Digital Equipment Corp. v. Desktop Direct, Inc., 511 U.S. 863, 6 (1994)

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868

DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORP. v. DESKTOP DIRECT, INC.

Opinion of the Court

plained, do not go against the grain of § 1291, with its object of efficient administration of justice in the federal courts, see generally Richardson-Merrell Inc. v. Koller, 472 U. S. 424 (1985).

But we have also repeatedly stressed that the "narrow" exception should stay that way and never be allowed to swallow the general rule, id., at 436, that a party is entitled to a single appeal, to be deferred until final judgment has been entered, in which claims of district court error at any stage of the litigation may be ventilated, see United States v. Hollywood Motor Car Co., 458 U. S. 263, 270 (1982). We have accordingly described the conditions for collateral order appeal as stringent, see, e. g., Midland Asphalt Corp. v. United States, 489 U. S. 794, 799 (1989), and have warned that the issue of appealability under § 1291 is to be determined for the entire category to which a claim belongs, without regard to the chance that the litigation at hand might be speeded, or a "particular injustic[e]" averted, Van Cauwenberghe v. Biard, 486 U. S. 517, 529 (1988), by a prompt appellate court decision. See also Richardson-Merrell, supra, at 439 (this Court "has expressly rejected efforts to reduce the finality requirement of § 1291 to a case-by-case [appealability] determination"); Carroll v. United States, 354 U. S. 394, 405 (1957).

B

Here, the Court of Appeals accepted Digital's claim that the order vacating dismissal (and so rescinding the settlement agreement) was the "final word on the subject addressed," 993 F. 2d, at 757 (citation omitted), and held the second Cohen condition, separability, to be satisfied, as well. Neither conclusion is beyond question,2 but each is best left

2 It might be argued that given the District Court's "somewhat cryptic" reference, 993 F. 2d, at 757, to what "a trier of fact could determine," its recision order here was merely "tentative," Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U. S. 463, 469, n. 11 (1978), and thus inadequate under the first Cohen test, or that the basis for vacating, Digital's alleged misrepre-

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