Court Opinion

ID: 9736971
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:11:17.928839+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:42:11.906223
License: Public Domain

O’Connor, J.
(dissenting, with whom Greaney, J., joins). The plaintiff’s loss of consortium claim and her husband’s workers’ compensation claim related to separate and independent rights. See Pinheiro v. Medical Malpractice Joint Underwriting Ass’n, ante 288 (1990); Bilodeau v. Lumbermen’s Mut. Casualty Co., 392 Mass. 537, 539 (1984); Olsen v. Bell Tel. Laboratories, Inc., 388 Mass. 171, 176-177 (1983); Feltch v. General Rental Co., 383 Mass. 603, 607 (1981); Ferriter v. Daniel O’Connell’s Sons, 381 Mass. 507, 519-530 (1980); Diaz v. Eli Lilly & Co., 364 Mass. 153, 160 (1973); Erickson v. Buckley, 230 Mass. 467, 470-471 (1918); Duffee v. Boston Elevated Ry., 191 Mass. 563, 564 (1906). Furthermore, “it creates no privity between two parties that, as litigants in two different suits, they happen to be interested in proving or disproving the same facts.” Sturbridge v. Franklin, 160 Mass. 149, 151 (1893). The court acknowledges, as it must, that the “spouse’s loss of consortium claim is an independent cause of action,” ante at 480, but concludes nevertheless that facts decisive of the plaintiff’s claim have been established against her in a case in which she was not a party, could not have been a party, and was not in privity with a party.
In “explanation,” the court advises that, although the plaintiff’s and her husband’s claims were independent, they were “sufficiently related” so that the demise of the consortium claim was the inescapable result of the failure of the workers’ compensation claim. That is to say, the plaintiff’s independent cause of action was utterly dependent on the compensation claim for its survival. Does everyone understand?
The court relies on Fidler v. E.M. Parker Co., 394 Mass. 534 (1985). That case was wrongly decided. In any event, Fidler is critically distinguishable from the present case. In *483Fidler, unlike here, the loss of consortium plaintiff at least could have joined in the underlying personal injury action, although he chose not to. “The guiding principle in determining whether to allow defensive use of collateral estoppel is whether the party against whom it is asserted ‘lacked full and fair opportunity to litigate the issue in the first action or [whether] other circumstances justify affording him an opportunity to relitigate the issue.’ ” Martin v. Ring, 401 Mass. 59, 62 (1987), quoting Fidler, supra at 541. Whether issue preclusion applies “rest[s] upon the wholesome principle which allows every litigant one opportunity to try his case on the merits, but limits him, in the interest of the public, to one such opportunity.” Home Owners Fed. Sav. & Loan Ass’n v. Northwestern Fire & Marine Ins. Co., 354 Mass. 448, 455 (1968). Because the plaintiff could not have asserted her loss of consortium claim in the workers’ compensation case, she has not had one opportunity to try her case on the merits.
As the court pointed out in Fidler, supra at 547, and points out again now, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit decided in Roy v. Jasper Corp., 666 F.2d 714, 716 (1st Cir. 1981), that the New Hampshire Supreme Court would apply the bar of collateral estoppel to a woman’s loss of consortium claim following an adverse determination of her husband’s workers’ compensation claim. The court fails to mention that, in arriving at that conclusion, the Court of Appeals reasoned that “the loss of consortium action is fundamentally derivative of the first spouse’s personal injury action.” Id. at 718. In this Commonwealth, we have repeatedly held that a loss of consortium claim is not derivative, but rather is independent. In any event, the result in Roy, supra, is unacceptable because, in denying the consortium claimant any opportunity to litigate her claim, it is fundamentally unfair.
Also, the court’s reliance on Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 48 (1982) is misplaced. Comment a to § 48 states, “[Loss of consortium] claims raise problems of consistency and fairness that are much better dealt with by rules of compulsory joinder than by rules of preclusion. . . . The rules *484of preclusion . . . tend to be . . . distinctly second-best solutions to the basic problems involved.” Comment a thus makes clear that § 48 applies only to a. situation in which joinder would be an alternative. That is not this case. The plaintiff did not have the option of joining her husband’s workers’ compensation case. Furthermore, comment c to § 48 states that loss of consortium can be characterized either as independent of the underlying personal injury claim or as derivative from it. “The position taken [here],” the comment continues, “is that the claim for these losses should be regarded as derivative.” The law of this Commonwealth is otherwise.
The court claims that fairness to the defendant and conservation of judicial resources dictate that the plaintiff be precluded from proving her claim. I disagree. Fairness demands consideration of not only the defendant’s interests, but of the plaintiff’s as well. If the defendant must be put to the test twice in order that the plaintiff shall have one opportunity to prove her claim, so be it. The alternative is unacceptable. “It is a violation of due process for a [finding] to be binding on a litigant who was not a party or a privy and therefore has never had an opportunity to be heard.” Massachusetts Property Ins. Underwriting Ass’n v. Norrington, 395 Mass. 751, 754 (1985), quoting Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore, 439 U.S. 322, 327 n.7 (1979).1
Today’s decision is fundamentally unfair to the plaintiff. Unfairness ought not be tolerated as a judicial resources conservation measure. The public interest requires that priority be given to citizens’ access to the courts and fair treatment to litigants, and only then to judicial economy.

 Justice Wilkins does “not worry about issue preclusion.” Instead, he concludes that, although the worker’s spouse would have a common law claim had the worker prevailed on his workers’ compensation claim, the .spouse has no claim because the worker did not prevail. Justice Wilkins’ formulation is just another way of saying what the court says: that the finding by the Division of Industrial Accidents that the worker had not suffered a work-related injury binds the spouse (issue preclusion) even though the spouse was not a party and could not have been a party in the workers’ compensation proceeding.