WI Supreme Court discusses stipulated vacatur.

• Date: 20 November 2002

Byline: Tony Anderson

The state Supreme Court continues to look at a proposal designed to keep litigants from bargaining with court decisions. Last week, the court resumed discussions on a proposal to eliminate stipulated reversal and stipulated vacatur.

The Supreme Court "approved in principle" last month a statutory change that would keep parties from making a unified request for the court of appeals or the Supreme Court to reverse or vacate the decision of a lower court. The goal was to keep parties from basing the settlement of a case on an appellate court vacating or reversing a lower court decision.

Since then, Supreme Court staff has been drafting new language for the proposal in an effort to address concerns raised at that time about the court maintaining the right on its own initiative to reverse or vacate lower court decisions. The issue involved a request by the Judicial Council that Section 809.18 of the Wisconsin Statutes be changed to read that, "Requests for stipulated...