The Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas has maintained a dedicated asbestos litigation program since 1986, under the master caption In re: Asbestos Litigation, No. 1986-00001. Instead of scattering asbestos cases across the court’s general civil division, Philadelphia consolidates them into one coordinated docket with its own procedures. Michael C. Schafle, Esq. is counsel in that docket, and this page explains what it is and how a mesothelioma case moves through it.
What a dedicated asbestos docket is
Most civil courts treat an asbestos lawsuit like any other injury case: it gets a judge at random and waits its turn behind car accidents and contract disputes. Philadelphia took a different path. Since 1986, asbestos cases filed in the Court of Common Pleas have been gathered under a single master caption, In re: Asbestos Litigation, No. 1986-00001, and managed as a program within the court’s mass tort operation.
The consolidation exists because asbestos cases share so much: the same defendants appear again and again, the medical science is common across cases, and the same discovery disputes would otherwise be re-fought in every courtroom. A standing program lets the court resolve those recurring questions once and apply the answers consistently.
How a case moves through the program
The mechanics vary with the court’s current case management orders, but the shape of the path is consistent. A new case is filed into the master docket rather than as an isolated action. Discovery, the exchange of work histories, product identification evidence, and medical records, proceeds under standardized procedures the program has refined over decades. The court holds case management and settlement conferences along the way, and cases are organized into groups for trial listings rather than waiting for one-off scheduling.
For a family, the visible difference is rhythm. The case has a track and moves along it. Defendants who have litigated in this program for years know its expectations, which tends to concentrate everyone’s attention on the real questions: where the exposure happened, whose products were there, and what the disease has cost.
Why the docket matters for a mesothelioma patient
A coordinated program is built to keep cases from stalling, and one purpose of that structure is to move the cases of seriously ill plaintiffs toward resolution while they can still participate. That is a scheduling reality, not a promise about any outcome. But it is a meaningful difference from filing in a court that sees an asbestos case occasionally and has no standing machinery for it.
There is a second, quieter benefit. Because the program has processed the same defendants and the same products for decades, much of the groundwork that would otherwise be rebuilt in each case, corporate histories, prior discovery, recurring witnesses, already exists. A well-prepared plaintiff’s team can put that accumulated record to work instead of starting from a blank page.
Michael Schafle’s role in the docket
Michael C. Schafle, Esq. is counsel in In re: Asbestos Litigation, No. 1986-00001. He is a founding partner of Green & Schafle, LLC in Philadelphia, admitted in Pennsylvania since 2005 (PA Bar ID 94298, verifiable at the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania) and in New Jersey, and he began his career on the defense side, which means he has seen these cases built from both directions. In 2023 he resolved two multi-million-dollar mesothelioma settlements. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. He has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America annually since 2017 and in Pennsylvania Super Lawyers from 2021 through 2026, and he has served as named counsel in more than fourteen federal MDL mass tort litigations.
The reason this matters on a page about the docket is simple: the program has its own procedures, its own conference practice, and its own institutional memory. A lawyer who already works inside it does not spend your case learning it.
Do you have to live in Philadelphia to file there?
No. Venue depends on the defendants, not on your address. Under Pennsylvania’s venue rules, a corporation can generally be sued where it regularly conducts business, and many asbestos defendants regularly do business in Philadelphia. Workers exposed at plants, shipyards, and rail shops across the state have had their cases heard in the program when venue supported it. The rules themselves are explained in Pennsylvania asbestos laws, and the rest of the state framework is in the Pennsylvania asbestos law overview.
What this means for your family
If a Pennsylvania exposure is behind a mesothelioma diagnosis, there is a good chance the case belongs in this program, and the earlier it is evaluated the sooner it can be filed into a docket that is built to keep it moving.
To find out whether your case fits, start with a free case review.