Future Conduct and the Limits of Class-Action Settlements

James Grimmelmann
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引用次数: 2

Abstract

*** This Article identifies a new and previously unrecognized trend in class-action settlements: releases for the defendant’s future conduct. Such releases, which hold the defendant harmless for wrongs it will commit in the future, are unusually dangerous to class members and to the public. Even more than the “future claims” familiar to class-action scholars, future-conduct releases pose severe informational problems for class members and for courts. Worse, they create moral hazard for the defendant, give it concentrated power, and thrust courts into a prospective planning role they are ill-equipped to handle. Courts should guard against the dangers of future-conduct releases with a standard and a rule. The standard is heightened scrutiny for all settlements containing such releases; the Article describes the warning signs courts must be alert to and the safeguards courts should insist on. The rule is parity of preclusion: a class-action settlement may release future-conduct claims if and only if they could have been lost in litigation. Parity of preclusion elegantly harmonizes a wide range of case law while directly addressing the normative problems with futureconduct releases. The Article concludes by applying its recommendations to seven actual future-conduct settlements, in each case yielding a better result or clearer explanation than the court was able to provide.
集体诉讼和解的未来行为和限制
***本文指出了集体诉讼和解中一个新的、以前未被认识到的趋势:释放被告未来的行为。这样的释放,使被告在将来犯下的错误不会受到伤害,对集体成员和公众来说是异常危险的。与集体诉讼学者所熟悉的“未来索赔”相比,未来行为释放对集体成员和法院构成了严重的信息问题。更糟糕的是,它们给被告带来了道德风险,赋予了被告集中的权力,并将法院推入了一个他们没有能力处理的前瞻性规划角色。法院应该用标准和规则来防范未来行为释放的危险。标准是加强对所有包含此类释放的和解协议的审查;本文阐述了法院必须警惕的警示信号和法院应坚持的保障措施。规则是对等的排除:当且仅当集体诉讼可能在诉讼中败诉时,集体诉讼和解可能会释放对未来行为的索赔。排除的对等性优雅地协调了广泛的判例法,同时直接解决了未来行为发布的规范性问题。最后,该条将其建议应用于七个实际的未来行为和解,在每个案例中都产生了比法院能够提供的更好的结果或更清晰的解释。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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