First-quarter filings in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas' mass tort program are up significantly from the previous year and indicate that 2015 will be another active year.

According to the court's most recent quarterly statistics, as of April, 406 new cases were filed. That number is a more than 29 percent increase over first-quarter numbers last year, which saw 314 new filings by the end of April and ended up closing with a total of 2,095 new cases being filed.

In the past few years, new filings for the mass tort program had been trending downward. But the closing total for 2014 represented a 158 percent increase over 2013, which saw only 813 new cases filed.