Court Opinion

ID: 9478817
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:58:47.915381+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:37.891077
License: Public Domain

CYNTHIA HOLCOMB HALL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I agree that we have jurisdiction to hear this appeal and that the district court erred in construing our decision in Wollersheim I so broadly. I cannot join the majority opinion, however, because a remand to the district court for further evaluation of the appropriateness of preliminary relief constitutes an enormous waste of judicial resources.
In Wollersheim I, the Church of Scientology (the “Church”) sought and obtained a preliminary injunction, based in part on its claim that the Church of the New Civilization (the “New Church”) stole its protected trade secrets. The Church alleged that New Church adherents took certain scriptural materials from the Church when they left to form the New Church. The Church, however, did not characterize the alleged harm as commercial or economic. Instead, the Church alleged only that its followers would suffer spiritual injury if the New Church was permitted to retain and use the scriptures. On appeal, we held that the Church’s failure to allege or offer proof that the scriptures had economic value meant that the scriptures did not qualify as trade secrets under California law.
Following our decision, the Church returned to the district court to again seek an injunction against the New Church’s use and distribution of the disputed scriptures. This time, however, the Church alleged that the scriptures had economic value: “Plaintiffs will be forever at a loss to protect the confidential nature and resultant economic value of these materials. Defendant will obtain an economic advantage that they would not otherwise possess which will be used to divert parishioners, the value and goodwill of which cannot be monetarily measured by plaintiffs.” The district court denied this second request for preliminary injunctive relief, construing our decision in Wollersheim I as precluding an injunction before a final hearing on the merits.
The Church made a tactical choice not to allege in its original application that the scriptures had an economic value. The Church cannot now avoid the consequences of that choice by burdening the district court with a second application for preliminary relief, and this court with a second interlocutory appeal. Where the Church easily could have alleged in its initial application that the scriptures had an economic value, we should hold that it is estopped from appealing the denial of its subsequent application for preliminary relief under California trade secrets law.1
*1311The doctrine of judicial estoppel, sometimes referred to as the doctrine of preclusion of inconsistent positions, is invoked to prevent a party from changing its position over the course of judicial proceedings when such positional changes have an adverse impact on the judicial process. See IB Moore’s Federal Practice ¶ .405[8], at 238-42 (2d Ed.1988). “The policies underlying preclusion of inconsistent positions are ‘general considerations] of the orderly administration of justice and regard for the dignity of judicial proceedings.’ ” Arizona v. Shamrock Foods Co., 729 F.2d 1208, 1215 (9th Cir.1984), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 1197, 105 S.Ct. 980, 83 L.Ed.2d 982 (1985) (citations omitted). Judicial estoppel is “intended to protect against a litigant playing ‘fast and loose with the courts.’ ” Rockwell International Corp. v. Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council, 851 F.2d 1208, 1210 (9th Cir.1988) (citations omitted). Because it is intended to protect the integrity of the judicial process, it is an equitable doctrine invoked by a court at its discretion.
I recognize that this is not the prototypical case for invoking judicial estoppel. Judicial estoppel is most commonly applied to bar a party from making a factual assertion in a legal proceeding which directly contradicts an earlier assertion made in the same proceeding or a prior one. See generally Note, Judicial Estoppel: The Refurbishing of a Judicial Shield, 55 Geo.Wash. L.Rev. 409, 410-12 (1987); Comment, Precluding Inconsistent Statements: The Doctrine of Judicial Estoppel, 80 Nw.U.L. Rev. 1244 (1986)2. Nevertheless, I find the policies underlying the doctrine of judicial estoppel to make this an equally appropriate case for its application.
Considerable judicial resources were expended in resolving the novel question of state law presented by the Church’s original argument that information could be a trade secret if it conferred a spiritual advantage on its creator. But instead of laying the question of interlocutory relief to rest, our decision in Wollersheim I that California law protects trade secrets only if they have commercial value, simply prompted the Church to start the process all over again by arguing in a new application for a TRO that the scriptures did have commercial value after all. As a result of the Church’s actions in pursuing two successive applications for injunctive relief, instead of a single application based upon alternative theories of spiritual and commercial value, there is no question but that the courts as well as the defendants have been needlessly burdened.
The integrity of the judicial process would be seriously undermined if every litigant could compel the courts to hear and decide repetitive requests for the identical relief. The Church should not be permitted to use the courts as a laboratory in which to experiment. The doctrine of judicial es-toppel was fashioned to prevent just this sort of litigation strategy which plays fast and loose with the judicial process.

. The Church alleged several other state law theories of recovery in this and its prior application for preliminary injunctive relief. We did not specifically analyze these other claims in *1311Wollersheim I. During oral argument in the present case, however, counsel for the Church, with commendable candor, acknowledged that the only argument made before this court to support the first injunction was that the scriptures conferred a spiritual advantage on the Church and its followers. The courts need not be at the Church’s beck and call to now analyze the relevance, if any, of the Church’s new allegations of commercial advantage to these other state law theories.

. Finley v. Kesling, 105 Ill.App.3d 1, 60 Ill.Dec. 874, 433 N.E.2d 1112 (1982), is cited by the latter article as a paradigmatic case for the invocation of judicial estoppel. In Finley, a declaratory action filed by the former owner of the Oakland Athletics baseball team to resolve ownership interests in the family corporation, the plaintiff asserted that he was the beneficial owner of 71% of the stock. The court estopped him from taking that position because, in a divorce action eight years before, he had testified under oath that he owned only 31% of the stock and that his wife and children owned the rest. Finley, 105 Ill.App.3d at 10, 60 Ill.Dec. at 881, 433 N.E.2d at 1119.