A mass tort is a civil action involving numerous plaintiffs against one or a few corporate defendants. The tort may involve, for example, personal injuries suffered by numerous plaintiffs as a result of a defective product, or a mass disaster in which there were many injured persons, such as an airplane crash, or exposure of a large group of people to toxic chemicals or pharmaceuticals.
Desert Center, in Riverside County, California, is an unincorporated town (pop. 150) located in the Colorado Desert of Southern California, mid way between the cities of Indio and Blythe at the junction of Interstate 10 and State Route 177 (Desert Center-Rice Road). In the vicinity of Desert Center are the Chuckwalla Mountains, Corn Springs, Eagle Mountain (a former Kaiser iron mine) and Chiriaco Summit. The ZIP Code is 92239, and the community is inside area code 760.