Quote Quoting llworking
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Are you talking about settlement agreements before a case is filed or after? I agree that if no case is filed there is no judge involved. Otherwise, I would think that it would be preferable to have the judge sign off on it, to ensure that the person didn't settle in bad faith and continue the case and get a default ruling.
In most civil cases, outside of perhaps family law cases, if the parties reach agreement in the matter they'll simply jointly move to dismiss the case, which the court will be more than happy to grant, and the agreement will never be submitted to the court nor become a part of the court record. The parties will do that in part precisely because they want the agreement to remain private.