Cite as: 527 U. S. 815 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
rationale as it was to the requirements of structural protection applicable to all class actions under Rule 23(a)(4).
Second, the class included those exposed to Fibreboard's asbestos products both before and after 1959. The date is significant, for that year saw the expiration of Fibreboard's insurance policy with Continental, the one that provided the bulk of the insurance funds for the settlement. Pre-1959 claimants accordingly had more valuable claims than post-1959 claimants, see 90 F. 3d, at 1012-1013 (Smith, J., dissenting), the consequence being a second instance of disparate interests within the certified class. While at some point there must be an end to reclassification with separate counsel, these two instances of conflict are well within the requirement of structural protection recognized in Amchem.
It is no answer to say, as the Fifth Circuit said on remand, that these conflicts may be ignored because the settlement makes no disparate allocation of resources as between the conflicting classes. See 134 F. 3d, at 669-670. The settlement decides that the claims of the immediately injured deserve no provisions more favorable than the more speculative claims of those projected to have future injuries, and that liability subject to indemnification is no different from liability with no indemnification. The very decision to treat them all the same is itself an allocation decision with results almost certainly different from the results that those with immediate injuries or claims of indemnified liability would have chosen.
Nor does it answer the settlement's failures to provide structural protections in the service of equity to argue that the certified class members' common interest in securing contested insurance funds for the payment of claims was so weighty as to diminish the deficiencies beneath recognition here. See Brief for Respondent Class Representatives Ahearn et al. 31 (discussing this issue in the context of the Rule 23(a)(4) adequacy of representation requirement); id.,
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