Devlin v. Scardelletti, 536 U.S. 1, 7 (2002)

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Cite as: 536 U. S. 1 (2002)

Opinion of the Court

requirements of injury, causation, and redressability. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555 (1992); see also In re Navigant Consulting, Inc., Securities Litigation, 275 F. 3d 616, 620 (CA7 2001).

Nor do appeals by nonnamed class members raise the sorts of concerns that are ordinarily addressed as a matter of prudential standing. Prudential standing requirements include:

"[T]he general prohibition on a litigant's raising another person's legal rights, the rule barring adjudication of generalized grievances more appropriately addressed in the representative branches, and the requirement that a plaintiff's complaint fall within the zone of interests protected by the law invoked." Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 751 (1984).

Because petitioner is a member of the class bound by the judgment, there is no question that he satisfies these three requirements. The legal rights he seeks to raise are his own, he belongs to a discrete class of interested parties, and his complaint clearly falls within the zone of interests of the requirement that a settlement be fair to all class members. Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 23(e).

What is at issue, instead, is whether petitioner should be considered a "party" for the purposes of appealing the approval of the settlement. We have held that "only parties to a lawsuit, or those that properly become parties, may appeal an adverse judgment." Marino v. Ortiz, 484 U. S. 301, 304 (1988) (per curiam). Respondents argue that, because petitioner is not a named class representative and did not successfully move to intervene, he is not a party for the purposes of taking an appeal.

We have never, however, restricted the right to appeal to named parties to the litigation. In Blossom v. Milwaukee & Chicago R. Co., 1 Wall. 655 (1864), for instance, we allowed a bidder for property at a foreclosure sale, who was not a

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