Understanding the Defense of Res Judicata

You get one bite at the apple. That’s the cliché, but nowhere does it hold true than it does in law. Because when you file a lawsuit, you make whatever claims you think you can, and once they resolve, you don’t get to try them again.

Res Judicata

The legal phrase is called res judicata and it means that once a matter or issue has been decided on by a court, the same issue cannot be brought before a court to decide again later in another case. That makes some sense—you can’t just keep trying to file the same case until you get the result that you want.

Res judicata is usually alleged by a Defendant as a defense to a lawsuit that the Defendant feels has already been decided by another court in the past.

And it doesn’t matter what courts you’re filing in, even if they’re two different courts. If the matter and facts and legal issues are the same, and they have been previously ruled on by a court in Nebraska, or New York, or Canada—any court that is considered competent—the matter cannot be refiled or reheard in any other court.

What is Identical?

Often, there are questions about whether a case that is filed truly is identical to a previously decided case. To see if a previously decided legal issue is truly identical, and thus barred by a later lawsuit, courts look at three main factors.

What Are You Asking For?

The first thing courts will look at is whether or not the remedies are the same—that is, what you are asking for in damages or compensation or what you are asking the court to do for you as relief.

Facts and Causes of Action

The second factor is whether the cases have the same or similar legal causes of action—but courts will really look to whether the causes of action come from or arise from the same set of facts, even if the causes of action themselves are technically different.

Additionally, you cannot relitigate a case just because you forgot to allege a cause of action that you knew of, but did not include in a lawsuit.

So, for example, if in lawsuit 1 you alleged conversation, and you lost, and then later filed the same lawsuit but this time alleged civil theft, you may be barred by res judicata because although the causes of action are technically different, they are effectively the same, and both could have been brought in the same initial lawsuit, even though for whatever reason, they were not.

The third is whether the parties to both lawsuits are the same.

They do not have to be exactly the same; if a party is legally the same as someone in a prior suit (for example, a “doing business as” a company that previously sued, or a subsidiary company of a company that previously sued), the later suit will be barred.

Do your business law case right the first time. Call the West Palm Beach commercial litigation lawyers at Pike & Lustig today if you have a commercial litigation case.

Source:

scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub/1465/