Opinion ID: 2584112
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: the claim abolished today is protected from belated judicial destruction by the doctrine of issue preclusion [30]

Text: ¶ 17 When certiorari was denied (and finality of COCA's decision came to be reached), the unharmed plaintiffs' entitlement to prosecute a private claim for a mere violation of the Act (to which counsel-fee recovery stood attached in favor of one declared to have emerged as prevailing party) became protected by the doctrine of issue preclusion. [31] ¶ 18 Issue preclusion prevents relitigation of facts and other issues actually litigated and necessarily determined in an earlier proceeding between the same parties or their privies. [32] The preclusion doctrine (both with respect to its claim and issue applications) fosters the important goal of affording finality [33] to all issues, of fact or law, which were fully and fairly litigated. [34] The preclusion doctrine is applicable whether the contested issues in the case in which it is invoked were rightly or wrongly decided. [35] ¶ 19 Actionability of the plaintiffs' private claim was finally resolved in their favor in Tibbetts I [36] by this court's denial of certiorari and subsequent issuance of its mandate. [37] The latter judicial act put an end to all direct remedies available for correction of that pronouncement, even if it were flawed by ascribing the wrong meaning to the text of the Act. I would neither tamper with nor repudiate the command of issue-preclusion doctrine by retroactively applying after-crafted changes to a once finally shaped norm of controlling statutory law. [38] ¶ 20 Under the terms of today's opinion, no mandate of this court could ever again attain the status of unassailable finality for the pronounced rulings in a case.