860
Opinion of the Court
of that equity for itself.34 On the face of it, the arrangement seems irreconcilable with the justification of necessity in denying any opportunity for withdrawal of class members whose jury trial rights will be compromised, whose damages will be capped, and whose payments will be delayed. With Fibreboard retaining nearly all its net worth, it hardly appears that such a regime is the best that can be provided for class members. Given the nature of a limited fund and the need to apply its criteria at the certification stage, it is not enough for a District Court to say that it "need not ensure that a defendant designate a particular source of its assets to satisfy the class' claims; [but only that] the amount recovered by the class [be] fair." Ahearn, 162 F. R. D., at 527.
The District Court in this case seems to have had a further point in mind, however. One great advantage of class action treatment of mass tort cases is the opportunity to save the enormous transaction costs of piecemeal litigation, an advantage to which the settlement's proponents have referred in this case.35 Although the District Court made no specific
34 We need not decide here how close to insolvency a limited fund defendant must be brought as a condition of class certification. While there is no inherent conflict between a limited fund class action under Rule 23(b)(1)(B) and the Bankruptcy Code, cf., e. g., In re Drexel Burnham Lambert Group, Inc., 960 F. 2d 285, 292 (CA2 1992), it is worth noting that if limited fund certification is allowed in a situation where a company provides only a de minimis contribution to the ultimate settlement fund, the incentives such a resolution would provide to companies facing tort liability to engineer settlements similar to the one negotiated in this case would, in all likelihood, significantly undermine the protections for creditors built into the Bankruptcy Code. We note further that Congress in the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1994, Pub. L. 103-394, § 111(a), amended the Bankruptcy Code to enable a debtor in a Chapter 11 reorganization in certain circumstances to establish a trust toward which the debtor may channel future asbestos-related liability, see 11 U. S. C. §§ 524(g), (h).
35 Some courts certifying limited fund class actions have focused on the advantages such suits have in reducing transaction costs when compared to piecemeal litigation. See, e. g., In re Drexel Burnham Lambert Group, Inc., supra, at 292 (certifying mandatory class in part because "some mem-
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