Abeyance - Settling Litigation

Settling Litigation

Abeyance can be used in cases where parties are interested in temporarily settling litigation while still holding the right to seek relief later if necessary. This may be considered a desirable outcome in cases where the party to the lawsuit is an organization with a transient membership and political perspective. The use of abeyance in such instances can allow such an organization to 'settle' with the party without officially binding its actions in the future, should a new group of decision makers within the organization choose to pursue taking the dispute to court.

For example, abeyance was used as a settlement method in a Canadian lawsuit involving the University of Victoria Students' Society (UVSS), the BCCLA, and a campus pro-life to whom the UVSS denied funding to. The parties agreed to settle the lawsuit by holding the case in abeyance in return for the UVSS temporarily giving resources back to the club. With this arrangement, the pro-life club held on to its right to immediately reopen the case again should the UVSS deny resources to the club in the future, and the UVSS was able to avoid an expensive legal battle it did not have the will to pursue at the time. Thus the use of abeyance provided the security of a settlement for the pro-life campus club, while preserving the student society's voting membership's ability to take the matter back to court should they choose in the future to deny resources to the club.