The Delaware County judge overseeing Pennsylvania’s opioid litigation has ordered that all fact discovery for the coordinated cases be completed by the end of the year. The Dec. 31 deadline, if met, would be the first step toward the court returning the scores of cases currently held in the county back to their home venues following years tied up in a nebulous discovery process.

Pennsylvania’s opioid litigation has proceeded slowly since the cases were coordinated before Judge Barry Dozor of the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas in 2018. Attorneys attribute the deliberate pace to the huge number of parties involved and the scale of the information they are seeking.