Court Opinion

ID: 9480511
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:50:05.632319+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:44.117214
License: Public Domain

SELYA, Circuit Judge
(concurring in the result).
The majority, “absent a clearer indication” that the district court intended to block the appellants’ possible future prosecution of contribution claims against the Settling Defendants, ante at 5, refuses to construe the district court’s order according to its terms and tenor. Like the majority, I doubt that the district court possesses “authority to eliminate by fiat substantive rights” of the kind at issue here. Id. Like the majority, I agree that a judgment predicated on the Settling Defendants’ arrangements with the PSC should “not prevent[ ] appellants from pursuing contribution claims that may arise in the future.” Id.; see, e.g., PNH Corp. v. Hullquist Corp., 843 F.2d 586, 594-95 (1st Cir.1988) (vacating dismissal of crossclaims where district court failed to “address adequately” potential indemnification and contribution liability); of. Fed.R.Civ.P. 13(g). I part company with my brethren, however, in their reluctance to confess the district court’s error, a reluctance which necessitates dressing the wolf of reversal in the sheep’s clothing of a nominal affirmance.
Given the express language of Partial Judgment No. 47, there could hardly be any “clearer indication” that the district court intended its decree to have the very effect that the majority disclaims — an effect which the PSC at oral argument (but not in its brief, filed by other counsel), and the Settling Defendants, have urged should be accorded. The judgment, by its terms, “Dismissed with Prejudice ... all claims by and against the ... settling defendants.” This language is plain enough, but the context in which the judgment was entered makes its import pellucid. The Settling Defendants candidly admit that a principal motive in settling with the PSC was the opportunity to put transactional costs behind them, that is, to escape from the maw of this massive litigation once and for all, avoiding among other things the hefty expense of monitoring the case in order to estimate and limit their possible liability for contribution. By the same token, the district court’s memorandum is premised on the court’s determination that appellants had not shown an adequate basis for potential contribution claims against the Settling Defendants. In entering judgment, the court forthrightly stated that “there is no reason why the parties who have had all the claims against them dismissed should have to await the ultimate outcome of this case before obtaining a final disposition of the distinct claims filed by and against them....” Given these accouterments, it is impossible for me to impute any meaning to Partial Judgment No. 47 which would not pretermit the filing of crossclaims by the Non-Settling Defendants against the Settling Defendants.
Affirming the judgment by giving it a “reading” directly at odds with its words and context may be pragmatic, and even understandable in deference to a district judge saddled with the crushing weight of what we have termed a “litigatory monster,” In re Recticel Foam Corp., 859 F.2d 1000, 1001 (1st Cir.1988). Yet, I question whether these ends are worth putting at risk our institutional credibility. In any event, I cannot bring myself to indulge in so convenient a fiction, affirming when reversal is called for by upholding an action which the court below never really took.
Left to my own devices, I would vacate the with-prejudice dismissal as it pertains to the potential crossclaims and remand for the entry of dismissal without prejudice, giving the Settling Defendants the chance, however unlikely it may seem that they will use it, to reconsider their position in light of the changed circumstance. But, inasmuch as the result which flows from the majority’s linguistic legerdemain is much the same as I would reach more directly, I am content to concur in the court’s result, if not its reasoning. Shakespeare, perhaps, was right when he counseled: “All’s well that ends well....”