The federal judge overseeing the testosterone products liability litigation is now deciding how to resolve a case management dispute that could delay the schedule for the first bellwether trials.

The judge is overseeing an agglomeration of hundreds of individual testosterone product lawsuits over testosterone side effects associated with testosterone replacement therapy, implicating products like AbbVie’s AndroGel.

In October 2014, the court ordered each plaintiff to fill out and submit a Plaintiff Fact Sheet, a 22-page form seeking detailed personal information that could be relevant to their claim. Information from the Plaintiff Fact Sheets will be used to determine which cases would be selected for the first few trials, known as bellwether trials.

Defendant AbbVie now seeks to extend the deadline for submitting the Plaintiff Fact Sheets, alleging that not enough plaintiffs have submitted them. As of May 1, out of 781 lawsuits filed against only AbbVie, only 303 Plaintiff Fact Sheets had been submitted. The deadline for submitting Plaintiff Fact Sheets was May 8.

The Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee replies that AbbVie is only trying “to unwind the bellwether trial schedule and delay, as much as possible, the pace and progress of this litigation.” The Committee states that over 92.5 percent of Plaintiff Fact Sheets were submitted by the May 8 deadline.

The schedule for bellwether trials was laid out in a November 2014 court order. The parties are tasked with proposing by October 2015 eight exemplary thromboembolism cases and eight cardiovascular injury cases. From these cases, the court will select three each from the thromboemb0lism and cardiovascular groups as the first bellwether cases. Trial dates in those six cases are scheduled from October 2016 through April 2017.

Generally, the plaintiffs in these testosterone lawsuits suffered cardiac and circulatory problems following testosterone replacement therapy. They are suing AbbVie and Abbott labs, makers of AndroGel, as well as other pharmaceutical manufacturers, alleging they failed to warn consumers and physicians about the dangerous side effects associated with testosterone replacement therapy.

AbbVie is getting particular scrutiny over a 2012 marketing campaign promoting AndroGel as a remedy for symptoms that are associated with the normal aging process in men. Plaintiffs allege AbbVie presented AndroGel as a lifestyle drug for men with no actual medical condition.

Multidistrict litigation (MDL) is a procedural device used by the federal court system to handle large numbers of individual lawsuits that have common issues and involve some of the same parties.

It’s frequently used in large-scale products liability litigation. Typically the court will select a handful of individual cases to try first as bellwether cases, to give the court and parties an idea of how the issues and evidence will play out. The outcome of bellwether cases is not binding on the other lawsuits in the MDL, but it does give the parties information they can use to negotiate settlement agreements.

The Testosterone Product Lawsuit MDL is In re: Testosterone Replacement Therapy Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2545, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.