Supplerande moment och rättskraft - En analys av i vilken utsträckning supplerande moment erhåller stadfästelsedomens rättskraft

Sammanfattning: Alternative forms of dispute resolution have gained increasing significance in Swedish procedural law, and it have drawn varied responses. It is common for parties, despite having initiated court proceedings, to reach a settlement agreement in which they ask the court to confirm by delivering judgement. Like other civil judgements, a confirmation judgement attains legal force. The res judicata effect means that the dispute between the parties is finally settled. A cause of claim may not be litigated more than once. Parties bear responsibility for the content of the settlement agreement which have offered them a broad opportunity to add legal matters beyond the original dispute. Such legal matters are called supplementary elements. Incorporated through case law these supplementary elements are subject to the res judicata effect of the confirmation judgement. Such an arrangement allows the parties to determine the scope of res judicata by contractual agreement, raising concerns about the potential breadth of its impact. If parties can control the res judicata of a confirmation judgement, there is a risk that the effect of res judicata will be too broad. The parties may thus lose future rights to judicial review. The institution of res judicata is, and has been, highly debated in the civil procedural law literature. Despite the extensive discussion, the extent of the legal force of supplementary elements has not received much consideration in the legal literature. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the extent of the legal effect of a confirmation judgement when the settlement agreement contains supplementary elements. The thesis highlights the res judicata issues that may arise when confirming a settlement agreement that contains supplementary elements. Of relevance to the purpose of the thesis is to investigate whether there is an outer limit to the supplementary elements that may be covered by the res judicata of the confirmation judgement, and if so, what the requirements are imposed on the supplementary elements covered by the res judicata. The supplementary elements examined by the court in previous cases have been linked to the disputed legal relationship between the parties. The thesis explores how res judicata is affected when parties introduce a supplementary element unrelated to the initial legal relationship. It follows from case law that clarity is a prerequisite for supplementary elements to be subject to the legal force of the judgement. It is required that the element is clearly formulated and their content determinable. A 2017 Supreme Court case introduced an additional requirement. The supplementary element must resolve the disputed issue in the claim to have legal effect. The requirement cannot be considered compatible with the definition of a supplementary element. Regardless of the interpretation of the Supreme Court’s reasoning, it does not address whether all supplementary elements gain legal effect if they meet the clarity requirement and a potential requirement for a solution of the subject matter of the proceedings. An outer limit to the extent to which supplementary elements acquire the legal force of the confirmation judgement is not stated in law, nor is it clarified in any guiding case law. Procedural agreements, governing procedural aspects, require legal support for their procedural effects under the principle of procedural invalidity. The parties sometimes incorporate a final settlement clause in settlement agreements. Final settlement clauses added to a settlement agreement constitute a supplementary element. The purpose of the clause is to ensure that the settlement agreement results in the final settlement of all the parties’ disputes. If the judgement constitutes a procedural obstacle because of the final settlement clause, the clause constitutes a procedural agreement. The parties have then indirectly created a procedural obstacle. The question arises as to how the legal force is affected when parties introduce a supplementary element into their settlement agreement that is not related to the same legal relationship. Is such extensive res judicata resulting from the supplementary element contrary to the principle of procedural invalidity? To answer the question about how the legal force of supplementary elements is to be determined it is necessary for the Supreme Court to establish an outer limit for which supplementary elements are subject to the legal force of the confirmation judgement and which are not. The reasoning of the court should be accompanied by clear criteria guiding on which the assessment is based.