Court Opinion

ID: 9432906
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:36:44.246591+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:36.238110
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
with whom Justice Blackmun joins, dissenting.
When both parties to a case pending on appeal ask the appellate court to vacate the judgment entered by the trial court because they have settled their differences, should the court routinely take that action without first considering its effect on third parties? Subsumed within that question is the related question whether an affected third party should *35be allowed to intervene to object to the vacation of the judgment. In this case the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit answered both of those questions incorrectly.
Petitioner Izumi manufactures electric razors in Japan that it sells to American distributors, including Windmere and Sears Roebuck. It has indemnified those distributors against liability for patent or trade dress infringement. Respondent Philips is a competitor that has been engaged in protracted litigation with Izumi’s distributors. In a case filed by respondent in the Southern District of Florida, the trial court entered a judgment dismissing respondent’s trade dress claims and awarding Windmere $89,644,257 plus attorney’s fees, interest, and costs on an antitrust counterclaim. In a second case filed by respondent in the Northern District of Illinois, the District Court held that the Florida judgment collaterally estopped respondent from pursuing certain claims against Sears. Thereafter, respondent and Wind-mere settled their differences on terms that included a payment to Windmere of $57 million and Windmere’s agreement to join in a motion to vacate the Florida judgment.
Izumi was not a party to the settlement. Promptly after the settling parties filed their motion in the Federal Circuit, Izumi tried to object to the vacation of the Florida judgment. The court denied the motion on the ground that Izumi lacked standing, because it was not a party and its interest was insufficient to support intervention. The court then granted the motion to vacate. When that action was brought to the attention of the District Court in Illinois, it reinstated claims against Izumi’s indemnitee (Sears).
Izumi filed a petition for certiorari presenting a single question.1 The petition itself devoted an entire section to refuting the Federal Circuit’s argument that Izumi’s interest *36was too insignificant to justify intervention.2 In its brief in opposition, respondent argued that the intervention issue was not properly raised.3 After consideration of respondent’s arguments, we nevertheless decided to grant certiorari. We might, of course, have expressly directed the parties to argue the two questions separately, but it is now apparent that such direction was unnecessary because their briefs on the merits canvassed both issues.
The question whether Izumi should have been allowed to intervene in the Court of Appeals is a “subsidiary question fairly included” in the question presented, Rule 14.1(a), because the answer to the intervention question depends on the validity of the practice of routinely granting settling parties’ motions to vacate trial court judgments. For if that routine practice is proper, then there is no point in allowing intervention. On the other hand, if vacation should ever be denied because of the potential impact on third-party interests, it was error to deny intervention in this case.4 If routine vacation is improper, the Court of Appeals’ reasons for denying intervention were clearly insufficient. Izumi obviously had a stake in the outcome of the motion, because the vacation of the Florida judgment significantly increased the potential liability and litigation expenses of its indemnitee. The fact that Izumi was not a formal party to the case before it sought to intervene is irrelevant because the very purpose of intervention is to acquire the status of a party.
*37Even if I were to concede that the intervention question is not “fairly included” in the question presented, I would still think it inappropriate to dismiss the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted. In view of the fact that petitioner raised and discussed the issue in its petition for certiorari, the Court’s decision today rests purely on the technicality that the petition failed to frame a separate question to introduce this argument. Given the Court’s occasional practice of ordering parties to address questions they have not raised,5 it is ironic that the omission in this case should be given critical weight. Indeed, the Court’s decision punishes this technical error much more severely than it has ever punished similar violations. Until today, the Court had never dismissed a case because of a violation of Rule 14.1(a) or its predecessors.6
To justify its decision, the majority quotes Yee v. Escondido, 503 U. S. 519 (1992), for the proposition that Rule 14.1(a), although prudential, is disregarded ‘““only in the most exceptional cases,”’”7 ante, at 32. But the majority omits the very next words, which explain that it is proper to *38set aside the rule “where reasons of urgency or of economy suggest the need to address the unpresented question.” 503 U. S., at 535 (1992) (emphasis added). Judicial economy is not served by invoking prudential rules “after we have granted certiorari and the case has received plenary consideration on the merits. Our decision to grant certiorari represents a commitment of scarce judicial resources with a view to deciding the merits of one or more of the questions presented in the petition.” Oklahoma City v. Tuttle, 471 U. S. 808, 815-816 (1985) (emphasis in original). See also Canton v. Harris, 489 U. S. 378, 384 (1989). The Court recently used stronger language when it refused to dismiss a case on prudential grounds raised and rejected in the process of granting certiorari. The majority noted that the dissent
“proposes that — after briefing, argument, and full consideration of the issue by all the Justices of this Court— we now decline to entertain this petition for the same reason we originally rejected it, and that we dismiss it as improvidently granted. That would be improvident indeed. Our grant of certiorari was entirely in accord with our traditional practice, though even if it were not it would be imprudent (since there is no doubt that we have jurisdiction to entertain the case) to reverse course at this late stage.” United States v. Williams, 504 U. S. 36, 40 (1992).8
*39Our opinion in Yee explains why Rule 14.1(a) ordinarily bars consideration of unpresented questions. First, the rule provides notice and prevents surprise, thus ensuring full briefing; second, the rule allows the Court to select only cases which present important questions and to focus its attention on those questions. Yee, 503 U. S., at 535-536. Neither reason applies here. There was no surprise, because the intervention issue was raised in the petition for certiorari and in petitioner’s opening brief, and respondent argued the propriety of denying intervention at every opportunity. Nor did failure to use the word “intervention” in the “Question Presented” section of the petition for certiorari interfere with the efficient selection of cases for plenary review, since the Court was fully aware that the issue needed to be resolved in order to reach the vacation issue. It is not surprising that Yee's explanation of Rule 14.1(a) does not fit the circumstances of this case, because Rule 14.1(a) was never intended to provide the basis for dismissal, and, before today, was never used for that purpose.9
The Court today suggests an additional argument for strict enforcement of Rule 14.1(a), that “there would also be a natural tendency — to be consciously resisted, of course — to reverse the holding of the Court of Appeals on the intervention question in order that we could address the merits of the question on which we actually granted certiorari.” Ante, at 34. Reliance on such a flimsy argument underestimates the character and the quality of the Court’s decisional processes. Moreover, this argument overlooks the fact that the Court *40was aware of that temptation at the time certiorari was granted. Nothing has changed since then to suggest dismissal is now more appropriate.
On the merits, I am persuaded that the Federal Circuit’s routine practice is as objectionable as the practice we recently condemned in Cardinal Chemical Co. v. Morton International, Inc., 508 U. S. 83 (1993).10 While it is appropriate to vacate a judgment when mootness deprives the appellant of an opportunity for review, United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U. S. 36 (1950), that justification does not apply to mootness achieved by purchase. Judicial precedents are presumptively correct and valuable to the legal community as a whole. They are not merely the property of private litigants and should stand unless a court concludes that the public interest would be served by a vacatur.
Respondent argues that a policy of routinely vacating judgments whenever both parties so request will encourage settlement. It will, of course, affect the terms of some settlements negotiated while cases are pending on appeal, but there is no evidence that the number of settlements will be appreciably increased by such a policy. Indeed, the experience in California demonstrates that the contrary may well be true.11 Moreover, the facts of this case indicate that any *41benefit in the form of saving work for the appellate court will probably be offset by the added burdens imposed on trial courts in later proceedings. On the other hand, it seems evident that a regular practice of denying these motions unless supported by a showing of special circumstances will create added pressure to settle in advance of trial. The public interest in preserving the work product of the judicial system should always at least be weighed in the balance before such a motion is granted. I would therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

 “Should the United States Court of Appeals routinely vacate district court final judgments at the parties’ request when cases are settled while on appeal?” Pet. for Cert. i.

 The substantive portion of Izumi’s petition for certiorari was divided into four lettered sections. In the fourth, section D, petitioner argued that the prospect of relitigation in Illinois and Izumi’s interest in the judgment against Windmere gave it “an immediate and direct interest in challenging the propriety of granting vacatur following settlement,” and therefore that “Izumi was entitled to intervene in the appeal for the purposes of opposing vacatur.” Pet. for Cert. 14, 15.

 Brief in Opposition 2, 4-5.

 See National Union Fire Ins. Co. of Pittsburgh v. Seafirst Corp., 891 F. 2d 762, 764 (CA9 1989) (intervention granted to allow nonparty to challenge vacation of judgment).

 Christianson v. Colt Industries Operating Corp., 484 U. S. 985 (1987) (directing parties to brief and argue jurisdictional question); Eisen v. Carlisle & Jacquelin, 414 U. S. 908 (1973) (same); Payne v. Tennessee, 498 U. S. 1076 (1991); Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 485 U. S. 617 (1988).

 Rule 14.1(a) itself dates only to 1990, but the 1990 revisions merely renumbered a rule which has not substantially changed since 1954. Rule 21.1(a) (1980) (identical language to present rule); Rule 23.1(c) (1954) (“Only the questions set forth in the petition or fairly comprised therein will be considered by the court”). The Court never dismissed certiorari under either of these earlier rules. Even under the harsher rule that governed between 1939 and 1954, which allowed consideration only of “questions specifically brought forward by the petition,” the Court never sanctioned violations with dismissal of certiorari as improvidently granted. Rule 38.2 (1939).

 The Court also notes that jurisdictional questions are a traditional exception to the rule that an issue must fall under a question presented, ante, at 33, but the Court fails to recognize that the issue here — the propriety of intervention — is jurisdictional and thus falls within that exception.

 The majority notes that Williams concerned a different prudential rule — the one which precludes review of an issue that “ ‘was not pressed or passed upon below’ ” — but fails to provide any reason why violation of that rule should be forgiven more easily than violation of Rule 14.1(a). Ante, at 34, n. 7. If anything, one might think that the Court should be more reluctant to waive the rule requiring presentation of the issue below, because it ensures the adequate development of the record and protects the Court from deciding questions that could have been resolved by the lower courts. In addition, although the majority claims that the rule was satisfied “because the issue there had been passed upon by the lower court,” it fails to note that part of the reason the rule was deemed to be satisfied was that the party had raised and the Court of Appeals had de*39cided the issue in another case. 604 U. S., at 43-45. In this case, a comparable response to the prudential rule precluding review of the issue not expressly mentioned in the “question presented” would simply note that the intervention issue was discussed in another section of the certiorari petition. Most importantly, the majority misses the point of the passage quoted from Williams. The majority in that case noted that “even if” the prudential rule were violated, “it would be imprudent... to reverse course at this late stage.” Id., at 40.

 See n. 6, supra.

 In Cardinal Chemical we held the Federal Circuit should discontinue its practice of routinely vacating as moot declaratory judgments of patent validity upon affirmance of a finding that the patent had not been infringed.

 Barnett, Making Decisions Disappear: Depublication and Stipulated Reversal in the California Supreme Court, 26 Loyola (LA) L. Rev. 1033, 1073 (1993). In the years before the California Supreme Court endorsed routine vacation of judgments on settlement, there was a natural experiment in the California courts of appeals. While most courts routinely granted vacation, Division One of the Fourth Appellate District never did. Comparison of the rates of settlement in that court and the rest of the California appellate courts suggests that the denial of vacation did not discourage settlement. In fact, the rate of settlement in Division One of the Fourth Appellate District was twice as high as that in other appellate courts.