Court Opinion

ID: 9457536
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:24:36.484885+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:23.337025
License: Public Domain

STEVENS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Movants were not parties to the litigation in which the district court purported to adjudicate their rights. They were not involuntary parties because they were not served with process. None of them became voluntary parties by entering an appearance or taking any other affirmative action.
A litigant may “stand in judgment” for absent parties only to the extent that their interests are of the same class. Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32, 44, 61 S.Ct. 115, 85 L.Ed. 22. In this case no *1007litigant stood in judgment for movants. The judgment purporting to dismiss their claims with prejudice was predicated solely on a factor which differentiated them from the rest of the class.
Unlike the other class members mov-ants were unwilling or unable to respond to the discovery orders. In my opinion, they had a right to request exclusion from the class as an alternative to responding; they were never advised of any such right, and no such request was made on their behalf. They had no representative in court to advocate protection of their separate interests, whatever they may have been, in not divulging the requested information. Yet it is those separate interests which led to the entry of a judgment against them.
If the class was to be divided into two parts, each was entitled to separate representation by a party qualified to stand in judgment for absent members before their rights could be determined. In my opinion the requirement of adequate representation refers less to the professional competence of counsel than to the identity of the interests of the representative party and those for whom he is permitted to stand in judgment. In this case movants’ interest in avoiding the sanction of dismissal with prejudice —as opposed to the possible sanction of exclusion from the class — was a matter of indifference to the representative plaintiff. For that reason which is entirely unrelated to the skill of counsel, movants were not adequately represented by any party to the case.
Since they were not parties to the litigation, movants could not be direct parties to the judgment. Since the judgment did not even purport to bind any party who represented them, it had no indirect impact on their rights. Indeed, in my opinion a judgment which does not even purport to bind any party to the litigation is a nullity.
I respectfully dissent.