In large mass torts, thousands of potential claimants may retain counsel before the case is fully developed, and filing every one of those claims immediately would flood the court with premature or duplicative complaints. A tolling agreement between plaintiffs' counsel and the defendant pauses the running of the statute of limitations for those claims for an agreed period, so counsel can wait for the litigation to mature without risking a time-bar defense.

Tolling agreements benefit both sides: plaintiffs avoid a rush to file weak or undeveloped claims, and defendants avoid a wave of premature filings while still getting visibility into the true size of the claimant pool, often as part of the same registry or census process used to size settlement exposure.

Juricratic treats an active tolling agreement as removing statute-of-limitations risk from a claimant's simulated case entirely for its duration, distinguishing it from equitable tolling, which is a doctrine courts apply after the fact rather than a negotiated contractual pause agreed to in advance.

Plaintiffs' firms negotiate mass tort tolling agreements early to protect large blocks of retained but unfiled claims, while defense counsel use them to control the pace and administrative burden of new filings and to gain census-quality data on the claimant pool in exchange.