Court Opinion

ID: 9526805
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:24:26.624243+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:22:22.839885
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion
White, J.
While it is true that an adjudication not on the merits does not preclude relitigation of issues not decided (if the objection which proved fatal in the first action can be avoided in a subsequent action1.) it is nevertheless, *681conclusive as to the points actually decided.2 The federal court decision was that appellants’ cause of action was barred by the six-months limitation of Ind. Acts 1953, ch. 112, § 1401, Burns Ind. Stat. Ann. § 7-801, subsection (a) and that Ind. Acts 1961, ch. 287, § 1, which added subsection (f) creating an exception for tort claims, did not apply to appellants’ cause of action which arose in 1959. Thus this federal court decision established a rule of law binding on the parties to this action. Therefore, had appellees, by answer or motion *682for summary judgment, taken proper advantage of this prior adjudication that the cause of action was barred, they could have successfully defeated the state court action brought by appellants after the federal court action failed. But appellees chose to litigate anew the question already decided in their favor by the federal court.
' Appellees chose to demur to the complaint. As the majority opinion holds, the federal court decision, not being alleged in the complaint could not have been considered as a prior adjudication between appellants and appellees in ruling on the demurrer. Therefore, the trial court and this court were free to decide whether the complaint stated a cause of action under the rules of law applicable in the absence of any prior litigation between the parties. The federal court decision having not been brought into the case as a prior adjudication between the parties hereto, was no more than a precedent arising from the adjudication of a similar issue between strangers.
The trial court followed the precedent, but this court quite correctly (I believe) concluded that the federal precedent was an erroneous interpretation of Indiana law. In doing so this court also made an adjudication binding on the parties under a rule known as “the law of the case”, which is also a species of res judicata, limited, however, to questions of law and to subsequent proceedings in the same case.3 Our problem is to determine which adjudication controls.
On remand and reconsideration of this case by the court below, a new fact was added to the facts alleged in the complaint on which we held in the first appeal that because Ind. Acts 1961, ch. 287, § 1, applied retroactively, appellants’ cause of action was not barred by Ind. Acts 1953, ch. 112, § 1401, Burns’ Ind. Stat. Ann. §7-801, subsection (a). The new fact *683was added by an affidavit supporting a motion for summary judgment. The new fact was thát it was in a prior action between the parties to this case, that the federal court had rendered a final decision that the 1961 act was not retroactive and that the cause of action was barred. I am reluctantly driven to the conclusion, from reading the Indiana authorities,4 that this new fact put an end to the conclusive force and effect of our prior decision as “the law of the case” —if it was proper for the trial court to consider that new fact in ruling on the motion for summary judgment.
Res judicata is a defense that can be waived5 and it is my opinion that it was waived by the appellees when they elected to relitigate in the trial court (and in this court), on demurrer, the law question of whether appellants’ cause of action was barred by the 1953 statute rather than by properly asserting (by answer, or summary judgment motion supported by affidavit) that it was barred because the federal court had already decided that law question against appellants.6 *684Therefore the law of this case established by our former adr judication is still the law of this case.
. I therefore .concur, in the result reached by the majority.
Note. — Reported in 248 N. E. 2d 378.

. Griffith v. Bank of New York (C. A. 2d N. Y.), 147 F. 2d 899, 160 A. L. R. 1340, cert. den. 325 U. S. 874, 89 L. Ed. 1992, 65 S. Ct. 1414, (1945); Miller v. Milford, 224 Iowa 753, 276 N. W. 826, 114 A. L. R. 1423, (1937); In re, Craven, 178 La. 372, 151 So. 625, 90 A. L. R. 973, (1933); Healy v. Atchison T. & S. F. R. Co. (Mo.), 287 S. W. 2d 813; Chirelstein v. Chirelstein, 12 N. J. Super 468, 79 A. 2d 884, (1951); Brick v. Cohn-Hall-Marx Co., 283 N. Y. 99, 27 N. E. 518; Converse v. Sickles, 146 N. Y. 200, 40 N. E. 777, 48 Am. St. Rep. 790; Hutchings v. Zumbrunn, 86 Okl. 226, 208 P. 224, (1922); Gist v. Davis, 11 S. C. Eq. (2 Hill) 335, 29 Am. Dec. 89; Peterson v. Morris, 119 Wash. 335, 205 P. 408. Anno: 11 L. Ed. 1059. “A surrogate court’s dismissal of a suit to compel an accounting by a trustee whose accounts have been previously approved by a judgment entered upon stipulation of the parties in the Supreme Court is not a bar to a suit in a federal court for damages for breach of trust and for duress in procuring the stipulation upon which the Supreme Court judgment was entered, where the dismissal was for reasons not going to the merits.” Griffith v. Bank of New York (C. A. 2d N. Y.), 147 F. 2d 899, 160 A. L. R. 1340, cert. den. 325 U. S. 874, 89 L. Ed. 1992, 65 S. Ct. 1414.

. Healy v. Atchison, T & S. F. R. Co., (Mo.), 287 S. W. 2d 813; Dunseth v. Butte Electric R. Co., 41 Mont. 14, 108 P. 567, 21 Ann. Cas. 1258, (1910); Chirelstein v. Chirelstein, 12 N. J. Super 468, 79 A. 2d 884; Brick v. Cohn-Hall-Marx Co., 283 N. Y. 99, 27 N. E. 2d 518. In Healy v. Atchison, T. & S. F. R. Co., supra [287 S. W. 2d 813, 815 (1956)] the Supreme Court of Missouri said: “Obviously the judgment of dismissal in the first case was not a judgment on the merits of plaintiffs’ cause of action;_ and, therefore, plaintiffs claim the right to commence a new action within one year under authority of Section 516.230. (Statutory references are to RSMo and V.A.M.S.) The trouble with plaintiffs’ contention is that as the grounds for dismissal the Court decided plaintiffs had no right to maintain the action in the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis and they did not appeal. In this situation, the rule is thus stated: ‘Where a valid and final personal judgment not on the merits is rendered in favor of the defendant, the plaintiff is not thereby precluded from thereafter maintaining an action on the original cause of action and the judgment is conclusive only as to what is actually decided.’ Sec. 49, A. L. I. Restatement of Judgments; see also See. 53, especially Comment c. In explanation of this rule, it is stated: ‘A judgment for the defendant may be based upon the ground that the plaintiff is not entitled to maintain an action in the State in which the judgment is rendered and not on a ground which would be applicable to an action in other States. In such a case the judgment is on the merits to the extent that it will bar the plaintiff from maintaining a further action in that State, but it is not on the merits so far as actions in other States are concerned. . . . Although, where the judgment for the defendant is not on the merits, the plaintiff is not precluded from maintaining a new action on the same cause of action, he is precluded from relitigating the very question which was litigated in the prior action.’ Restatement of Judgments, pp. 194-195: Likewise, it is stated in 30 Am. Jur. 945_, Sec. 208: ‘An adjudication on grounds purely technical, where the merits cannot come into question, is limited to the point actually decided, and does not preclude the maintenance of a subsequent action brought in a way to avoid the objection which proved fatal in the first action. As to the technical point decided, however, the judgment is conclusive, even though it is not conclusive as to the merits of the entire controversy.’ See also 50 C. J. S., Judgments, § 638, p. 72; Redmond v. Republic Steel Corp., 238 Mo. App. 647, 186 S. W. 2d 51. Thus, as to the question actually decided, in the judgment of dismissal, the judgment is conclusive against plaintiffs even though it was not conclusive on the merits of the cause of action or their right to maintain the action elsewhere.”

. Alerding v. Allison, 170 Ind. 252, 258, 83 N. E. 1006, 127 Am. St. Rep. 363 (1908), Westfall v. Wait, 165 Ind. 353, 359, 73 N. E. 1089, 6 Ann. Cas. 788 (1905); 2 Freeman on Judgments (5th Ed.) §§ 630, 639; Sturgis v. Rogers, 26 Ind. 1, 14 (1866).

. Dodge v. Gaylor, 53 Ind. 365 (1876); Davis v. Krug, 95 Ind. 9; Buehner Chair Co. v. Feulner, 164 Ind. 368, 371, 73 N. E. 816 (1905); Alerding v. Allison, 170 Ind. 252, 260, 83 N. E. 1006 (1907).

. Brown v. Stapleton, 216 Ind. 387, 391, 24 N. E. 2d 909 (1940).

. “A party cannot rely upon a judicial determination of any issue by way. of estoppel, and also upon proof of the facts upon which the determination is based. The necessary effect of the estoppel is to preclude .all- inquiry as to the, truth of the matter determined, and when a party 'who is entitled to set up the estoppel opens the inquiry into'the truth of the matter he cannot complain that the other party pursues it without regard to the estoppel”. Megerle v. Ashe, 33 Cal. 74, 84 (1867). [That case involved truth of facts vs. their prior adjudication. The case at bar involves correctness of a rule of law vs. its prior adjudication. Appellees by their demurrer opened the inquiry into what was the correct rule of law and cannot now complain that appellants pursued that inquiry without regard to estoppel by the federal court decision.]
“Before, a party can be held conclusively to have waived defense of estoppel by former judgment, he must have assumed a’-position so inconsistant with the assertion as to amount to an election to abandon it [which appellees did by demurring and permitting an appeal without having asserted the prior adjudication as an estoppel] or proceedings must have reached a stage that the allowance would be inequitable. [The second appeal is such a stage.] Hickey v. Johnson, C, C. A. Okl., 9 F. 2d 498. . . .” 50 C. J. S. 15, Judgments § 597, note 21.