Coisa julgada coletiva: limites subjetivos, eficácia e liquidação da sentença

Abstract

This article aims to address within the scope of collective procedural law the Res Judicata in class actions, focusing primarily on its subjective limits, but also presenting the way it produces effects – secundum eventum litis effectiveness – and the form of the class action settlement. To this end, the most respectable scholars of the Civil Procedure and Class Action areas were used, as well as decisions of the Superior Courts, with their different opinions, in order to demonstrate the importance of class processes in the current scenario, in which citizens seeks to increasingly enforce their civil and social rights. Understanding the subjective limits of the res judicata in class actions is extremely important because it allows in addition to resolving the controversy discussed in the class action the protection of the interests of substituted persons in the process whose rights are in dispute. Facing this extraordinary active legitimation (with the adequate substitution / representation of the people who will have the rights / interests protected), there is the act of questioning the action of the Public Power in such class demands. As for the effects of the class action, it will depend on the outcome of the process and the right or interest to be protected (diffuse, class or individual homogeneous). Regarding the class action settlement, it will be studied how the quantum settlement due in the event of a condemnatory decision can be performed, since indivisible rights are protected and this rights have the nature that goes beyond the individual sphere of the legitimate ones