SAN FRANCISCO — U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of the Northern District of California on Wednesday yielded to calls in a mass tort against Monsanto Co. to appoint a six-attorney leadership team that he initially called “ridiculously bloated.”
At the start of a more than hourlong hearing, Chhabria, a novice to multidistrict litigation, made plain his skepticism about plaintiffs’ proposal to appoint three co-lead attorneys and another three who would round out an “executive committee” in the MDL proceedings. They have also proposed appointing two “liaison counsel” who could coordinate between state and federal proceedings, among other things.
