Cite as: 511 U. S. 863 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
Nor are we swayed by Digital's last-ditch effort to come within Cohen's sense of "importance" by trying to show that settlement-agreement "immunities" merit first-class treatment for purposes of collateral order appeal, because they advance the public policy favoring voluntary resolution of disputes. It defies common sense to maintain that parties' readiness to settle will be significantly dampened (or the corresponding public interest impaired) by a rule that a district court's decision to let allegedly barred litigation go forward may be challenged as a matter of right only on appeal from a judgment for the plaintiff's favor.
III
A
Even, finally, if the term "importance" were to be exorcised from the Cohen analysis altogether, Digital's rights would remain "adequately vindicable" or "effectively reviewable" on final judgment to an extent that other immunities, like the right to be free from a second trial on a criminal charge, are not. As noted already, experience suggests that freedom from trial is rarely the sine qua non (or "the essence," see Van Cauwenberghe, 486 U. S., at 525) of a negotiated settlement agreement. Avoiding the burden of a trial is no doubt a welcome incident of out-of-court dispute resolution ( just as it is for parties who prevail on pretrial motions), but in the run-of-the-mill cases this boon will rarely compare with the " 'embarrassment' " and " 'anxiety' " averted by a successful double jeopardy claimant, see Abney, 431 U. S., at 661-662, or the " 'distraction from . . . dut[y],' " Mitchell, 472
endorsing Digital's claim that a privately negotiated right not to stand trial would be immediately appealable. To the contrary, Lauro Lines expressly adopted (at least for criminal appeals) Midland Asphalt's limitation that " '[a] right not to be tried in the sense relevant to the Cohen exception rests upon an explicit statutory or constitutional guarantee,' " 490 U. S., at 499, quoting 489 U. S., at 801, and stated that the collateral order doctrine operates "[s]imilarly" in civil cases, 490 U. S., at 499.
881
Page: Index Previous 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007