Court Opinion

ID: 9482687
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:57:32.399422+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:08.416818
License: Public Domain

DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree that the judgment of the district court ought to be affirmed, and I agree with Judge Jones’ analysis of Texas law. The same result would obtain, in my view, under federal law.
I am uncertain whether the enforceability of the settlement agreement is dependent on state law or federal law. Diversity cases do sometimes present questions for which federal principles provide the rule of decision — see Edwards v. Aetna Life Ins. Co., 690 F.2d 595, 598 n. 4 (6th Cir.1982), a diversity case where federal law was applied in deciding a judicial estoppel question — and this court has repeatedly said, as did the district court in the case at bar, that federal trial courts possess inherent power to enforce settlement agreements entered into by litigants in cases pending before them. See, for example, Kukla v. National Distillers Products Co., 483 F.2d 619 (6th Cir.1973), and Purex Corp. v. Willis Day Properties, Inc. (unpublished), 914 F.2d 258 (table), full text available at 1990 WL 130481, 1990 U.S.APP.LEXIS 16038 (6th Cir.1990), both of which were diversity cases. Whether federal trial courts exercising diversity jurisdiction have any inherent power to enforce settlement agreements that would not be enforceable under state law is an interesting question, but I would leave its resolution to another day; the issue is not presented by the case before us.