After wrapping up three bellwether trials this summer over 3M’s dual-ended combat earplugs, a federal judge in Florida had prepared three more in the next five months. But that apparently wasn’t nearly enough: U.S. District Judge M. Casey Rodgers of the Northern District of Florida recently added five more bellwether trials, all set to be completed by the end of the year.

“I’m going to be entering a series of orders that are going to change the pace of things in this litigation, mainly because of the size of the litigation and my responsibility as the presiding judge over this massive MDL to move things along,” she told lawyers at an Aug. 20 status conference. “And nobody’s fault, but the bellwether process that we’ve been pursuing and the pace of the trials that have taken place is just not moving things quickly enough, in my mind.”