Who Is Bound: Successors, Organizations, and Third Parties

Abstract

This volume asks whether a person who did not directly take part in the litigation is subject to the effect of the judgment. Only by distinguishing the personal scope of a judgment's effect from the proof procedure for obtaining an execution clause can execution premised on succession avoid erasing a third party's defense. The path to relief opens where the person falls within the statutory personal scope to which the effect extends and the proof required for execution against a successor is furnished, or the matter is contested through an action for the grant of an execution clause, and closes where there is only an economic connection, with neither a statutory scope of effect nor a basis for succession, so that the prior judgment cannot be enforced against that person. The six sections address, in turn, the party as the starting point, the timing and proof of succession, litigation on behalf of another, the distance between an organization and its members, proof for an execution clause against a successor, and cases where documentary proof falls short. The strongest counterargument is as follows. If a new trial were required for every succession, execution could be evaded merely by transferring the right. The drafting of relationship diagrams and the consistency of parties across parallel proceedings are not addressed in this volume.