Cite as: 527 U. S. 815 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
Torts, and "Settlement Class Actions": An Introduction, 80 Cornell L. Rev. 811, 832 (1995) ("[S]ide settlements suggest that class counsel has been laboring under an impermissible conflict of interest and that it may have preferred the interests of current clients to those of the future claimants in the settlement class"). The resulting incentive to favor the known plaintiffs in the earlier settlement was, indeed, an egregious example of the conflict noted in Amchem resulting from divergent interests of the presently injured and future claimants. See 521 U. S., at 626-627 (discussing adequacy of named representatives under Rule 23(a)(4)).
We do not, of course, know exactly what an independent valuation of the limit of the insurance assets would have shown. It might have revealed that even on the assumption that Fibreboard's coverage claim was sound, there would be insufficient assets to pay claims, considered with reference to their probable timing; if Fibreboard's own assets would not have been enough to pay the insurance shortfall plus any claims in excess of policy limits, the projected insolvency of the insurers and Fibreboard would have indicated a truly limited fund. (Nothing in the record, however, suggests that this would have been a supportable finding.) Or an independent valuation might have revealed assets of insufficient value to pay all projected claims if the assets were discounted by the prospects that the insurers would win the coverage cases. Or the court's independent valuation might have shown, discount or no discount, the probability of enough assets to pay all projected claims, precluding certification of any mandatory class on a limited fund rationale. Throughout this litigation the courts have accepted the assumption that the third possibility was out of the question, and they may have been right. But objecting and unidentified class members alike are entitled to have the issue settled by specific evidentiary findings independent of the agreement of defendants and conflicted class counsel.
853
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