16
Scalia, J., dissenting
"parties" to the litigation the rights to take such actions as conducting discovery and moving for summary judgment, e. g., Fed. Rules Civ. Proc. 30(a)(1), 31(a)(1), 33(a), 34(a), 36(a), 45(a)(3), 56(a), 56(b), 56(e). It is undisputed that the class representatives are the only members of the class who have such rights.
Petitioner was offered the opportunity to be named the class representative, but he declined; nor did he successfully intervene. Ante, at 4, 5. Accordingly, he is not a party to the class judgment.
A
The Court does not deny that, at least as a general matter, only those persons named as such are the "parties." Rather, it contends that persons "may be parties for some purposes and not for others," ante, at 10, and that petitioner is a party to the class judgment at least for the "purposes of appealing," ante, at 7.1 The Court bases these contentions on three of our precedents, which it says stand for the proposition that "[w]e have never . . . restricted the right to appeal to named parties to the litigation." Ibid. These precedents stand for nothing of the sort.
All of these precedents are perfectly consistent with the rule that only named parties to a judgment can appeal the judgment because they involved appeals not from judgments but from collateral orders. The appellants were allowed to appeal from the collateral orders to which they were parties,
1 The Court provides only one other example of a purpose for which a nonnamed class member is purportedly a "party": we have, it says, tolled the statute of limitations for such a person between the time the class action is filed and the time class certification is denied. Ante, at 10 (citing American Pipe & Constr. Co. v. Utah, 414 U. S. 538 (1974)). Not even petitioner, however, is willing to advance the novel and surely erroneous argument that a nonnamed class member is a party to the class-action litigation before the class is certified. Brief for Petitioner 24-26. This lonesome example is, in other words, entirely irrelevant to the question of party status.
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