Flores v. Edinburg Consol. Independent School Dist.

• Decision Date: 17 September 1984
• Docket Number: No. 83-2195,83-2195
• Citation: 741 F.2d 773
• Parties: 19 Ed. Law Rep. 838 Aminta FLORES, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees Cross-Appellants, v. EDINBURG CONSOLIDATED INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, et al., Defendants-Appellants Cross-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 773

741 F.2d 773

19 Ed. Law Rep. 838

Aminta FLORES, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees Cross-Appellants, v. EDINBURG CONSOLIDATED INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, et al Defendants-Appellants Cross-Appellees.

No. 83-2195.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

Sept. 17, 1984.

Alfonso Ibanez, L. Aron Pena, Edinburg, Tex., Roy S. Dale, Brownsville, Tex., for defendants-appellants cross-appellees.

Mitchell J. Green, Conde Thompson Cox, Asst. Attys. Gen., Austin, Tex., amicus curiae, for State of Tex.

Douglas M. Becker, Ray Goldstein, Austin, Tex., for Edinburg Consol. Indep. School Dist.

Larry Watts, Laura Oren, Houston, Tex., for plaintiffs-appellees cross-appellants.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Before GARZA, GARWOOD, and HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judges.

HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge:

The Edinburg Consolidated Independent School District appeals from a judgment entered against it in this Sec. 1983 action brought by the administratrix of the estate of David Flores, a junior high school student who suffered an injury to his hand in a classroom accident and later committed suicide. A jury found that the school district's negligence had caused an infringement of Flores's constitutionally-protected right not to have his bodily integrity impaired by unsafe school conditions, and awarded damages of $550,000. A suit in state court identical to the federal suit, except that its legal theory was state tort rather than constitutional tort, resulted in a summary judgment for defendants on grounds of sovereign immunity. Because we conclude that under Texas law the present suit is barred by the doctrine of res judicata, we reverse the judgment and order that judgment be entered for the defendants.

I

In January 1977, when he was fourteen years old, Flores was using a power circular saw in his woodworking class and suffered a severe cut to his right hand; at the time of the injury, the saw's safety guard had been removed and the teacher was in an area of the classroom from which he could not observe or supervise students using the power tools. Although surgery was successful in saving Flores's hand, the hand was left permanently deformed--a condition that evidently preyed on Flores's mind. The Flores family blames this condition for Flores's eventual suicide in October 1981.

In January 1979 Flores sued the school district and his woodshop teacher in the Texas state court, arguing that their negligence had been the cause of his injury. Defendants were granted summary judgment before trial on the ground of sovereign immunity. Tex.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 6252-19a (waiver of immunity in Texas Tort Claims Act does not apply to school districts). No appeal from this judgment was ever perfected.

In September 1980 Flores filed the present suit in the district court, alleging that the school board's custom or policy of disregarding safety concerns had led to Flores's injury; a right of recovery was asserted under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. Flores's woodshop teacher was also named as a defendant, but he was granted summary judgment by reason of qualified governmental immunity. The school board's motion for summary judgment, which raised inter alia the issue of res judicata, was denied. The case proceeded to trial ¹ and resulted in a judgment for the plaintiffs. The school district appeals. ²

II

The Texas law of res judicata ³ is traceable at least back to Foster v. Wells, 4 Tex. 101 (1849), and has not changed significantly since that time. The most frequently cited early statement of the rule is found in Freeman v. McAninch, 87 Tex. 132, 27 S.W. 97, 100 (1894), where the Texas Supreme Court declared that "[a] party cannot relitigate matters which he might have interposed, but failed to do, in a prior action between the same parties or their privies, in reference to the same subject matter." Thus, a judgment "is not only final as to the matter actually determined, but as to every other matter which the parties might litigate in the cause, and which they might have had decided." Id.

On its face, this broad statement of the rule suggests that every claim that might be permissibly joined in one suit must be so joined or will be forfeited. The Texas Supreme Court, however, soon explained that it understood the rule "to mean only that all matters which properly belong to a cause of action asserted in the pending suit, such as will sustain or defeat, in whole or in part, that cause of action, must be produced or be barred by the judgment, and not that all of the different causes of action a party may have respecting the same property must be joined, because they may be, in one proceeding." Moore v. Snowball, 98 Tex. 16, 81 S.W. 5, 8 (1904). The court quoted approvingly from Freeman on Judgments 249: "The general expression, ... that a judgment is conclusive of every matter which the parties might have litigated in the action, is misleading. What is really meant by this expression is that a judgment is conclusive upon the issues tendered by the plaintiff's complaint." Id.

More recently, these early statements of the doctrine of res judicata were reaffirmed in Abbott Laboratories v. Gravis, 470 S.W.2d 639, 642 (Tex.1971):

[A]n existing final judgment rendered upon the merits by a court of competent jurisdiction upon a matter within its jurisdiction is conclusive of the rights of the parties in all other actions on the points at issue and adjudicated in the first suit. Further, the rule of res judicata in Texas bars litigation of all issues connected with a cause of action or defense which, with the use of diligence, might have been tried in a former action as well as those which were actually tried.

Thus the scope of the res judicata bar is dependent on a determination of which issues are "connected with a cause of action or defense" in the first suit.

The Texas Supreme Court has never explicitly stated what becomes of an issue that is actually raised in the first action but not decided there because a judgment on the merits is entered on some other ground. However, if res judicata barred the relitigation only of those issues actually decided in the first action, it would be indistinguishable from collateral estoppel with respect to the issues raised in the pleadings; only with respect to issues that should have been raised in the pleadings but were not raised would res judicata pose a greater bar than collateral estoppel. See Gilbert v. Fireside Enterprises, Inc., 611 S.W.2d 869, 871 & n. 4 (Tex.Civ.App.1980). Furthermore, if the pleading of a different legal theory would have induced the court to decide a particular issue in the first action, the issue is plainly one "which, with the use of diligence, might have been tried in [the] former action." Diligence is, in brief, a key determinant of the applicability of the res judicata bar to any particular case.

Some uncertainty about this rule has arisen since the Texas Supreme Court's decision in Griffin v. Holiday Inns of America, 496 S.W.2d 535 (Tex.1973). In Griffin, a contractor sued his employer alleging that the two parties had had a contract, that the contractor had performed under their contract, and that he had not been paid. Judgment was entered for the employer. The contractor then sued on a theory of quantum meruit, but the Court of Civil Appeals affirmed its dismissal on the basis of res judicata. Reversing, the Texas Supreme Court noted that, although the quantum meruit claim could have been joined with the contract claim, the two actions were factually independent; the contractor could recover in quantum meruit while conceding that there was no actual contract between the parties or that, if there was an actual contract, he had not fully performed. The case was thus analogous to Moore v. Snowball, where the plaintiff in the second suit conceded without reservation all of the factual issues placed in dispute by his prior action. The only things common to the first and second suits in Moore and Griffin were the property and the transaction, respectively, underlying the suits; the legal theories and factual bases were, in both cases, entirely distinct.

In Gravis, decided by the Texas Supreme Court two years before Griffin, the court found that a plaintiff's suit against a drug manufacturer upon a strict liability theory was barred by an earlier adverse judgment in a suit upon a negligence theory identical as to parties and overlapping in material ways in their facts. The court rejected the argument that the judgment in the negligence action should be no bar because negligence is not an issue in a products liability suit. Because "[b]oth suits involve[d] a tort action resulting from the furnishing of the same drug for the same operation on the same person," 470 S.W. at 642, the court held that the two claims were obliged to be brought in a single action. In short, a change in legal theory was not enough to justify separate actions.

The present plaintiffs are in an even weaker position than the Gravis plaintiffs because the shift in legal theory from their state suit to their federal suit does not free them from reliance on the factual allegations made in their state complaint. Though the legal bases for the two actions are distinct--Sec. 1983 in place of Texas tort law--the crucial factual issue raised by plaintiffs' complaints in both actions is the alleged negligence of officials of the school district. Flores, however, relies upon the following declaration by the Griffin court Freeman [v. McAninch] has been consistently cited for the proposition that all grounds of recovery or defense relating to the cause of action asserted in the pending suit must be urged or will be barred by the judgment. Ogletree v. Crates, Tex.Sup., 363 S.W.2d 431; Moore v. Snowball, 98 Tex. 16, 81 S.W. 5. We have not said or held that a judgment in a suit on one claim or cause of action is necessarily conclusive of all claims and causes...