Law360, New York ( October 20, 2014, 3:33 PM EDT) -- In many mass tort litigations, where trying the claims of every plaintiff is impractical, courts and litigants have struggled with how to identify plaintiffs for early trials, often referred to as bellwether trials, that give the parties useful information about other plaintiffs in the docket. With some minor variations, courts generally either allow the parties to select cases they regard as representative, or the court (or parties) selects cases randomly, with the expectation that a random selection will more truly reflect the docket as a whole than party selections. Although the Manual For Complex Litigation endorses random selection,[1] courts in a number of recent mass tort litigations have allowed the parties to select plaintiffs who will be eligible for initial trials.[2]...