Opinion ID: 3025396
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: issues

Text: Milligan argues that the District Court is precluded from retrying the factual issue of whether his proposed lagoon would attract birds and thus create an airport hazard because the Iowa district court, in a prior case between the same parties, tried this issue and found that the lagoon posed no threat to airport safety. We disagree. Issue preclusion prevents a party to a prior action from relitigating issues that were raised and resolved in the previous action. See, e.g., Hunter v. City of Des Moines, 300 N.W.2d 121, 123 (Iowa 1981). State legislative acts and judicial decisions have the same full faith and credit in every court within the United States . . . as they have by law or usage in the courts of such State . . . from which they are taken. 28 U.S.C. § 1738 (1994); accord Haberer v. Woodbury County, 188 F.3d 957, 961 (8th Cir. 1999). Iowa law requires that four conditions be met before an Iowa court may apply the doctrine of issue preclusion:  '(1) the issue determined in the prior action is identical to the present issue; (2) the issue was raised and litigated in the prior action; (3) the issue was material and relevant to the disposition in the prior action; and (4) the determination made of the issue in the prior action was necessary and essential to that resulting judgment.'  Dettmann v. Kruckenberg, 613 N.W.2d 238, 244 (Iowa 2000) (quoting American Family Mut. Ins. Co. v. Allied Mut. Ins. Co., 562 N.W.2d 159, 163- 64 (Iowa 1997)); accord North Star Steel Co. v. MidAmerican Energy -8- Holdings Co., 184 F.3d 732, 737 (8th Cir. 1999). Failure of any of these four conditions prevents the application of issue preclusion. The issues of whether birds would be attracted to Milligan's proposed lagoon, and whether this would constitute an airport hazard, were raised and resolved in the state court. These same issues were raised in the District Court. The dispositive issues, however, in the two proceedings were not identical because different lagoon configurations were presented to the state and federal courts and because the state court found not a water fowl hazard but a pilot visibility hazard. On the basis of that finding, the state court granted the city's motion for an injunction prohibiting Milligan from constructing his lagoon as it was then planned. Therefore, inasmuch as the issues in the two judicial proceedings were not identical, the doctrine of issue preclusion is inapplicable. More to the point, however, the District Court in any event was not reviewing the state judicial decision. Instead, its review was of a subsequent finding of the Red Oak City Council, a legislative body, that the lagoon would create a water fowl hazard to aviation. We have been shown no authority, and are unaware of any, for the proposition that through collateral estoppel a finding made in a judicial decision can preclude a legislative body from later making a contrary finding. As stated earlier in this opinion, the city's action taken in the interest of airport safety meets both the federal rationally-related standard and the more stringent Iowa reasonably-expect-toachieve standard, and therefore must be sustained.