Opinion ID: 2364266
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Building-Code Violations

Text: The defendants also challenge the injunction ordering them to abate various building-code violations at the campground. The defendants contend that they do not control the individual campsites in a manner sufficient to effectuate the terms of the injunction and that the trial justice erred in relying on vague and ambiguous portions of the state building code. [7] Once again, however, we have no need to reach the merits of defendants' arguments because res judicata bars their attempted relitigation here. As discussed above, we may raise the doctrine res judicata sua sponte to affirm a trial court's judgment. See Merrilees, 618 A.2d at 1315. In this case, we hold that res judicata precludes defendants from relitigating defenses that were raised or that could have been raised in the previous code-violation proceeding before the state building-code board. Here, the identity of the parties was the same in both proceedings. Also, the state building-code board's decision upholding the alleged building-code violations became the equivalent of a final judgment when defendants did not appeal it under § 23-27.3-127.1.4(f), (g). See Tucker, 657 A.2d at 550. We also hold that because the issues in both proceedings were identical, res judicata bars defendants from reasserting defenses that they raised or that they could have raised before the state building-code board. Even though the second amended complaint listed some additional violations at individual campsites that were not at issue in the first proceeding, both proceedings involved identical issues  namely, whether structures built by campers on individual campsites violated the building code. These additional violations arose from the seasonal and transient nature of defendants' business; that is, new campers occupied the campsites and built new structures of the same type that the state building-code board had ruled were illegal in the previous proceeding. Despite these new offending structures, defendants had the opportunity to argue that these kinds of structures on individual campsites and erected by campers did not violate the building code. Therefore, defendants are foreclosed from reasserting that defense in this proceeding. For the foregoing reasons, we hold that res judicata bars the defendants from raising any argument or defense suggesting the defendants' lack of responsibility for removing these structures from individual campsites. The parties already litigated this issue before the state building-code board during the previous proceeding. Although the record before us does not show whether, in the previous proceeding, the defendants' actually argued all the building-code issues and defenses asserted in their brief, such as the alleged vagueness and ambiguity of the state building code, res judicata bars the relitigation of defenses that were raised or that could have been raised in that previous proceeding. Accordingly, we hold that the defendants cannot reassert these defenses on this appeal because they could have and should have been raised in the proceedings before the state building-code board or in a timely appeal from the board's decision that upheld the violations.