Opinion ID: 2213625
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Validity of Consent Decree.

Text: At the outset, we consider plaintiff's contention that the consent decree so violates public policy that the court should have declined to enforce its provisions. Plaintiff argues that, although the parties gave the transaction the title of Consent Judgment and Order of Permanent Injunction, the decree was not a legal determination but rather merely a prize in a contest where the court's power to render judgment and approve the matter was delegated to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Such delegation of judicial power, plaintiff urges, is so violative of public policy that the court should refuse to enforce the decree. We have said that a judgment by consent is, in substance, a contract of record made by the parties and approved by the court, and it is not a judicial determination of any litigated right. Timmons v. Holmes, 249 Iowa 888, 890, 89 N.W.2d 371, 372 (1958). Thus, we believe that a court's role in approving a consent decree involves a determination of whether the provisions upon which the parties have agreed constitute an appropriate and legally approved method of disposing of the contested issues in the litigation. It is not necessary in order to uphold the validity of a consent decree that the solutions therein contained be those the court itself would have adopted if it were adjudicating the controversy. The consent decree at issue in the present case was not entered until the parties were well into the litigation to which it related. The court file already contained more than nine volumes of legal-size paper numbering more than fifteen hundred pages. As a result of the court's determination of the parties' motions for summary judgment, it was fully aware that the case carried a potential for an exceedingly lengthy and difficult trial. The controversy involved a conflict between the deeply held convictions of two factions within an educational movement. The conflict had grown to involve students at Maharishi International University whose future education could have been adversely affected by the continuation of the litigation. Viewed in this light, we cannot fault the court's willingness to adopt a solution to the conflict which the parties themselves had worked out in arm's length negotiations. The court did perhaps go too far in one respect. We do not approve its action in agreeing to interpret the Maharishi's answers to the proffered questions. This, we believe, went beyond the role which the court should have assumed in approving a consent decree. But our disapproval of such action, taken prior to the entry of the decree, does not require us to hold that the decree itself was contrary to public policy. Plaintiff at no time has contended that the court misinterpreted the Maharishi's responses to the four questions. It also has never contended that the decree was other than that to which it agreed in the event that the Maharishi's responses were as they turned out to be. The decree was therefore that which plaintiff was willing to accept given the realities of the situation which confronted it. We are not convinced that the decree itself is violative of public policy in the manner in which it disposes of the controverted issues within the litigation. The University, as one of the defendants in that litigation, was threatened with future disruption of its educational processes by plaintiff's activities. It realized that this circumstance probably would not give rise to an adequate remedy at law. Accordingly, the granting of injunctive relief on its counterclaim does not appear to have been inappropriate. Given this circumstance, plaintiff has failed to demonstrate that the provisions for indemnification of the University against expenses incurred in enforcing the injunctive provisions of the decree are violative of public policy. The district court did not act illegally or beyond its jurisdiction in enforcing the decree according to its terms over plaintiff's objections on public policy grounds.