Market briefs · Mass Tort Ad Agency

Hair relaxer: what a signed case costs, and the November ruling that decides the tort

Nearly 12,000 pending cases, no trial, no verdict, no settlement. Everything in MDL 3060 turns on a general-causation ruling due in November. Here is what claimant acquisition costs this week and what a firm entering now is actually betting on.

Figures computed Jul 23, 2026 08:02 UTC · Brief reviewed Jul 23, 2026 · MDL 3060 (N.D. Ill.) · Judge Mary M. Rowland

01The read

Three and a half years in, MDL 3060 has produced no trial, no verdict, and no settlement — individual or global. That is not drift. It is a court front-loading the scientific question. Judge Rowland held Science Day in January, took bellwether selection away from the parties in April and picked all ten trial-track cases herself, and set general-causation Daubert and summary judgment briefing to close November 16, 2026.

That date is the tort. If plaintiffs' general-causation experts survive it, roughly 11,900 pending federal cases acquire a settlement value and the Special Master who has been in place since April 2025 finally has something to negotiate over. If they do not, the litigation ends the way acetaminophen ended — the cautionary parallel every operator in this tort should be holding in mind.

So the posture is the inverse of social media addiction. There, defendants are paying to stay away from juries and the open question is what a case is worth. Here, nobody has paid anything, and the open question is whether there is a case at all.

02Acquisition economics

Computed from live Meta campaign delivery across MTAA-managed accounts. Figures refresh daily and will not match what you read here in a month.

Cost per signed case here runs several times the social media addiction figure. Part of that is a narrower qualified population — this claim needs a specific cancer diagnosis, not a mental health history. Part of it is that the tort has been marketed hard since 2023, so the easily reachable claimants were reached years ago. A firm entering now is buying into a picked-over pool at a late-cycle price, before the science risk has cleared.

03Docket scoreboard

04Filing velocity

Pending actions in MDL 3060, from JPML reports. Filings are still rising, which tells you other firms are buying inventory ahead of the Daubert ruling rather than waiting for it. Whether that is conviction or sunk cost is a fair question, and worth asking before matching their pace.

05Qualification standard

What MTAA screens for before a lead is delivered as a qualified claimant:

• Diagnosed uterine cancer, endometrial cancer, or ovarian cancer. Uterine fibroids requiring hysterectomy are pled in the MDL but carry materially weaker value.
• Regular relaxer use over a sustained period — the working standard is at least a year, and frequency matters more than duration alone.
• Identifiable product or brand family: Dark and Lovely, Just for Me, Optimum Care, Olive Oil, Soft & Beautiful, ORS, and comparable lines.
• Pathology confirming diagnosis and date, with documented usage predating diagnosis.
• No prior representation on the same claim.

Exposure proof here rests on consumer recall, not on prescription or implant records. There is no pharmacy database to pull and no surgical report naming the product. That shifts the evidentiary burden onto lay witness development and makes per-case documentation heavier than a pharmaceutical tort of comparable size — a difference that shows up in intake staffing, not in the lead price.

Note also that the federal bellwether pool was limited to uterine, endometrial, and ovarian cancer cases filed and served by February 1, 2024. New claimants are not bellwether candidates; they are inventory for whatever framework the bellwethers eventually produce.

06Risks

07Questions firms ask

What does a signed hair relaxer case cost to acquire right now?

MTAA-managed Meta campaigns are producing leads and signed cases at the costs shown above, measured over a trailing 30-day window and computed from live campaign delivery. Read the 30-day column rather than the 7-day, because signed-case attribution lags lead delivery by two to four weeks.

Should a firm enter this tort before the November Daubert ruling?

That is the entire question, and it is a risk-appetite call rather than a marketing one. Buying before the ruling means paying today's prices for cases that are worth either something or nothing depending on a single order. Waiting means competing for a picked-over pool at higher prices if the ruling goes for plaintiffs, and losing nothing if it does not. MTAA does not think there is a defensible general answer; there is only whether a given firm can absorb a total loss on the inventory it acquires between now and then.

Has the hair relaxer litigation settled?

No. There is no global settlement, no announced settlement framework, and no individual case has settled or gone to verdict. Special Master Ellen K. Reisman was appointed in April 2025 to coordinate settlement discussions across the MDL and parallel state proceedings, and those discussions have not produced a public framework.

Who qualifies for a hair relaxer claim?

The core profile is a diagnosis of uterine, endometrial, or ovarian cancer following sustained regular use of chemical relaxers, with pathology confirming the diagnosis and date and documented usage predating it. Uterine fibroids requiring hysterectomy are pled but carry materially weaker value. Proof of exposure depends on consumer recall rather than prescription records, which makes documentation heavier per case than in a comparable pharmaceutical tort.

When do the first hair relaxer trials start?

No trial date is set. Daubert and summary judgment motions are due November 16, 2026, with summary judgment replies due January 6, 2027, and first trials are expected mid-2027. That expectation is the parties' working assumption, not a court order, and it has already moved more than once.

How does hair relaxer compare to other torts on acquisition cost?

Cost per signed case here runs several times the figure for social media addiction on the same measurement basis. The comparison across every tort MTAA currently benchmarks is published on the brief index, and it is updated from live campaign delivery rather than quoted from a rate card.