Opinion ID: 706975
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Supplemental Briefing on the Prior litigation

Text: 13 As described above, the Clementses initially sought review of their employment terminations through the Airport Authority's administrative grievance process, and when this ultimately produced an adverse decision, the couple petitioned for judicial review under the Nevada APA in state district court. By the time this case reached our court on appeal from summary judgment in federal district court, the Nevada state district court had issued a decision denying the Clementses' petition for review, and an appeal from that decision was pending in the Nevada Supreme Court. The initial state district court decision had been issued prior to the federal district court decision. 14 At first glance, the question whether the Clementses had a property interest in their employment for purposes of their Due Process claims seemed intimately connected to the question whether the Clementses were protected by the Airport Authority's somewhat complicated civil service system. Although the state proceedings did not adjudicate the constitutional claims, their resolution of the civil service claims appeared to provide an authoritative construction of the Airport Authority's civil service regulations, and appeared to answer the questions whether the Clementses' jobs were covered by the system and whether the requisite civil service procedures had been followed. Despite the apparent overlap of issues, there was a complete absence of any discussion of the potential preclusive effect of either the state administrative proceedings or the state district court decision in the proceedings below. No mention of preclusion appeared in either the federal district court decision or any of the initial briefs filed in this court. Accordingly, we requested supplemental briefing on this question. 3 15 In the first set of supplemental briefs, only one cursory sentence on the final page of the defendants' brief suggested that the doctrine of claim preclusion might be applicable to this case. The remainder of the brief presented extensive arguments as to the issue preclusive effect that should be given to the state court proceedings. The plaintiffs' supplemental brief was similarly restricted to a discussion of issue preclusion. 16 Two months after we heard oral argument, the Nevada Supreme Court issued its long awaited opinion. Shortly thereafter, we again requested supplemental briefing; this time on the effect, if any, of the Nevada Supreme Court's decision on this federal action. It was in response to this final request for additional briefing that the defendants elected to assert an argument that the entire federal action is barred by the doctrine of claim preclusion.