiffs will qualify to participate. No public claim form, payment formula or claims administrator had been announced as of early October.

When a docket moves from litigation to a settlement program, new federal filings typically slow sharply. Counsel holding unfiled inventory often has more reason to register those claims under the program than to pay filing fees and serve complaints in the MDL. The nine-case gain should therefore not be read as a collapse in claimant interest; it reflects where the Depo-Provera claims now go.

How many Ozempic and GLP-1 lawsuits are pending?

The JPML's 1 October 2026 report lists 4,025 pending actions in MDL No. 3094, In re: Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists (GLP-1 RAs) Products Liability Litigation, in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, out of 4,139 filed. That is three more than the 4,022 recorded on 1 September 2026, when the docket crossed 4,000 for the first time.

The flat line follows the general causation hearing. Judge Karen Spencer Marston reserved 10 to 18 September 2026 for a Rule 702 hearing on whether the plaintiffs' experts may testify that the drugs cause gastroparesis and related gastrointestinal injuries, and she took the issue under advisement without ruling from the bench. She had already held, in August 2025, that a gastroparesis claim requires a gastric emptying study performed at the time of diagnosis, which screens out a share of potential claims before any causation question arises.

A plaintiff-side firm deciding whether to file another Ozempic or Wegovy gastrointestinal case in October 2026 is placing a bet on that ruling. If the court excludes the general causation experts, the docket faces the same fate as Zantac (MDL 2924), where the exclusion of all general causation experts in December 2022 led to summary judgment against roughly 50,000 federal claims. If the experts survive, filings can be expected to resume. Separate vision-loss claims are in a different docket, MDL No. 3163, and are not affected by the gastrointestinal Daubert Challenge.

How many hair relaxer lawsuits are pending in October 2026?

There were 12,381 pending actions in MDL No. 3060, In re: Hair Relaxer Marketing, Sales Practices, and Products Liability Litigation, before Judge Mary M. Rowland in the Northern District of Illinois, on 1 October 2026, out of 16,828 filed. The docket gained 252 cases in the month, after leading all MDLs with a gain of 350 in September.

On 24 September 2026, the court set the first Bellwether Trial in the MDL to begin on 7 September 2027 and scheduled eight monthly case management conferences ahead of it. The defendants' joint Rule 702 motion to exclude the plaintiffs' general causation experts has been fully briefed since June 2026 and remains undecided. Separately, Arizona sued L'Oréal USA and SoftSheen-Carson in Maricopa County in September 2026 over cancer warnings on relaxer products, the first state enforcement action in the litigation.

Hair relaxer's ratio of pending to historical actions, about 74 percent, is lower than the talc or hernia mesh dockets. The difference of roughly 4,450 cases between the history total and the pending count reflects cases that have left the MDL, whether by voluntary dismissal, dismissal for failure to meet case-specific requirements, or other exit.

Paraquat, Bard PowerPort and Suboxone: the second tier

Below the top five sit several dockets that drive much of the current trial and settlement activity.

Paraquat (MDL 3004). The In re: Paraquat Products Liability Litigation docket, before Chief Judge Nancy J. Rosenstengel in the Southern District of Illinois, lists 6,602 pending actions out of 8,495 filed since 2021. Syngenta and Chevron signed a Master Settlement Agreement with co-lead counsel in September 2025, and more than 900 plaintiffs have since rejected individual offers. Those holdouts face limited discovery under orders the court entered in June 2026, and they still face the April 2024 exclusion of the plaintiffs' only general causation expert. The gap of nearly 1,900 between filed and pending cases reflects claims that have already left the docket.

Bard implanted port catheters (MDL 3081). The In re: Bard Implanted Port Catheter Products Liability Litigation docket, before Judge David G. Campbell in the District of Arizona, has 4,140 pending actions out of 4,420 filed. On 4 September 2026, a jury in the Divelbliss bellwether awarded $40 million in compensatory damages on negligent design defect and failure-to-warn theories, the first plaintiff verdict in the MDL, after the first bellwether ended in a defense verdict. The jury rejected the manufacturing-defect and fraudulent concealment claims and awarded no punitive damages. The next bellwether, an infection case from Florida, is set for trial on 13 October 2026.

Suboxone film (MDL 3092). The In re: Suboxone (Buprenorphine/Naloxone) Film Products Liability Litigation docket, before Judge J. Philip Calabrese in the Northern District of Ohio, lists 2,022 pending actions out of 2,112 filed. The JPML count likely understates the litigation. Published reports describe more than 11,000 claims associated with the Suboxone litigation, several times the federal action count; if those reports are accurate, a large body of claims is being held outside the federal docket rather than filed as separate actions. Reports put the first bellwether trial around March 2028.

The Suboxone gap shows a general limit of the JPML report: it counts actions on the federal docket, not claimants. Where an MDL uses a Census Registry, tolling agreements, or multi-plaintiff complaints, the JPML number can be a fraction of the true inventory.

MDL No.	Litigation	Judge	Pending 1 Oct 2026	History total	Next event
3004	Paraquat	Chief Judge Nancy J. Rosenstengel (S.D. Ill.)	6,602	8,495	Holdout discovery; possible return to bellwether trials
3140	Depo-Provera	N.D. Fla.	6,412	6,524	Settlement registration, November 2026
3084	Uber sexual assault	Judge Charles R. Breyer (N.D. Cal.)	4,916	5,221	Further bellwether settings
3081	Bard implanted port catheter	Judge David G. Campbell (D. Ariz.)	4,140	4,420	Infection-case bellwether, 13 October 2026
3094	GLP-1 RAs	Judge Karen Spencer Marston (E.D. Pa.)	4,025	4,139	Rule 702 ruling on general causation
3092	Suboxone film	Judge J. Philip Calabrese (N.D. Ohio)	2,022	2,112	Bellwether pool narrowing

How many cases are pending in federal MDLs in October 2026?

The 1 October 2026 JPML report lists 162 pending MDL dockets before 141 transferee judges in 50 districts. The most recent verified national total is 206,182 pending actions, from the 1 September 2026 report, when 166 dockets were open; an aggregate total for October could not be verified from the sources available to this desk at publication.

The monthly direction of travel, however, is clear from the docket-level data. Among the dockets that matter most to the personal injury bar, the five tracked month on month above added a combined 682 actions between the two reports, driven almost entirely by Uber and hair relaxer. Even without an aggregate October total, that combined increase alone is larger than the 642 net gain the whole system recorded the month before.

The fall from 166 to 162 dockets is the other national signal. The JPML terminates an MDL when the transferee court has completed its work, typically after a global settlement has been administered or the remaining cases have been remanded to their original districts. September's report had added five new MDLs and terminated one. October shows the reverse pattern, with closures outrunning any new centralizations reflected in that month's count.

Where the cases sit: age and geography of the big dockets

Size alone hides how old most of the large dockets are. The table below sets each major docket's October count against the year the JPML centralized it, using the year embedded in each MDL's docket number or its transfer order.

MDL No.	Litigation	Centralized	Pending 1 Oct 2026	Approximate age
2738	J&J talc	2016	69,340	10 years
2789	Proton-pump inhibitors	2017	11,404	9 years
2846	Bard/Davol hernia mesh	2018	23,324	8 years
2873	AFFF	2018	15,264	8 years
3004	Paraquat	2021	6,602	5 years
3060	Hair relaxer	6 Feb 2023	12,381	3 years 8 months
3081	Bard implanted port catheter	2023	4,140	about 3 years
3084	Uber sexual assault	4 Oct 2023	4,916	3 years
3094	GLP-1 RAs	2 Feb 2024	4,025	2 years 8 months
3140	Depo-Provera	Feb 2025	6,412	1 year 8 months

Four of the five largest dockets are eight or more years old. The federal MDL system's caseload is dominated by litigations that have already run through years of bellwether trials, gatekeeping rulings and settlement negotiations, while the dockets now attracting most new filings (Uber, hair relaxer, Depo-Provera, GLP-1) are each under four years old and hold between 4,000 and 12,400 actions. The GLP-1 docket is the clearest example of fast growth: it was centralized with 55 actions in February 2024 and reached 4,025 in October 2026.

Geography is just as concentrated. The District of New Jersey hosts both talc and proton-pump inhibitors, which together hold more than 80,000 pending actions, and accounted for about 41 percent of every pending MDL action in the September report. The Southern District of Ohio (hernia mesh), the District of South Carolina (AFFF) and the Northern District of Illinois (hair relaxer) follow. For defense counsel, that concentration means a handful of transferee judges control the case management, Rule 702 and bellwether decisions that will set values for most of the federal mass tort caseload.

How to read the JPML report: pending actions versus history

The actions-pending report has two numeric columns for each docket, and they answer different questions.

Actions pending is the number of civil actions on the MDL's docket that have not been terminated as of the report date. It includes cases that have settled but not yet been dismissed, cases on inactive dockets, and cases stayed pending a ruling. It excludes cases remanded to their original courts, cases dismissed, and claims that were never filed as federal actions.

History total is the cumulative number of actions that have ever been part of the MDL, whether transferred in by the panel, filed directly in the transferee court under a direct-filing order, or added as tag-along actions. The difference between the two columns shows how many cases have left.

Practitioners use the report for three main purposes:

1. Sizing an inventory. A firm evaluating whether to enter a mass tort compares the pending count with the expected settlement matrix to estimate the total value pool and its own likely share.
2. Tracking momentum. Month-on-month changes show whether filing activity is accelerating (often after verdicts, advertising campaigns or a favorable gatekeeping ruling) or stalling (after an adverse Rule 702 ruling or the opening of a settlement program).
3. Gauging docket health. A shrinking share of pending to history, without a settlement, can indicate that a Lone Pine Order, Plaintiff Fact Sheet (PFS) deficiencies, or summary judgment is clearing cases out.

The JPML report counts actions, not people. A single multi-plaintiff complaint counts once. Claims preserved through a tolling agreement or a registry do not appear at all. State-court coordinated proceedings, such as California's JCCPs, New Jersey's multicounty litigation, Pennsylvania's Philadelphia Complex Litigation Center, and the Delaware Superior Court, are entirely outside the count. For dockets like Uber, talc, Suboxone and paraquat, which have large state-court or registry components, the federal number is a floor, not a total.

Does a rising MDL case count mean a settlement is coming?

No. A rising MDL case count means more actions were filed or transferred than were closed; it does not mean liability has been established, that any defendant has agreed to pay, or that a settlement is near. In several dockets the relationship runs the other way: once a global settlement framework is announced, as in Depo-Provera, new federal filings slow because claimants are routed into the program instead.

What a rising count does signal is that plaintiffs' firms are still willing to spend money filing cases. Each new federal action carries a filing fee, service costs, and in many MDLs the obligation to serve a plaintiff fact sheet with medical records within a set deadline. Firms generally do not take on those costs unless they believe the docket has value. Monthly MDL statistics are therefore a lagging indicator of the plaintiffs' bar's collective view of a litigation, shaped by verdicts, Rule 702 rulings, advertising spend and the availability of Third-Party Litigation Funding.

The October data illustrates the point. The Uber docket grew fastest in the month its bellwether settled on confidential terms, after one large plaintiff verdict and one very small one. Hair relaxer kept growing even though its first trial is eleven months away and its general causation motion is undecided. GLP-1 stopped growing while its Rule 702 ruling is pending. None of those patterns says anything about whether or when a Global Settlement will come.

What MDL statistics October 2026 mean for practitioners

For personal injury firms

The October MDL statistics favor caution about entering dockets on the strength of headline size alone. Talc is enormous, but its value is now governed by the terms of a proposed resolution rather than by new filings. Depo-Provera has moved into a settlement program in which timely registration and complete records matter more than adding volume. GLP-1 carries binary Rule 702 risk until Judge Marston rules. The dockets still in open intake, Uber and hair relaxer, are also those where trial outcomes have been the most variable, so case selection and record development carry more weight than inventory size.

Firms carrying Uber inventory should note that the federal count now includes nearly 1,000 claims that were subject to pending settlement agreements as of July 2026. Per-case value assumptions built on the total docket may therefore overstate what remains to be resolved through trial or a global deal.

For litigation funders and lenders

Funders underwriting portfolios against JPML counts should adjust for three distortions: registry and tolling inventories that the federal number omits (Suboxone is the clearest example), settled-but-not-dismissed cases that inflate pending counts (Uber, paraquat), and state-court dockets that may hold as many claims as the MDL. A funder pricing exposure to a docket stalled at a Rule 702 decision, such as GLP-1, is effectively pricing a single ruling.

For defendants and their insurers

The narrowing to 162 dockets concentrates exposure. Defendants in the top-five dockets face inventories in five figures that move slowly in either direction, while defendants in mid-sized, fast-growing dockets face the steepest short-term change. For insurers, the gap between the pending count and the history total is a rough measure of how much of a docket's eventual cost has already been resolved and how much remains open.

For arbitration and mass-claims counsel

The JPML report covers only court filings. Claims that companies have routed into Mass Arbitration through consumer contracts appear nowhere in it, and some consumer mass arbitrations now rival a mid-sized MDL in claimant count: a campaign over Google Assistant recordings involved more than 69,000 claimants, and a federal court in Illinois once ordered Samsung to pay about $4 million in American Arbitration Association (AAA) fees for more than 35,000 biometric privacy claimants. Counsel comparing the economics of the two forums should treat the JPML figures as half of the picture for any product or service sold under an Arbitration Agreement.

Methodology and limits of this analysis

All per-docket figures for 1 October 2026 come from the JPML's MDL statistics report of that date. The September comparisons come from the JPML's 1 September 2026 report, as reported by the sources listed with this article and in this site's earlier coverage. Monthly changes are simple subtraction. Pending-to-history percentages are calculated by this desk and do not appear in the JPML report.

Figures this desk could not verify against two independent sources were left out, including an October national pending total and October counts for several smaller dockets. Where the federal count is known to understate a litigation (registries, state coordinated proceedings, settled but undismissed cases), the article says so rather than adjusting the number.

FAQ

What is the largest MDL in October 2026?

The Johnson & Johnson talcum powder litigation, MDL No. 2738 in the District of New Jersey, with 69,340 pending actions in the JPML's 1 October 2026 report. The Bard/Davol hernia mesh MDL is second with 23,324.

How many MDLs are pending in October 2026?

The 1 October 2026 JPML report lists 162 pending MDL dockets before 141 judges in 50 federal districts, down from 166 dockets on 1 September 2026.

How many Uber sexual assault lawsuits are pending in MDL 3084?

4,916 pending actions as of 1 October 2026, up 328 from 4,588 a month earlier, out of 5,221 filed in the docket's history.

How many Depo-Provera lawsuits are pending in October 2026?

6,412 pending actions in MDL No. 3140 as of 1 October 2026, nine more than in September, as claims move toward a settlement program expected to open for registration in November 2026.

How many Ozempic and GLP-1 lawsuits are pending?

4,025 pending actions in MDL No. 3094 as of 1 October 2026, essentially unchanged from 4,022 in September while Judge Karen Spencer Marston decides the Rule 702 general causation challenge.

Does a rising MDL case count mean a settlement is coming?

No. A higher count shows that more cases were filed than closed; it says nothing about liability or settlement timing, and dockets often slow once a settlement program is announced.