Settler's Remorse

Authors

Floyd Abrams, Cahill, Gordon & Reindel LLP

Abstract

Who can quarrel with the notion that settling civil cases is generally a good thing? Litigation is expensive, time-consuming, preoccupying, and often personally destructive. Our courts are overburdened and, in any event, imperfect decision-making entities. It may even be true that, more often than not, "the absolute result of a trial is not as high a quality of justice as is the freely negotiated, give a little, take a little settlement." But not every case should be settled. Many are worthless. The settlement of others could too easily lead to a torrent of unwarranted litigation. Sometimes, as Professor Owen Fiss has observed, parties "settle while leaving justice undone." While few of the settlements I have been involved with can be so described, one has plagued me since I participated in negotiating it twenty-five years ago. Now, in light of very recent and deeply disturbing revelations, it plagues me still more.

Recommended Citation

Floyd Abrams, Settler's Remorse, 105 Mich. L. Rev. 1033 (2007).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol105/iss6/1