Opinion ID: 168501
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Claim-splitting principle

Text: 10 Before discussing the specific elements of Utah and federal law of claim preclusion, we narrow our focus to the key issue in this case. Although plaintiffs attack the district court's claim preclusion analysis on a number of points, we perceive the key issue to be whether plaintiffs' current complaint represents an impermissible attempt to split their claims. Stone v. Dep't of Aviation, 453 F.3d 1271, 1278 (10th Cir. 2006) (A plaintiff's obligation to bring all related claims together in the same action arises under the common law rule of claim preclusion prohibiting the splitting of actions.). 11 The Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 24 (1982) enunciates the general rule concerning claim splitting: 12 (1) When a valid and final judgment rendered in an action extinguishes the plaintiff's claim pursuant to the rules of merger or bar . . . the claim extinguished includes all rights of the plaintiff to remedies against the defendant with respect to all or any part of the transaction, or series of connected transactions, out of which the action arose. 13 (2) What factual grouping constitutes a transaction, and what groupings constitute a series, are to be determined pragmatically, giving weight to such considerations as whether the facts are related in time, space, origin, or motivation, whether they form a convenient trial unit, and whether their treatment as a unit conforms to the parties' expectations or business understanding or usage. 14 (emphasis added). 15 The question for us, then, is whether the facts that form the basis of plaintiffs' current claims (the 2002 amended complaint) are part of the same transaction they asserted in the previous actions. This question is determined by the manner in which the facts constituting the transaction are grouped. As will be demonstrated, the district court grouped all facts arising prior to the final judgments in the previous actions as a single transaction.