Opinion ID: 2339947
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Effect of Judicial Proceedings.

Text: While the Act requires the Council to give appropriate weight to ... decisions of other branches of government, § 7, in carrying out its duties, including its determination of housing regions, present and prospective lower income need, its promulgation of criteria and guidelines for determining municipal fair share, and its provision of population and household projections, there is no similar express requirement in connection with any particular municipal proceeding before the Council. The Act does not deal expressly with the question of what force and effect, if any, are to be given to prior determinations in a particular Mount Laurel litigation after its transfer to the Council. Where no final judgment has been entered, we believe the Council is not bound by any orders entered in the matter, all of them being provisional and subject to change, nor is it bound by any stipulations, including a municipality's stipulation that its zoning ordinances do not comply with the Mount Laurel obligation. The administrative remedies, and the administrative approach to that subject, may be significantly different from the court's. Fair share rulings by the court, provisional builder's remedies, site suitability determinations  all of these may not be in accord with the policies and regulations of the Council. Similarly, stipulations in Mount Laurel matters were undoubtedly based on the assumption that the issues would be determined by the court in accordance with Mount Laurel II. They presumably represented the litigant's belief that what was being stipulated would be adjudicated in any event. It is not only, in a sense, unfair to the litigant to be bound by these interim adjudications and stipulations, it would also be inconsistent with the purposes of the Act, for these determinations and stipulations may be inconsistent with the comprehensive plan of development of the state and the method of effectuating it. In this regard, we note that general principles of law have long held that res judicata is applicable only when a final judgment is rendered, and the doctrine of collateral estoppel applies whenever an action is sufficiently firm to be accorded conclusive effect. Restatement (Second) of Judgments, § 13 at 132. But this Court has also stated that collateral estoppel is not mandated by constitution or statute and is a doctrine designed to accomplish various goals, a rule not to be applied if there are sufficient countervailing interests. Matter of Coruzzi, 95 N.J. 557, 568 (1984). On this difficult issue, and faced with this unprecedented Act, we conclude that there are sufficient countervailing interests  in the form of the Council's need for flexibility, and the State's need for uniformity  to free the administrative agency of the requirements of collateral estoppel. At the same time, we underscore that the agencies now involved in this field are free to use the records developed in litigation, including any interim orders or stipulations entered, for such purposes as they deem appropriate. We note that the Rules of Evidence, per se, will not apply in administrative proceedings under the Act. See N.J.S.A. 52:14B-10. Thus, again, technical legal rules will neither compel nor preclude the Council or the Administrative Law Judges hearing cases under section 15 from considering the records already developed in court proceedings.