Opinion ID: 2807460
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Intervening Change of Law

Text: Ideker argues collateral estoppel should not apply in her case because KCP & L and Amesquita changed the law between the district court’s two dismissals. In support, Ideker relies on ASARCO, Inc. v. McNeill, 750 S.W.2d 122 (Mo. Ct. App. 1988), a tax case in which the appeals court observed “a judicial declaration intervening between . . . two proceedings may so change the legal atmosphere as to render the rule of collateral estoppel inapplicable.” Id. at 129 (quotation omitted) (noting the distinct application of collateral estoppel to serial tax cases). Ideker also relies on Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 28(2) (1982), which excepts an issue from preclusion if “[t]he issue is one of law and . . . a new determination is warranted in order to take account of an intervening change in the applicable legal context or otherwise to avoid inequitable administration of the laws.” See also Fielder v. Fielder, 671 S.W.2d 408, 411 (Mo. Ct. App. 1984) (“[T]he Restatement (Second) rule has the virtue of preventing multiple litigation of an issue of law where the claims are closely related, but does not lock the parties into an erroneous conclusion of law for all time.” (emphasis added)). -6- The district court initially accepted Ideker’s change-of-law argument but, upon reconsideration, decided KCP & L and Amesquita did not change the law but instead simply clarified what the law had been since the legislature enacted the 2005 amendments. Aptly distinguishing Ideker’s cited authorities as involving “something other than an incorrect decision,” such as “the same type of transaction . . . repeated on multiple occasions” or “a series of transactions occurring before and after a change in the law” like the annual tax assessments in ASARCO, the district court determined Ideker’s reassertion of the same injury claim did not justify an exception. See ASARCO, 750 S.W.2d at 126-27. Though the district court still believed it had made a mistake in predicting state law, the district court recognized “Missouri courts have consistently stated that the correctness of a decision does not affect its conclusiveness.” We detect no error in the district court’s careful analysis. Even if we assume, without deciding, the district court’s state-law prediction was “incorrect,” Ideker fails to show reversible error. Under Missouri law, “‘[w]hether a prior judgment is legally correct is not at issue in applying the doctrine of collateral estoppel.’” In re Scarborough, 171 F.3d at 642 (quoting Buckley, 889 S.W.2d at 179); accord Gott v. Dir. of Revenue, 5 S.W.3d 155, 159 (Mo. 1999) (en banc) (“The finality of a [judicial] decision . . . does not depend on the correctness of that decision.”). “[T]he fact that the judgment may have been wrong or rested on a legal principle subsequently overruled in another case” does not alter the preclusive effect “of a final, unappealed judgment on the merits.” Federated Dep’t Stores, Inc. v. Moitie, 452 U.S. 394, 398 (1981); accord Ginters v. Frazier, 614 F.3d 822, 826 (8th Cir. 2010) (“Even wrongly decided questions may be precluded from reconsideration under the doctrine.”). To decide otherwise would seed “‘uncertainty and confusion’” and frustrate the purposes of collateral estoppel. Federated, 452 U.S. at 398-99 (quoting Reed v. Allen, 286 U.S. 191, 201 (1932)); accord Clark v. Clark, 984 F.2d 272, 273 (8th Cir. 1993) -7- (“[I]ssue preclusion prevent[s] relitigation of wrong decisions just as much as right ones. Otherwise, the doctrines would have no effect and be useless.”); Buckley, 889 S.W.2d at 179 (explaining the purposes of collateral estoppel “are not served by permitting relitigation based on changes (if it is a change) in legislative or decisional law”). Any purported “mistake” the district court made in predicting Missouri law does not enable Ideker to “circumvent the dismissal in the first case” by refiling the same injury claim based on the same historical facts in a second case. Sexton, 152 S.W.3d at 274.