Opinion ID: 784819
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: mungo's testimony

Text: 55 Finally, Taylor asserts that Judge Wedoff erred when he allowed Mungo to testify that she was coerced by Taylor into signing the settlement agreement and that she did not receive the benefit of proper legal advice from Taylor before signing that agreement. Taylor argues that the doctrine of judicial estoppel bars such testimony because Mungo testified in the underlying state court divorce proceeding that she entered the settlement agreement freely and voluntarily, that no one forced her to enter the agreement, and that she was pleased with Taylor's representation. 56 Judicial estoppel is inapplicable here because, contrary to Taylor's suggestion, the position espoused by Mungo in this case is not clearly inconsistent with the testimony she gave in the underlying state court divorce proceeding. See Levinson v. United States, 969 F.2d 260, 264 (7th Cir.1992) (judicial estoppel requires, among other things, that the later position must be clearly inconsistent with the earlier position). Mungo's position at trial in this case may be summed up as follows: she admits that she agreed to sign the settlement agreement but she contends that her willingness to do so was the product of Taylor's undue pressure and inadequate legal advice. Mungo's earlier testimony that she entered the settlement agreement freely and voluntarily is not clearly inconsistent with her current conviction that Taylor gave her bad legal advice and pressured her into accepting the agreement. 57 Moreover, this is not a case where the doctrine of judicial estoppel must be invoked in order to prevent a litigant from prevailing twice on separate, mutually exclusive theories. See Ogden Martin Systems of Indianapolis, Inc. v. Whiting Corp., 179 F.3d 523, 527 (7th Cir.1999) (Judicial estoppel serves `to protect the courts from being manipulated by chameleonic litigants who seek to prevail, twice, on opposite theories.') (citation omitted); Ladd v. ITT Corp., 148 F.3d 753, 756 (7th Cir.1998) ([T]he purpose of the doctrine... is to reduce fraud in the legal process by forcing a modicum of consistency on a repeating litigant.). To the contrary, Mungo claims that she essentially lost by signing the settlement agreement and seeks to redress that loss with the malpractice action against Taylor. 58 Finally, as Judge Wedoff recognized, it would make no sense to permit Taylor to invoke the doctrine of judicial estoppel to bar Mungo's testimony because, assuming Mungo's allegations are correct, Taylor's bad legal advice and pressure convinced Mungo to give the testimony in the state court divorce proceeding in the first place. As the bankruptcy court noted, it would hardly be appropriate for the attorney who gave that bad advice to say that because her client testified in accordance with that bad advice that her client is estopped from asserting that the advice [is] bad. ( See R. 1-1, Record, Vol. II, September 28, 2001 Order at p. 14.)