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.
Parkersburg, located at the confluence of the Ohio and Little Kanawha Rivers, is the third largest city in the State of West Virginia. It is the county seat of Wood County and the largest city in the Parkersburg-Marietta-Vienna Metropolitan Statistical Area. The Bureau of the Public Debt, an agency of the U.S. Treasury Department, is headquartered in Parkersburg.