Court Opinion

ID: 9425509
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:55.692683+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:56.023708
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Blackmun,
concurring.
I join the Court's opinion and concur in its judgment. Our decision, however, must not be regarded as encouragement to lawyers in a case of this kind to frame their pleadings as a class action, intentionally, to attract and save members of the purported class who have slept on their rights. Nor does it necessarily guarantee intervention for all members of the purported class.
As the Court has indicated, the purpose of statutes of limitations is to prevent surprises “through the revival of claims that have been allowed to slumber until evidence has been lost, memories have faded, and witnesses have disappeared.” Order of Railroad Telegraphers v. Railway Express Agency, 321 U. S. 342, 348-349 (1944). Under our decision today, intervenors as of *562right will be permitted to press their claims subject only to the requirement that they have an interest relating to the property or transaction and be impaired or impeded in their ability to protect that interest. Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 24 (a). Such claims, therefore, invariably will concern the same evidence, memories, and witnesses as the subject matter of the original class suit, and the defendant will not be prejudiced by later intervention, should class relief be denied. Permissive intervenors may be barred, however, if the district judge, in his discretion, concludes that the intervention will “unduly delay or prejudice the adjudication of the rights of the original parties.” Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 24 (b). The proper exercise of this discretion will prevent the type of abuse mentioned above and might preserve a defendant whole against prejudice arising from claims for which he has received no prior notice.
The provision in Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 23 (c)(1), that an order allowing the maintenance of a suit as a class action “may be conditional, and may be altered or amended before the decision on the merits,” could be viewed to generate uncertainty under the Court’s decision, for the class aspect might be disbanded after the litigation has long been underway. Rule 23 (c)(1), of course, provides that the court shall decide whether a class action may be maintained “[a]s soon as practicable after the commencement of an action.” This decision, therefore, will normally be made expeditiously. And any later alteration with respect to intervention is subject to the discretionary elements of Rule 24 (b), mentioned above, and to Rule 23 (d) (3)’s provision that “the court may make appropriate orders . . . imposing conditions ... on intervenors.”