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Collateral estoppel, also sometimes known as issue preclusion, is a common law estoppel doctrine that prevents a person from relitigating an issue. This is for the prevention of legal harassment and to prevent the abuse of legal resources.
Issue
Parties may be estopped from litigating determinations on issues made in prior actions. The determination may be an issue of fact or an issue of law. Preclusion requires that the issue decided was actually and necessarily decided as part of a valid final judgment. Valid final judgments of state courts are given preclusive effect in other state and federal courts under the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Valid final judgments must be issued by courts with appropriate personal and subject matter jurisdiction. It is notable, however, that an error does not make a decision invalid. Reversible errors must be appealed. For instance, a federal court's erroneous assumption of subject matter jurisdiction may not be attacked collaterally.
Collateral estoppel does not prevent an appeal of a decision, or a party from asking the judge for reargument or a revised decision. In federal court, judgments on appeal are given preclusive effect. However, if the decision is vacated, the preclusive effect of the judgment fails.
Strategy
Collateral estoppel may be used either defensively or offensively:
- Defensive
- Offensive
- Used by a plaintiff to prevent relitigation by a defendant who lost against another plaintiff on the same issue.
Mutuality
Traditionally, collateral estoppel applied only where there was mutuality of parties, meaning that both the party seeking to employ collateral estoppel and the party against which collateral estoppel is sought were parties to the prior action.
Most courts have now abandoned mutuality as a requirement for collateral estoppel in most circumstances. The modern trend is clearly in favor of abandoning the mutuality requirement.
In the absence of mutuality, courts are more hesitant to apply collateral estoppel in an offensive setting than in a defensive one. In other words, courts are more hesitant to apply collateral estoppel to a defendant from a previous action if the defendant is sued by a new plaintiff for the same issue.
Rationale
Collateral estoppel is an efficiency rule that is meant to save judicial resources by avoiding the relitigation of issues of fact that have already been actually litigated. The rule is also intended to protect defendants from the inequity of having to defend the same issue repeatedly.
Related concepts
Collateral estoppel is closely related to the concept of claim preclusion, which prevents parties relitigating the same cause of action after it has been decided by a judge or jury. Res judicata (literally - that which has been decided) is sometimes used as the term for both concepts, or purely as a synonym for claim preclusion.
Criminal law
Although it emerged out of civil law, in the United States it has applied to federal criminal law since United States v. Oppenheimer in 1916. In 1970 in Ashe v. Swenson, the United States Supreme Court applied it to double jeopardy to limit prosecution for crimes committed at the same time.
External links
- United States v. Oppenheimer, 242 U.S. 85 (1916)
- Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436 (1970)
"Collateral estoppel"