Have you ever coveted the terms of a confidential settlement between two or more other parties to gauge how much you should pay or receive in the same matter? Although such settlement terms may be jealously guarded, there may be ways to lift the veil of secrecy and learn how other parties and counsel presently value the case in contrast to perhaps outsized demands or paltry offers announced earlier.
Secrecy is often a key component to settlement negotiations. Confidentiality keeps private terms that an adversary or competitor might otherwise use to gain an undue advantage and places the settling party at a distinct disadvantage by revealing a strategy or pattern of factors on which the settling party resolves similar disputes. As the Second Circuit in In re Lake Utopia Paper Ltd ., 608 F.2d 928, 930 (2d Cir. 1979) observed:
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