Opinion ID: 1209204
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: NLRA Pre-emption

Text: Hawtel next argues that the NLRA pre-empts the DLIR's administration of unemployment compensation in the period since the Ninth Circuit's 1980 Hawtel II decision. The circuit court correctly perceived that this issue formulation is an attempt to evade the collateral estoppel effect of Hawtel II 's holding that the NLRA does not pre-empt Hawaii's statutory scheme providing unemployment compensation to strikers. Collateral estoppel is an issue preclusion doctrine which bars a party from relitigating a factual or legal issue necessarily decided in a prior suit on a different claim involving the party or the party's privy. Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore, 439 U.S. 322, 326 and n. 5, 99 S.Ct. 645, 649 and n. 5, 58 L.Ed.2d 549, 559 and n. 5 (1979). [17] However, collateral estoppel is inapplicable if controlling facts or legal rules have changed since the prior suit. Montana v. United States, 440 U.S. 147, 158, 159, 99 S.Ct. 970, 976, 59 L.Ed.2d 210, 220 (1979). Hawtel reasons that collateral estoppel is inapplicable. We disagree. The fundamental issue framed by Hawtel here is identical to the pre-emption issue litigated in Hawtel I and II. The issue is whether the NLRA pre-empts the payment of unemployment compensation to strikers because the payment alters Congress' balance of labor-management collective bargaining power. Compare Amended Opening Brief at 47; Reply Brief at 8 with Hawtel II, 405 F. Supp. at 276; Hawtel I, 378 F. Supp. at 794. Hawtel's asserted discovery of additional facts about the DLIR's administrative procedures does not change the identity of the pre-emption issue here and in the prior federal litigation. The procedures concern eligibility criteria which, as explained above, Congress specifically intended the states to design. The procedures therefore are not controlling facts warranting re-examination of the NLRA pre-emption issue. Collateral estoppel also applies because Hawtel could have raised the additional facts in the federal litigation before its termination by Hawtel III in 1982. If a new legal theory or factual assertion advanced in a second action is relevant to the subject matter and the issue adjudicated in a first action, so that it could have been raised in the first action, collateral estoppel applies notwithstanding the failure to raise the legal theory or factual assertion in the first action. 1B MOORE'S FEDERAL PRACTICE ¶ 0.443[2] at 760-61 (1984). The facts upon which Hawtel now relies concern the administration of Hawaii's unemployment compensation scheme. These facts clearly are relevant to the subject matter and issues presented by the Hawtel III supplemental complaint, which challenged, under the same federal laws invoked here, Hawaii's collection and administration of its unemployment tax and benefit scheme[.] 691 F.2d at 907. We hold that Hawtel is collaterally estopped from relitigating NLRA pre-emption.