Opinion ID: 4553695
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Nunez’s Arguments

Text: Nunez’s arguments against disgorgement are not persuasive. He chieﬂy argues that his situation is unlike Buckley and Sweeney’s because he was settling both his objection to the Pearson II settlement and his own Nunez action in California. If Nunez were right, he might be entitled to a more precise accounting of his settlement proceeds that reﬂects the value of any individual claim he might have been asserting. See Safeco Ins. Co. of America v. AIG, Inc., 710 F.3d 754, 757 (7th Cir. 2013) (approving objector side deal where only objector’s individual claims were settled), discussed further in Pearson II, 893 F.3d at 985–86; compare Young, 324 U.S. at 209 (“The appeal here . . . was not from a denial of any individual claim of 14 No. 19-3095 Potts and Boag.”), 214 (Potts and Boag liable to account only for “money paid in excess of the stock value”). The problem for Nunez is that the value of the Nunez action at the time it was settled was zero. Nunez was himself a member of the Pearson class. His opportunity to opt out had already passed when he ﬁled his objection to the Pearson II settlement. By settling that objection, Nunez ensured the Pearson II settlement would ﬁnally bind him just as it bound every other class member. Maintaining Nunez thereafter would have been sanctionably frivolous. In any event, after the Pearson II settlement, securing dismissal with prejudice of Nunez required only that defendants take the basically ministerial steps of pleading accord and satisfaction and moving for judgment on the pleadings. See Walton v. United Consumers Club, Inc., 786 F.2d 303, 306–07 (7th Cir. 1986). Nunez’s argument that he was leveraging the class’s claims to settle his own worthless case for $60,000 impairs rather than improves his position. Nunez argues further that we have “no jurisdiction” to interfere with his settlement of Nunez. It is not clear what kind of jurisdiction he supposes us to lack but the supposition is groundless. Nunez brought these issues before this court in the ﬁrst instance by ﬁling his objection and appealing its denial. Under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 42(b), we had (but regrettably did not exercise) authority to scrutinize Nunez’s dismissal of his appeal. See Pearson II, 893 F.3d at 987. And the district court had jurisdiction to decide whether that dismissal was part of a “class sellout.” Id. at 986. If Nunez had wanted to avoid this scrutiny, he might have settled Nunez as the entirely separate concern he now insists it was. We have already suggested the likely reason he did not do so: after the No. 19-3095 15 Pearson II settlement, the Nunez case was a dead letter, so Nunez’s only settlement leverage, like Buckley and Sweeney’s, was the value of being a nuisance, getting in the way of defendants’ and other plaintiﬀs’ desires to put Pearson itself to rest.