Settlements can be an efficient way to resolve disputes and can save time, money and emotional distress for all parties involved. Judges often encourage parties to consider resolving their disputes out of court and can even facilitate negotiations to reach an agreement during pre-trial meetings or other court proceedings. Favoritism to reach an agreement is consistent with the view that litigation serves as a dispute resolution mechanism, including in cases involving a Car Accident Attorney in Wilmington NC. According to this view, it is essential to achieve peace between the parties, and the precedent created by judicial decisions is a mere by-product of the dispute resolution process. The dispute resolution model fits well with the perspective of litigants, who control most aspects of the litigation, even if and when they reach an agreement.
Litigants, both current and potential, have strong incentives to reach a settlement because the costs of litigation far outweigh the costs of the settlement. In addition, due to the justiciability restrictions imposed by the courts of Article III, cases before those courts are a perfect fit for the dispute resolution model. In other words, in the courts created by virtue of Article III of the Constitution, the evolution of the law occurs only in real litigation that arises between opposing parties. And in the doctrine of justiciability, as the dispute resolution model predicts, third-party concerns about precedents play no role.
The Third Circuit emphasized that, while the “conciliatory fever” in this case was not enough to justify the challenge, judges “must not allow their role as negotiators to hide their primary duty to administer the law in a way that is fair in fact and that has the appearance of fairness. The judge should not force him to reach an agreement using his powers arbitrarily and the lawyer should not just submit to the judge's suggestion, but should strongly recommend it to him. According to the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges (Canon 3A), a judge “may encourage and attempt to facilitate the resolution of the dispute, but must not act in a way that forces either party to relinquish the right to have the dispute resolved by the courts”.
Specifically, the judge met privately with the plaintiff and told him that “these issues never work for a plaintiff unless they are resolved, and that he must reach an agreement because the judge cannot rule in his favor. Article 455 (b), on the other hand, states that a judge must challenge himself when he “has a personal bias or prejudice with respect to one of the parties, or has personal knowledge of controversial evidentiary facts related to the process.” The judge specifically recommended that the case be resolved between a certain amount in dollars and warned the parties that if they reached an agreement for a comparable amount once the trial began, he would impose sanctions, which he did. In addition, Canon 4A specifies that “a judge must not act as an arbitrator or mediator or perform judicial functions other than the official functions of the judge, unless explicitly authorized by law”.