Court Opinion

ID: 9745085
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 22:33:43.883592+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:55.860474
License: Public Domain

—When it legitimated the practice of stipulated reversal in Neary v. Regents of University of California (1992) 3 Cal.4th 273 [10 Cal.Rptr.2d 859, 834 P.2d 119] our Supreme Court rejected the prevailing federal view that the judicial system ought not allow the judgment of a court, “created at cost to the public and other litigants, to be a bargaining chip in the process of settlement.” (Matter of Memorial Hosp. of Iowa County, Inc. (7th Cir. 1988) 862 F.2d 1299, 1302.)1 Neary did not merely authorize stipulated reversal in appropriate circumstances, as the parties in *1826that case had requested, but created a blanket presumption in its favor, which they did not seek. (See Barnett, Making Decisions Disappear, supra, 26 Loyola L.A. L.Rev. 1031, 1061.) That presumption is destined to plague the appellate courts of this state.
According to the Supreme Court, a strong presumption in favor of stipulated reversal relieves the parties of “the burden of showing that their stipulation should be granted because no countervailing factors are present, e.g., a contrary public interest.” (Neary, supra, 3 Cal.4th at p. 284.) Because the parties do not have to submit “supporting declarations and documentary evidence” the appellate court is assertedly relieved of the responsibility “to fully consider these materials.” (Ibid.) “Under a presumption in favor of granting the parties’ request for reversal, the court need not expend significant resources unless a nonparty comes forward and objects to the settlement for some reason or unless some problem is apparent in the record.” (Ibid.)
The trouble with this theory is that it deprives the appellate courts of the ability to determine intelligently whether the public interest exception that Neary allows may apply, or whether there may be other “extraordinary circumstances” warranting denial. Neary overlooks the fact that joint requests for stipulated reversal do not arise in the adversarial context American courts take for granted. They are by nature collaborative. Therefore, as the commentators have noted, “the court cannot rely on the assumption that a problem will be ‘apparent in the record,’ or that an affected nonparty will get notice of the proceeding and thus be able to ‘come[] forward and object[].’ Rather the court of appeal will have to consider sua sponte, in inquisitorial fashion, the possible existence and interests of third parties who might be affected by the settlement. American courts may not excel at this unfamiliar task. Hence there will be a continuing risk of cutting off the rights of unconsidered third parties, with resulting problems of due process, as well as a continuing potential for compromise to the neutrality and reputation of the courts.” (Barnett, Making Decisions Disappear, supra, 26 Loyola L.A. L.Rev. at pp. 1074-1075; accord Zeller, Avoiding Issue Preclusion by Settlement Conditioned Upon the Vacatur of Entered Judgments, supra, 96 Yale LJ. at p. 879 [stipulated reversal allows the parties to a dispute “to conspire against the interests of unrepresented future parties and the judicial system. In a party-initiated, party-controlled procedural regime, such a device has enormous potential for abuse”]; Fisch, Rewriting History, supra, 76 Cornell *1827L.Rev. at p. 621, fn. 165 [“. . . it is rare that third parties who might benefit from the preclusive effect of a judgment will learn of the threat to the judgment in time to make their presence known to the court”]; Resnik, Judging Consent (1987) U.Chi. Legal F. 43, 101 [“Absent the adaptation of some forms of continental procedure in which the court and its staff (rather than the litigants) develop information, judges are ill-equipped to do much other than nod when the litigants join together and seek court approval”].) Because judges will ordinarily be unable to determine the nature and propriety of compromises that result in joint requests for stipulated reversal, the consequences of the presumption established in Neary will inevitably include the unknowing judicial effectuation of some highly questionable private bargains.
By relieving counsel of the burden of showing that there is no public interest or “extraordinary circumstance” justifying denial of a request for stipulated reversal, and by declaring that the Courts of Appeal “need not expend significant resources” on these questions, Neary has placed the Courts of Appeal in a quandary: we are obliged to ignore either the presumption or the risks it creates.
Neary suggests the risks are minor and worth taking on the curious ground that stipulated reversal is inconsequential. According to Neary, stipulated reversal will create “no inference that the jury or trial court erred. Whatever conclusions the public wishes to draw from the litigation can still be drawn after the reversal.” (Neary, supra, 3 Cal.4th at p. 283.) If the inference that the reversed judgment was wrong or ineffectual could not be drawn, or if stipulated reversal did not at least create some ambiguity about the validity or.force of the judgment reversed, such relief would rarely be sought. The most common reason parties seek vacatur, a similar remedy allowed in certain circumstances by some federal courts (see, e.g., Scott v. Iron Workers Local 118 (9th Cir. 1991) 928 F.2d 863),2 is to destroy a judgment’s collateral estoppel effect. (Fisch, Rewriting History, supra, 76 Cornell L.Rev. *1828at p. 616; Note, Collateral Estoppel Effects of Judgments Vacated Pursuant to Settlement (1987) 1987 U.Ill. L.Rev. 731.) These efforts have created complex and as yet unresolved problems in those jurisdictions in which vacatur is available. (Zeller, Avoiding Issue Preclusion by Settlement Conditioned Upon the Vacatur of Entered Judgments, supra, 96 Yale L.J. 860; see also, Note, The Impact of Collateral Estoppel on Postjudgment Settlements (1985) 15 Sw.U.L.Rev. 343.) Stipulated reversal, which indicates much more strongly than vacatur that the judgment has been affirmatively rejected, will surely be sought for this and perhaps an even greater array of dubious purposes.
The danger cannot be wholly eliminated by a local rule requiring parties seeking stipulated reversal to disclose information that might justify denial of their request. Among other things, the parties may not then know whether the judgment they seek to reverse may, for example, have collateral estoppel or other effects in potential future litigation, or whether any third parties might otherwise be prejudiced. Some litigants will likely resolve doubts in their own favor and eschew an assiduous investigation that might unearth information detrimental to their cause.
Nor can the danger that stipulated reversal will be abused be eliminated by a provision in the order that reversal “is pursuant to settlement and does not constitute either approval or rejection of the trial court’s judgment,” as Neary allows. (3 Cal.4th at p. 283.) Such a disclaimer does not clearly countermand the ordinary understanding of the word “reversal” and, in any case, is not required to be communicated to third parties and is not otherwise self-executing. Few litigants will gratuitously reveal information suggesting that a bargained-for reversal may be inefficacious.
It is not too soon for our Supreme Court to reconsider the propriety of stipulated reversal, as other courts that had taken a similar position recently have done. For example, the Tenth Circuit, whose reconsideration may have been prompted by the refusal of a senior trial judge to comply with one of its orders directing vacatur in another case, “pending a reasoned and more detailed order” (Benavides v. Jackson Nat. Life Ins. Co. (D.Colo. 1993) 820 F.Supp. 1284, 1285), appears to have reversed its policy favoring vacatur.3 *1829(Oklahoma Radio Associates v. F.D.I.C., supra, 3 F.3d 1436.) After canvassing the views of all the federal circuits, and declaring that he was expressing the view of “all of the active judges of this court,” Judge Holloway stated as follows: “The furthering of settlement of controversies is important and desirable, but there are significant countervailing considerations which we must also weigh. A policy permitting litigants to use the settlement process as a means of obtaining the withdrawal of unfavorable precedents is fraught with the potential for abuse. We agree with the Seventh Circuit that ‘an opinion is a public act of the government, which may not be expunged by private agreement.’ [Citation.] ‘When the parties’ bargain calls for judicial action, ... the benefits of settlement to the parties are not the only desiderata.’ [Citation.] ‘The precedent, a public act of a public official, is not the parties’ property.’ [Citation.]” (Id., at p. 1444.)
Still more recently, in Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co. v. Yanakas (2d Cir. 1993) 11 F.3d 381 (Yanakas), the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit questioned the wisdom of its earlier opinion in Nestle Co. v. Chester’s Market, Inc. (2d Cir. 1985) 756 F.2d 280, which held it an abuse of discretion for a trial court to refuse to vacate its judgment if the parties reached a settlement conditioned on such relief. The court had concluded in Nestle, as did our Supreme Court in Neary, that the importance of honoring settlements took precedence over the finality of judgments. (Nestle, supra, 756 F.2d at p. 283.) The Second Circuit refused in Yanakas to adhere to Nestle for the reason, among others, that granting vacatur to facilitate settlement would allow “a party with a deep pocket” to eliminate a judgment it dislikes “simply by agreeing to a sufficiently lucrative settlement to obtain its adversary’s cooperation in a motion to vacate. We do not consider this a proper use of the judicial system.” (Yanakas, supra, 11 F.3d at p. 384.) Yanakas also rejects the view that granting vacatur will conserve judicial resources, pointing to “indications that the promise of judicial economy may be illusory.” (Id., at p. 385.) “More importantly,” the opinion concludes, “when the proposed savings can be realized only at the cost of increasing the vulnerability of the judicial system to manipulation, we view the investment as unsound.” 
Judge Kearse, the author of Yanakas, relied in part on Justice Stevens’s recent condemnation of the routine vacation of judgments by some courts in *1830his dissent from the dismissal of certiorari as improvidently granted in Izumi Seimitsu Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha v. U.S. Philips Corporation (1993) 510 U.S. _ [126 L.Ed.2d 396, 114 S.Ct. 425] (Izumi). Justice Stevens—-joined by Justice Blackmun, the only other member of the Supreme Court to take a position on the issue—contended not only that a trial court judgment is a presumptively correct public act that should not be subject to barter by private litigants, but questioned the assumption—which is at the heart of Neary—that granting vacatur or stipulated reversal 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 be true.” (Izumi, supra, 510 U.S. at p. _ [126 L.Ed.2d at p. 408] italics in original.) Justice Stevens bases this latter statement on the fact that prior to Neary the rate of settlement in a division of the California Court of Appeal that never granted such motions was twice as high as that in divisions that routinely granted such relief. (Izumi, supra, 510 U.S. at p. _ fn. 11 [126 L.Ed.2d at p. 408], citing Barnett, Making Decisions Disappear, supra, 26 Loyola L.A. L.Rev. at p. 1073.)
Justice Stevens’s assessment is shared by federal trial judges who have addressed the issue. Thus, Sherman G. Finesilver, Chief Judge for the District of Colorado, has emphasized that “[t]he . . . view that vacatur is conducive to settlement is not only empirically unsupported but runs contrary to the experience of this and other district courts: specifically, that vacatur saves far less in circuit court resources than, by its perverse incentive for litigants to stall on settlement until after judgment, it costs the district court and the parties. Vacatur is simply not efficient judicial resource management.” (Benavides v. Jackson Nat. Life Ins. Co., supra, 820 F.Supp. 1284, 1288; see also, Russell v. Turnbaugh (D.Colo. 1991) 774 F.Supp. 597.)
*1831Neary debases the judicial coin with the currency of a false expediency. It will not only waste judicial resources but undermine respect for judicial institutions. Neither the taxpayers who support the judicial system nor the jurors who participate will easily understand why wealthy litigants should be permitted to purchase reversal of a judgment not shown to be wrong. Trial court support for stipulated reversal is equally unlikely, for as some trial judges have already pointed out, it is their independence that is most directly compromised.5 Like one of those judges, “[w]e can imagine few practices condoned by the judicial system that would have a less salutary effect on both the reality and the perception of its integrity.” (Benavides v. Jackson Nat. Life Ins. Co., supra, 820 F.Supp. at p. 1289.)

The views of all the federal circuits that have taken a position on this issue are summarized in Oklahoma Radio Associates v. F.D.I.C. (10th Cir. 1993) 3 F.3d 1436, 1439-1444. Neary is also inconsistent with the view of most of the commentators. See Barnett, Making Decisions Disappear: Depublication and Stipulated Reversal in the California Supreme Court (1993) 26 Loyola L.A. L.Rev. 1033, 1057-1084; Fisch, Rewriting History: The Propriety of Eradicating Prior Decisional Law Through Settlement and Vacatur (1991) 76 Cornell L.Rev. 589; Zeller, *1826Avoiding Issue Preclusion by Settlement Conditioned Upon the Vacatur of Entered Judgments (1987) 96 Yale L.J. 860, 868; Resnik, Finding the Factfinders, chapter 15, in Verdict: Assessing the Civil Jury System (Litan ed.) (Brookings Inst. 1993) pp. 500-530. But see Note, Settlement Pending Appeal: An Argument for Vacatur (1989) 58 Fordham L.Rev. 233.

The Ninth Circuit has adopted the rule, originally articulated in Ringsby Truck Lines v. Western Conference of Teamsters (9th Cir. 1982) 686 F.2d 720, that an appellate court should not vacate a lower court opinion where the appellant, having lost below and desiring to avoid the collateral estoppel effects of the adverse judgment, causes the appeal to become moot. The so-called Ringsby exception (to the rule declared in United States v. Munsingwear (1950) 340 U.S. 36 [95 L.Ed. 36, 71 S.Ct. 104], that appellate courts must ordinarily vacate judgments that have become moot due to circumstances over which the appellant had no control) is based on the view that otherwise any litigant dissatisfied with the trial court’s findings could easily have them “wiped from the books.” (686 F.2d at p. 721.)
A plurality of the other federal circuits refuse outright to vacate judgments to facilitate negotiated dispositions. (See, e.g., Matter of Memorial Hosp. of Iowa County, Inc., supra, 862 F.2d 1299; Clarendon, Ltd. v. Nu-West Industries, Inc. (3d Cir. 1991) 936 F.2d 127; In re *1828United States (D.C.Cir. 1991) 927 F.2d 626 [288 App.D.C. 354].) As earlier noted, the views of the federal circuits that have addressed the issue are summarized in Oklahoma Radio Associates v. F.D.I.C., supra, 3 F.3d 1436, 1439-1444, an opinion which itself exemplifies the growing movement away from vacatur.

Perhaps the Tenth Circuit was also motivated by the fact that the parties in Oklahoma Radio Associates sought vacatur of the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

This view was also recently adopted by another division of our court in Lucich v. City of Oakland (1993) 19 Cal.App.4th 494 [23 Cal.Rptr.2d 450], where the parties unsuccessfully sought to apply Neary to the judgments of appellate courts. Lucich explains that the Court of Appeal “has established procedures for holding settlement conferences ... in order to spare the parties and the public the costs of appellate proceedings. [Citation.] If the parties desire an impetus for settlement, they should avail themselves of that opportunity. The procedure *1830followed here, awaiting oral arguments on a fully briefed appeal and settling after submission and after a written decision is filed, [and then seeking dismissal of the appeal and decertifi-cation of the opinion] saves no one’s time or money, a prime object of this court’s Local Rule 3 [relating to settlement conferences].” (Id., at p. 501.) The court states that the parties’ “impermissible motive” was “manipulation of the appellate function to allow litigants to test the judicial water to the fullest while preserving the option of avoiding the precedential effect of an appellate decision if that test proves foreboding.” (Id., at p. 502.)
Exactly the same points can be made against permitting stipulated reversal of the judgments of trial courts, which have far more elaborate early settlement procedures than appellate courts and where pretrial settlement would result in far greater savings of judicial resources and public funds. Judge Kearse’s opinion in Yanakas and Judge Holloway’s opinion in Oklahoma Radio Associates, supra, which also involved attempts to vacate appellate opinions, implicitly acknowledge that the exaltation of settlement over the finality of judgments, as in Nestle and Neary, has implications that cannot in principle be limited to the judgments of trial courts. (See also Judge Easterbrook’s opinion in Matter of Memorial Hosp. of Iowa County, Inc., supra, 862 F.2d at p. 1302.)

United States District Court Judge John R. Hargrove has observed, for example, that settlements calling for the vacating of judgments not only pose “monstrous obstacles” for the efficient management of trial court dockets, but “threaten to undermine the independence and unique role of the judiciary. It is profoundly the duty of courts to declare the state of the law; perhaps this Court erred in its interpretation of the law . . . , but that is a determination properly left for the Fourth Circuit, not private agreement.” (Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority v. One Parcel of Land in Prince George’s County, Maryland (D. Md. Nov. 23, 1993) 1993 WL 524783, 1993 U.S. Dist. Lexis 18485.)
Chief Judge Finesilver has described the way in which vacatur is used to distort the law by institutional litigators, “who must return to court many times with the same arguments.” (Benavides v. Jackson Nat. Life Ins. Co., supra, 820 F.Supp. 1284, 1289.) Vacatur allows such litigators “to control the direction and content of the jurisprudence—to weed out the negative precedent and preserve the positive—and create an artificially weighty and one-sided estimate of what comprises ‘the case law.’ ” (Ibid.) The victorious party “is typically not a repeat litigator and has little interest in preserving the precedential value of the judgment below.” For this reason, and the “pecuniary sweetener” it inevitably receives, the victorious party “has little reason to resist vacatur and take its chances on appeal.” (Ibid.) In this manner, “[t]he case law becomes what the party with the greatest resources wishes it to be. Economic prowess purchases more persuasive power than the marketplace of ideas and sound reasoning combined.” (Ibid.)
Judge Finesilver’s opinion in Benavides explained his refusal to comply with an order of the Tenth Circuit directing him to vacate his prior judgment. (820 F.Supp at p. 1285.) California trial judges should be no less reluctant to advise us of information that may not have been called to our attention by the parties that may warrant reconsideration of an order granting stipulated reversal and directing the trial court to dismiss the action.