A settlement covering most of a docket leaves a remainder, and on August 10, 2026 the Depo-Provera court entered a separate order about it. Case Management Order No. 14 stays nearly everything else in the MDL while the settlement program is implemented, and then defines — in terms rather than in generalities — which plaintiffs are still litigating. Two of those definitions turn on nothing about the medicine: one on the date a case was commenced, and one on how long after the last injection the meningioma was diagnosed. For anyone in those groups, the order also imposes an immediate and enforceable duty to send written preservation notices to every treating and prescribing provider, on a 60-day clock, with dismissal with prejudice at the end of the escalation ladder.
Six labels, and why they matter
The order opens by naming the groups it applies to. The vocabulary is administrative, but each label describes a real person with a real reason for being outside the program.
- Non-Settling Plaintiffs — people with cases pending in the MDL who are eligible for the settlement program but do not participate. The settlement administrator tells the court the date on which an eligible plaintiff became one.
- Ineligible Plaintiffs — people with pending cases who are not eligible or permitted to participate, other than the two groups below. Here too the settlement administrator informs the court once the determination is made.
- Limitations Plaintiffs — people who are not eligible because of the date on which they commenced their action.
- Latency Plaintiffs — people who are not eligible because of the timing of the meningioma diagnosis relative to their last use of the medication.
- Future Filed Plaintiffs — people whose cases are filed, refiled, removed or transferred into the court after August 10, 2026, excluding those who file on the administrative docket solely to participate in the settlement.
- Litigating Plaintiffs — the working category the order actually governs: the non-settling plaintiffs, the ineligible plaintiffs who are not limitations or latency plaintiffs, and the future filed plaintiffs. Pro se plaintiffs are bound the same way.
The two definitions to sit with are the last two in the middle of that list. A claim can be outside the settlement for a reason that has nothing to do with whether the medication caused anything — because of when the lawsuit was filed, or because of the gap between the last injection and the diagnosis. Neither is a judgment about the merits. Both are lines drawn in a private agreement.
The administrative docket, and a date in June
The court agreed to open a no-filing-fee administrative docket so that people whose only purpose in filing is to join the settlement program are not charged to do it. Access to it is narrow. Only plaintiffs who both signed an engagement letter with counsel to pursue the claim on or before June 11, 2026 and are eligible for the settlement program may file there. If the settlement administrator determines that someone on the administrative docket does not meet those criteria, the complaint is transferred to the active docket.
That June 11 date is worth noticing. It is four days before the settlement was announced, and it functions as a cutoff: representation begun after it does not reach the fee-free docket. Defendants are not required to respond to complaints filed there at all, unless and until a case is transferred to the active docket.
Everything else is stayed
With the settlement program consuming the parties’ effort, the court stayed all proceedings in the MDL except for four things: the obligations this order itself imposes, the proceedings in the three pilot cases, the threshold proof-of-use and injury obligations that apply to limitations and latency plaintiffs under the earlier pretrial orders, and whatever future orders establish. The stay runs until the court lifts it.
A stay is not a pause on the deadlines that fall on the people inside it. It is a pause on everything else.
The preservation notice duty
The order’s operative requirement is one that patients themselves often ask about long before a court raises it: making sure the records still exist. Counsel for every litigating plaintiff — and every pro se litigating plaintiff — must notify, in hard copy by certified mail or another method that proves receipt, that records must be preserved pending collection. The list of recipients is specific:
- Every physician or other healthcare provider who treated the plaintiff for any reason, or who prescribed the medication.
- Where lost wages are claimed, every employer from three years before the first day of claimed lost wages through the last day claimed.
- Where lost wages are claimed, every tax preparer or advisor over that same period.
The deadline is 60 days — after becoming a non-settling plaintiff, after the settlement administrator determines ineligibility, or after a future filed case arrives in the court. By that same deadline, counsel must serve a statement listing every recipient, with copies of the notices and a signed certification that they were sent, and must keep copies for as long as the case is pending.
What happens if the notices do not go out
The escalation is spelled out. A deficiency notice goes out through the litigation’s filing system with a copy to the court. The court then orders the deficiency cured within 30 days — a cure period available only to plaintiffs who already took timely steps to comply, expressly not an automatic extension. If it is still not cured, a show cause order follows, and if that goes unanswered the case is dismissed with prejudice.
There is an evidentiary consequence too, and it is the one that would hurt a trial. A litigating plaintiff may not introduce any document or information from a physician, other healthcare provider, employer or tax preparer that was never sent a preservation notice. A case can survive the procedure and still lose the records that would have proved it.
None of this is work for the client to do. It is work for counsel, on a clock that starts without asking. But it is a useful reminder of what this litigation runs on: the clinic chart, the imaging report, the pharmacy history and the dates — which is why the advice to keep every disc, portal login and explanation-of-benefits letter is not filler.
This article is general information about how these cases work. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney-client relationship, and no two claims are alike. If something here sounds like your situation, the useful next step is a conversation about the facts.
