Opinion ID: 1379638
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: our holding on appeal, discussion of legal issues

Text: On appeal, we affirm the district court's ruling on the grounds of collateral estoppel. Thus, we need not reach the other issues raised by the parties on appeal. The district court correctly denied a stay. By the doctrine of offensive collateral estoppel, discussed more fully below, the attorney general was barred from raising as defenses to this action essentially the same defenses to essentially the same substantive contract provisions he raised at the district court level in Local 2238, 108 N.M. 163, 769 P.2d 76. We agree entirely with Judge Herrera, the trial judge in the case before us, that Judge Encinias, in his ruling in Local 2238, actually and necessarily decided the challenged provisions in that case. We likewise agree with Judge Herrera that the provisions challenged in the case at bar are strikingly similar, if not identical, to the contract provisions determined [to be] legally sufficient by Judge Encinias. In both cases the attorney general contended that certain compensation and benefit provisions in the respective contracts constituted a violation of RLMR 7(B). Although there are slight differences between some of the contract provisions, materially they are strikingly similar. For example, in Local 2238, the contract specified certain pay provisions in the event of employee standby or in the event an employee was called at home to report for work immediately. In the instant case, the contract sets forth terms by which employees are to be paid for waiting at the work place to start working. Materially the provisions are similar. The attorney general contends that the two contracts provide for future appropriations for dissimilar benefits: under the contract in Local 2238, future appropriations could be spent for certain types of work clothing and shoes, while in the contract before us, future appropriations might be spent for reimbursing an employee for loss of personal property on the job or for counseling services that an employee might receive. We think the threshold determinative questions are (1) whether the two unidentical provisions are concerned with identical subject matter ( i.e., are they both in fact concerned with future appropriations), and (2) whether the attorney general in the first case in fact argued against the substantive merits of the two provisions, not whether every single item contracted for in each contract was identical. The record clearly shows that both contract provisions were concerned with identical subject matter and that the attorney general argued against the substantive merits of both contracts in the two cases. After we know that the attorney general in the first case did argue against those parts of the first contract that involved the same subject matter as that covered by pertinent parts of the second contract, we then need to ask whether the second contract would have disposed of materially the same employee rights as were disposed of in the first contract. So long as the same employee rights under materially similar provisions in the second case were at issue in the first case, and so long as those rights were disposed of by a ruling in the first case, then it does not matter that one contract provision promised the employees clothing and shoes while the other promised them counseling. We apply this analysis to another example from the two contracts. In the first contract that the attorney general sought to reject, there were certain provisions allowing employees leave time for voting, taking care of sick family members, and attending family funerals. In the second contract, there were similar albeit unidentical provisions on an identical subject matter  granting leave time for care of newborn infants and chronically ill children. While the items provided for in both contracts were not identical, the attorney general nonetheless was given a full and fair opportunity to defend against, and did defend against, the inclusion of such similar leave-time provisions in the first contract. That part of the first contract which was dispositive of the parties' leave-time rights was fully litigated. In the second case, materially similar provisions from a contract covering identical subject matter need not be relitigated if again contested by the attorney general. To repeat: By principles of collateral estoppel, the Local in the case at bar is not required to relitigate, and the attorney general is estopped from contesting, leave-time provisions when another local's materially similar leave-time rights under a different contract were disposed of by a prior court construing contract provisions covering identical subject matter. It matters not that one contract was concerned with employee leave to attend to a sick child while the other contract was concerned with attendance at a funeral. This does not mean that particularized contract provisions will always be judicially deemed similar merely because they are involved with the same general subject matter or come under the same general heading. We could conceive of a union's either deceptively or mistakenly placing two entirely dissimilar contract provisions under similar headings or arguing that they involved the same subject matter when in fact they didn't. We merely find that under the facts of this case Judge Herrera was right to rule that the contract before him contained provisions that were strikingly similar to the contract provisions ruled on by Judge Encinias. We further find that similar rights involving identical subject matter were disposed of by the court in the first case. In a future case, the attorney general is free to raise the same argument that he has raised here as to the dissimilarity of purportedly similar contract provisions in two different contracts contested in two different lawsuits, and should he make a better case of showing dissimilarity, he may be entitled to prevail. We are persuaded neither from the record, nor from the briefs, nor from the attorney general's oral argument  where counsel was unable to provide us with a best-shot example of two egregiously dissimilar provisions  that Judge Herrera erred in ruling as he did on collateral estoppel. Our holding is consistent with that in Silva v. State, 106 N.M. 472, 745 P.2d 380 (1987), wherein Justice Ransom ably and concisely discussed the standards for application of the doctrine of offensive collateral estoppel. Id. at 475-76, 745 P.2d at 383-84. As Justice Ransom noted, The trial court is in the best position to decide whether a party against whom estoppel is asserted has had a full and fair opportunity to litigate. Id. at 476, 745 P.2d at 384. Judge Herrera made such a determination here, and made it correctly. Further, Judge Herrera correctly decided that the record [was sufficient for him] to determine what issues were actually and necessarily determined [against the attorney general in the instant action] by prior litigation. Cf. id. Justice Ransom in Silva, id. at 475-76, 745 P.2d at 383-84, has already analyzed the United States Supreme Court's holding in Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore, 439 U.S. 322, 99 S.Ct. 645, 58 L.Ed.2d 552 (1979), wherein the Court enunciated its standard for application of offensive collateral estoppel. We will not repeat that discussion here. We find support for the position we have taken herein in post- Parklane decisions by the Court involving claim and issue preclusion. We find the Court moving away from technical definitions and standards for the imposition of doctrines like collateral estoppel and toward determinations based on a policy of finality that is to be arrived at on a case by case basis. In other words, in recent years, the Court has cared less for the name by which one calls claim or issue preclusion than it has for the policy which is to be served in applying principles of finality. This is best illustrated in Arizona v. California, 460 U.S. 605, 103 S.Ct. 1382, 75 L.Ed.2d 318 (1983), wherein the Court held that rights of Indian tribes to the waters of the Colorado River were not relitigable, owing to the policy of finality adhering to the tribes' water rights as established in a prior decree (373 U.S. 546, 83 S.Ct. 1468, 10 L.Ed.2d 542 (1963)) on the same issue. The Court differed with the Special Master's determination of the issue on law-of-the-case principles, because the Court sought a higher degree of finality than law-of-the-case doctrine would afford. 460 U.S. at 619, 103 S.Ct. at 1391. The Court noted that: [W]hile    technical rules of preclusion are not strictly applicable, the principles upon which these rules are founded should inform our decision. It is clear that res judicata and collateral estoppel do not apply if a party moves the rendering court in the same proceeding to correct or modify its judgment. Nevertheless, a fundamental precept of common-law adjudication is that an issue once determined by a competent court is conclusive. Id. (Citations omitted.) Just as the Court did in Arizona v. California , we find the principles of finality adhering to prior judicial rulings as important if not more important than technical definitions that may have been necessary to satisfy standards of a bygone era overly concerned with black-letter rules of law. In applying principles of finality upon which offensive collateral estoppel is based, we find that the trial court's ruling was correct in every respect. For the foregoing reasons the district court is affirmed. IT IS SO ORDERED. RANSOM and BACA, JJ., concur.