Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-1086_5ie6.pdf
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LUCKY BRAND DUNGAREES, INC. v. 
MARCEL FASHIONS GROUP, INC. 
Syllabus 

Action but did not.  The District Court granted Lucky Brand’s motion 
to dismiss.  The Second Circuit vacated and remanded, concluding that
“defense  preclusion”  prohibited  Lucky  Brand  from  raising  an  unliti-
gated defense that it should have raised earlier. 

Held: Because  Marcel’s  2011  Action  challenged  different  conduct—and
raised different claims—from the 2005 Action, Marcel cannot preclude 
Lucky Brand from raising new defenses.  Pp. 6–12.

(a) This case asks whether so-called “defense preclusion” is a valid
application of res judicata: a term comprising the doctrine of issue pre-
clusion, which precludes a party from relitigating an issue actually de-
cided in a prior action and necessary to the judgment, and the doctrine 
of  claim  preclusion,  which  prevents  parties  from  raising  issues  that
could have been raised and decided in a prior action.  Any preclusion
of defenses must, at a minimum, satisfy the strictures of issue preclu-
sion or claim preclusion.  See, e.g., Davis v. Brown, 94 U. S. 423, 428. 
Here,  issue  preclusion  does  not  apply,  so  the  causes  of  action  must 
share a “common nucleus of operative fact[s]” for claim preclusion to 
apply,  Restatement  (Second)  of  Judgments  §24,  Comment  b,  p.  199. 
Pp. 6–8.

(b) Because the two suits here involved different marks and differ-
ent conduct occurring at different times, they did not share a “common
nucleus  of  operative  facts.”    The  2005  claims  depended  on  Lucky 
Brand’s  alleged  use  of  “Get  Lucky.”    But  in  the  2011  Action,  Marcel 
alleged that the infringement was Lucky Brand’s use of its other marks
containing the word “Lucky,” not any use of “Get Lucky” itself.  The 
conduct  in  the  2011  Action  also  occurred  after  the  conclusion  of  the 
2005 Action.  But claim preclusion generally “ ‘does not bar claims that 
are  predicated  on  events  that  postdate  the  filing  of  the  initial  com-
plaint,’ ” Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, 579 U. S. ___, ___, be-
cause events occurring after a plaintiff files suit often give rise to new
“operative facts” creating a new claim to relief.  Pp. 8–10.

(c) Marcel claims that treatises and this Court’s cases support a ver-
sion of “defense preclusion” that extends to the facts of this case.  But 
none of those authorities describe scenarios applicable here, and they 
are unlikely to stand for anything more than that traditional claim or
issue  preclusion  principles  may  bar  defenses  raised  in  a  subsequent
suit—principles that do not bar Lucky Brand’s release  defense here. 
Pp. 10–12. 

898 F. 3d 232, reversed and remanded. 

SOTOMAYOR, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.