Opinion ID: 1815325
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Scope of the Claim Determined in the Prior Litigation.

Text: In the prior litigation against the defendant involving the limits of its policy, the insured, as judgment debtor, and the plaintiff, administrator, as a judgment creditor, urged that defendant's obligations had not been fully discharged by the tender of $50,000, which represented the bodily injury limit of the policy for injury to one person. Both judgment debtor and judgment creditor urged in that litigation that plaintiff, Betty Jane Fournier, in the dram-shop action, had received two separate and distinguishable recoveries for injury in person: one in her capacity as representative of her deceased son's estate and a second in her capacity as mother of the decedent. It was urged that these were recoveries by two separate persons each of which was based on injury in person. Based upon this theory, the judgment debtor and judgment creditor asked the court to construe defendant's policy as requiring further payment on defendant's part in addition to the sum which had already been tendered. In our decision in the prior litigation, 364 N.W.2d at 222, we rejected these contentions stating that [n]o further recovery can be had on the policy under the theory that Betty as an individual parent was `injured in person.' After so concluding, we further stated: We do not decide whether any claim on her part as a parent under Iowa R.Civ.P. 8 based on Iowa Code section 123.92 for injury to property or to means of support would be compensable under other provisions of the policy because such issues are not raised in this case. Id. at 222. In the present case, the contention advanced is that the defendant, Illinois Casualty Company, is required to make further indemnification of its insured for the judgments in the dram-shop action by reason of the policy coverages relating to injuries sustained as property damage. We have recognized that declaratory judgment actions can give rise to claim preclusion in much the same manner as other types of litigation but only with respect to the same claim or cause of action. In Westway Trading Corp. v. River Terminal Corp., 314 N.W.2d 398, 401 (Iowa 1982), we stated: Res judicata, in the sense of claim preclusion, applies only if the cause of action in the [prior] litigation was the same as the present action. A cause of action is the same when the asserted invasion of rights is the same. A plaintiff is not entitled to a second day in court simply by alleging a new ground of recovery for the same wrong. In order to determine whether the cause of action is the same, we examine the protected right, the alleged wrong, and the relevant evidence. Support for the foregoing view is found in Restatement (Second) Judgments § 33 (1980), which states: A valid and final judgment in an action brought to declare rights or other legal relations of the parties is conclusive in a subsequent action between them as to the matters declared, and, in accordance with the rules of issue preclusion as to any issues actually litigated by them and determined in the action. In the REPORTER'S NOTE accompanying this section, it is observed that The problem of deciding the scope of a prior determination is one frequently encountered in other contexts.... [T]he same techniques used elsewhere can be applied to declaratory judgments, and, as noted, a declaratory judgment will often be more revealing in this regard than other judgments. Id. at 340. The Restatement's suggested test for determination of the dimensions of a claim is as follows. (1) When a valid and final judgment rendered in an action extinguishes the plaintiff's claim pursuant to the rules of merger and 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. (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. Restatement (Second) Judgments § 24 (1982) (emphasis added). We conclude that, in the application of the foregoing principles to declaratory judgment litigation, the extent of the claim which has previously been litigated must be determined pragmatically so as to include all rights which are reasonably related to the objective sought to be obtained by the declaratory judgment litigation. See, e.g., Kaspar Wire Works, Inc. v. Leco Engineering & Machine, Inc., 575 F.2d 530, 536-37 (5th Cir.1978); Howe v. Nelson, 271 Minn. 296, 301, 135 N.W.2d 687, 692 (1965). We have recognized that, in seeking a declaration of rights under a written instrument, a party is not always required to litigate the full scope of all affected rights and obligations in a single proceeding. In Westway, 314 N.W.2d at 401, we determined that, where different disputes under a lease matured at different times, separate claims may be brought. Similarly, in In re Ditz's Estate, 255 Iowa 1272, 1283-84, 125 N.W.2d 814, 821 (1964), we determined that the result of an action for a declaratory judgment seeking to attack a will for creating an illegal trust did not give rise to claim preclusion with respect to a subsequent claim involving testamentary capacity. Notwithstanding that in a proper case separate actions for declaratory judgment may be brought for the determination of rights and obligations under a single contract, we do not believe that this is such a case. Under a pragmatic view of claim preclusion, the scope of the claim adjudicated in the prior litigation was whether or not the defendant had any additional responsibility under its liability insurance policy with the Fraternal Order of Eagles for the payment of the judgments against its insured in the Black Hawk County dram-shop litigation. It was declared in the prior litigation that the claim made by the judgment debtor and the judgment creditor that additional sums were payable under defendant's policy was not sustainable under the interpretation of the policy which they urged in that action. The present litigation seeks to relitigate the same issue, i.e., the extent of defendant's obligation to indemnify the Fraternal Order of Eagles against plaintiff's judgments. We conclude that this second effort may not be countenanced under recognized principles of claim preclusion.