Cite as: 511 U. S. 863 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
a higher level of generality. Indeed, just because it would be the rare settlement agreement that could not be construed to include (at least an implicit) freedom-from-trial "aspect," we decide this case on the assumption that if Digital prevailed here, any district court order denying effect to a settlement agreement could be appealed immediately. (And even if form were held to matter, settlement agreements would all include "immunity from suit" language a good deal plainer than what Digital relies on here, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 44.) See also Van Cauwenberghe, supra, at 524 ("For purposes of determining appealability, . . . we will assume, but do not decide, that petitioner has presented a substantial claim" on the merits).6
2
The more fundamental response, however, to the claim that an agreement's provision for immunity from trial can
6 Similarly, we must reject as patently irrelevant for § 1291 purposes Digital's repeated claims that the District Court applied the "wrong legal standard" in granting Desktop's motion to vacate the dismissal order. If Digital is right that a settlement agreement confers a contractual "immunity from suit," that protection is no more "irretrievably lost," and thus no more appealable under § 1291, when a district court applies an erroneous legal standard than when it commits a plain vanilla mistake in mis-applying the proper standard.
Nor do we accept uncritically Digital's novel and highly convenient contention that such a right to be free from trial is, either in this case or generally, more valuable than other rights conferred by a settlement agreement. See infra, at 881-882. While Digital emphasizes that, under the terms of the settlement here, Desktop is owed a larger sum for "dismissal of the above referenced lawsuit and a waiver of all damages" than for "all rights to the Trademarks," that proves little, if anything. To compare those two amounts is to place the bargained-for damages waiver on the wrong side of the ledger: that (typically quite valuable) right is precisely the sort that is fully vindicable on postjudgment appeal. Moreover, even if a high price tag might otherwise be an indicator of a right's "importance" to the benefited party, we cannot ignore that settlement agreement "prices" may be structured for tax, accounting, and business strategy reasons that have nothing to do with their true value to the party.
877
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