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### STATE OF MICHIGAN

COURT OF APPEALS

EDITH BUGBEE Guardian/Conservator of DONALD LIP KERR,

Plaintiff-Appellee, UNPUBLISHED October 15, 2015

v No. 321715 Saginaw Circuit Court ROBERT BENNETT, LC No. 13-019187-CZ

Defendant-Appellant.

Before: B OONSTRA , P.J., and S AAD and H OEKSTRA , JJ.

P ER C URIAM

.

In this action to quiet title, defendant appeals as of right an order of the trial court denying his motion for summary di sposition, granting plaintiff’ s counter-motion for summary disposition, and quie ting title to the subject property in plai ntiff’s name in her capacity as guardian/conservator for Donald Kerr. Because defendant’s atte mpt to establish title to the property through evidence of a quitclaim deed previously reject ed by the trial court is precluded by collateral estoppel, we affirm.

This is the second suit between these parties seeking to quiet title to an 80-acre property located in Saginaw County. Defe ndant filed the first quiet tit le action in 2010, alleging that he purchased the property from Ke rr in 2003 for $1 0,000 in cash (w hich he did not withdraw from a bank). Bennett v Bugbee , unpublished opinion per curiam of the Court of Appeals, issue d November 15, 2012 (Docket No. 307977), p 1. According to defen dant, his half-sister drafted and notarized a quitclaim deed (the “Bennett deed”) which liste d the purchase price at $10,000, and the closing was at her house in 2003, w itnessed by defendan t’s now-deceased mother and his
then-wife. Id. Defendant then waited six years to record the deed for the prop erty, until 2009, after Kerr had become legally incapacitated. Id. at 2. In contrast, Kerr denied selling the property, he continued to pay the taxes on the property even af ter the supposed transfer, there
was no evidence in his bank ac counts that he received $10,000, and Kerr testified that the signature purporting to be his on the deed did not match his ow n signature. Id. at 2. After a November 2011 bench trial, the court found that there was no cr edible evidence that defendant had paid Kerr $10,000. Accordingly, the court issued an order denying defendant’s motion to quiet title. Defendant appealed and this Court affirmed. Id . at 4. In particular, this Court
concluded that there was no clear error in the trial court’s fa ctual finding that defendant had not-2- paid Kerr for the property and that implicit in the trial court ’s findings was the conclusion that any presumption the Bennett dee d was valid had been rebutted. Id. at 3-4.

Although defendant’s motion to qui et title was denied, the tria l court’s 2011 order did not affirmatively quiet title in Kerr’s favor. Consequently, plain tiff filed the instant quiet title complaint in March 2013, after plaintiff’s title company found the circuit court’s 2011 order denying defendant’s claim to the property insufficient to estab lish good title in plaintiff’s name. Defendant moved for summary disposition pursuant to MCR 2.116(C )(10), and in support of his motion, defendant submitted the Bennett deed and a copy of the trial court’s 2011 order. Defendant argued that the Bennett deed remains valid under Mich igan law because the court’s 2011 order did not invalidate it or set it aside because of “op pression, misrepresentation, fraud,
or undue influence.” The trial court denied defendant’s motion based on the determination that collateral estoppel applied to pre vent defendant from re-litiga ting the same issue in this case, i.e., the validity of the Bennett deed, that had been decided against him in the earlier action. Further, the trial court granted summary disposition in plaintiff’s favo r under MCR 2.116(I)(2) and entered an order quieting title i n plaintiff’s name. Defendant now appeals as of right.

On appeal, consistent with his arguments in the trial court, de fendant argues that the Bennett deed remains valid, and su perior to plaintiff’s interes t in the property, because the trial court in the prior action did not specifically invalidate the deed or make findings of op pression, misrepresentation, fraud, or undu e influence. Defendant mainta ins that, absent such findings, the deed is valid because it meets the statutory requirements for f orm and because consideration is neither necessary nor essential to the deed’s validity. Accord ing to defendant, collateral estoppel does not bar him from pursuing these arguments because, in the previous litigation, the trial court only determined that there had been a lack of consideration for the transfer, not that the Bennett deed was actually invalid. We disagree.

This Court reviews a trial court’s decision on a motion for sum mary disposition de novo. Auto Club Group Ins Co v Burchell , 249 Mich App 468, 479; 642 NW2d 406 (2002). Likewise, the application of a legal doctr ine, such as col lateral estoppe l, is a question of law which we
review de novo. Estes v Titus , 481 Mich 573, 579; 751 NW2d 493 (2008).

Collateral estoppel precludes li tigation of the same issue in a subsequent, different cause of action between the same parties when the prior proceeding cu lminated in a valid final judgment and the issue was actua lly and necessarily litigated. Ditmore v Michalik , 244 Mich App 569, 577; 625 NW2d 462 (2001). The purpose of the rule is “to relieve parties of the cost and vexation of multiple lawsuits, conserve judicial resources, and, by preventing inconsistent decisions, encourage reliance on adjudication . . . .” Monat v State Farm Ins Co , 469 Mich 679, 692-693; 677 NW2d 843 (2004) (quotation marks and citations omi tted). For collateral estoppel to apply, generally three elemen ts must be satisfied: “(1) a q uestion of fact essential to the judgment must have been actually litigated and determined by a valid and final judgment; (2) the same parties must have had a full [and fair] opportunity to lit igate the issue; and (3) there must be mutuality of estoppel.” Id. at 682-684 (citation and quotation marks omitted). In the subsequent action, the parties must be the same as or privy to the parties in the first action, and
the ultimate issues to be concl uded must be identical, and not merely similar, to those resolved in
the first action. Rental Props Owners Ass'n of Kent Co v Kent Co Treasurer , 308 Mich App 498, 529-530; 866 NW2d 817 (2014).-3- In this case, the trial court co rrectly determined that collate ral estoppel precluded defendant’s efforts to again attempt to establish his ownership of the property by evidence of the Bennett deed. Specifically, defendant’s attempt to re-litigate the validity of the Bennett deed is precluded because his title to the subject property under the B ennett deed was actually litigated
in the earlier action. The trial court determined, based on it s weighing of the evidence and assessment of the credibility of the witnesses, that defendant had not purchased the property from Kerr, and the trial court denied defendant’s motion to qui et title in his name based on the Bennett deed. On appeal to this Court, we then held that, impl icit in the trial court’s determination that defendant had not purchased the property as he claimed was a determination that any presumption regarding the deed’s validity had been reb utted and thus the deed did not support defendant’s claim to the property. Bennett , unpub op at 3-4. In other words, the invalidity of the Bennett deed, which formed the basis for defe ndant’s claim to the property, was
essential to the trial court’s judgment denying defendant’s mot ion to quiet title to the property based on the deed, see generally Fleming v Conklin , 237 Mich 243, 246; 211 NW 638 (1927),
and it was essential to this Cour t’s final judgment affirming t he trial court’s order. Any additional arguments defendant might have wished to raise in co nnection with the issue of the validity of the Bennett deed, incl uding the assert ion that cons ideration is not re quired to establish the validity of a deed, should have been raised in the previous litigation. See Leahy v Orion Twp , 269 Mich App 527, 530; 711 NW2d 438 (2006).

In sum, because the issue of the Bennett deed’s validity was fu lly and fairly litigated, and actually decided in an action between the same parties which re sulted in a valid and final judgment, collateral estoppel pr ecludes defendant from once aga in attempting to establish ownership of the property by vi rtue of the Bennett deed. See Monat Ins Co , 469 Mich at 692-

693.

Affirmed. Having prevailed in fu ll, plaintiff may tax costs pu rsuant to MCR 7.219.

/s/ Mark T. Boonstra /s/ Henry William Saad
/s/ Joel P. Hoekstra