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Page Number: 12.0

10 

LUCKY BRAND DUNGAREES, INC. v. 
MARCEL FASHIONS GROUP, INC. 
Opinion of the Court 

Action could not bar Lucky Brand’s 2011 defenses.

At bottom, the 2011 Action involved different marks, dif-
ferent  legal  theories,  and  different  conduct—occurring  at
different times.  Because the two suits thus lacked a “com-
mon  nucleus  of  operative  facts,”  claim  preclusion  did  not 
and  could  not  bar  Lucky  Brand  from  asserting  its  settle-
ment agreement defense in the 2011 Action. 

III 
Resisting this conclusion, Marcel points to treatises and 
this  Court’s  cases,  arguing  that  they  support  a  version  of 
“defense  preclusion”  doctrine  that  extends  to  the  facts  of 
this case.  Brief for Respondent 24–26.  But these authori-
ties  do  no  such  thing.  As  an  initial  matter,  regardless  of 
what those authorities might imply about “defense preclu-
sion,”  none  of  them  describe  scenarios  applicable  here.
Moreover,  we  doubt  that  these  authorities  stand  for  any-
thing more than that traditional claim- or issue-preclusion
principles may bar defenses raised in a subsequent suit—
principles  that,  as  explained  above,  do  not  bar  Lucky 
Brand’s release defense here. 

Take, for example, cases that involve either judgment en-
forcement or a collateral attack on a prior judgment.  Id., at 
26–35.  In the former scenario, a party takes action to en-
force  a  prior  judgment  already  issued  against  another;  in 
the latter, a party seeks to avoid the effect of a prior judg-
ment by bringing a suit to undo it.  If, in either situation, a 
different outcome in the second action “would nullify the in-
itial judgment or would impair rights established in the in-
itial  action,”  preclusion  principles  would  be  at  play.  Re-
statement (Second) §22(b), at 185; Wright & Miller §4414. 
In both scenarios, courts simply apply claim preclusion or 
issue preclusion to prohibit a claim or defense that would