Court Opinion

ID: 9693817
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:01:33.946142+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:50.594682
License: Public Domain

DANA, Justice,
with whom ROBERTS, and RUDMAN, Justices, join,
concurring.
[¶21] This declaratory judgment action was brought by the Markleys in order to achieve some measure of certainty with regard to the boundary of their property. Their neighbors, the Semles, also asked the court to determine the true boundary line between the parties’ properties. After considering the extensive evidence presented during the three-day trial, the court reluctantly concluded that it was unable to adequately locate the boundary between the adjoining lands and thus declined to declare the boundary as requested by the parties.
[¶ 22] I agree that the court was not obligated to declare the boundary between the parties’ properties in the absence of sufficient proof of such a boundary. I write separately, however, to clarify that in my opinion, nothing prevents the Markleys or the Semles from bringing a future action to determine the property boundary despite their failure to adequately establish the boundary in the present action. In other words, the court’s failure to find for either the Markleys or Semles should have no issue or claim preclusion effect on future attempts to establish the boundary should further evidence tending to establish a certain boundary become available.
[¶23] The doctrine of res judicata, or claim preclusion, “serves the critical policies of judicial economy, the stability of final judgments, and fairness to litigants,” Blance v. Alley, 1997 ME 125, ¶ 4, 697 A.2d 828, 829 (quotation omitted), by barring “the relit-igation of issues that were tried, or that may have been tried, between the same parties or their privies in an earlier suit on the same cause of action.” Id. (quotations omitted).
A valid and final judgment in an action brought to declare rights or other legal relations of the parties is conclusive in a subsequent action between them as to the matters declared, and in accordance with the rules of issue preclusion, as to any issues actually litigated by them and determined in the action.
Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 33 (1982) (emphasis added). In the present case the court was unable to make a declaration and the essential issue in dispute plainly was not determined in the action. The parties instead were left in a legal limbo. This case is distinguishable from the typical quiet title action, in which a party asserts title to a parcel of land superior to another and accepts the risk of failing to persuade the factfinder of the quality of the title. See Blance v. Alley, 330 A2d 796 (Me.1975) (in a quiet title action, even if plaintiff can prove property boundary, he must also establish his title to the property to prevail). The Mark-leys did not come to the court to obtain that which they claimed was theirs, but rather, in the face of uncertainty, to ask the court for a judicial determination of what was theirs. Of the three critical policies embodied by the doctrine of res judicata, only the policy of judicial economy would be served by a strict application of the doctrine in these circumstances. Certainly there is nothing stable in the current judgment of the court, and there would be no unfairness to the litigants in allowing them future opportunities to establish the boundary between their properties. The determination of the legal relationships between parties is a crucial function of the judiciary and the circumstances of this case should not preclude the Markleys or the Semles from obtaining such a determination in the future.