Gessay v. City of Philadelphia
| Decision Date | 14 January 1983 |
| Docket Number | 4098 |
| Parties | Rose Gessay and Charles Gessay v. City of Philadelphia and Grant Rawdin and Rardea Gordon |
| Court | Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court |
(1) When a court of competent jurisdiction has entered a final judgment on the merits of a cause of action, the parties to the suit and their privies are thereafter bound not only as to every matter which was offered and received to sustain and defeat the claim or demand, but as to any other admissible matter which might have been offered for that purpose
(2) The doctrine of res judicata should receive a liberal construction and should be maintained and applied without technical restriction
(3) To support a claim of res judicata, the party asserting the defense must show: (i) identity of the thing sued upon; (ii) identity of the cause of action; (iii) identity of the persons and parties to the action; and (iv) identity of the quality or capacity of the parties suing or sued
(4) Res judicata may be asserted only if the ultimate and controlling issues have been decided in a prior proceeding in which the present parties had an opportunity to appear and assert their rights
(5) A valid and final arbitration award has the same effect under the rules of res judicata and is subject to the same exceptions and qualifications as a judgment of court
(6) Absent final court action, res judicata should not be applied, especially where the Court is unaware of any court participation in a settlement agreement entered into by the parties in a prior case
(7) The bar against a subsequent action for personal injuries excluded by an original defendant in his initial claim against an additional defendant for contribution and/or indemnity is inapplicable where the original action is settled and discontinued before trial, rather than prosecuted to judgment
(8) Identity of the causes of action does not exist where the subject matter and the ultimate issues are not the same
(9) Identity of the causes of action is established where plaintiff alleges the same liability creating conduct of the defendant in both actions
(10) The current approach to res judicata focuses upon the scope of the claim which is determined by a transactional approach relying upon two rules: (i) a transaction may be single despite different harms, and (ii) claim preclusion applies where evidence needed in the second suit would have sustained the prior action
(11) Minor differences in form will not defeat the rule requiring identity of parties for res judicata to apply
(12) Where the Court was not provided with the prior settlement agreement, it could not be discerned whether plaintiff remained a party to the prior arbitration proceedings and identity of parties could not be established
(13) A determination that identity of the parties exists is not foreclosed by the fact that plaintiff's insurance carrier was the real party in interest in the prior action, inasmuch as identity of the parties is met whenever their privies appear on the same cause of action and contractual privity existed between plaintiff and her insurer
(14) To establish collateral estoppel it must be shown that: (i) the issue decided in the prior adjudication was identical with the one present in the later action; (ii) there was a final judgment on the merits; (iii) the party against whom the plea is asserted was a party or in privity with a party to the prior adjudication; and (iv) the party against whom it is asserted has had a full and fair opportunity to litigate the issue in question in a prior action
(15) Collateral estoppel permits preclusion of only those issues distinctly put in issue and directly determined in the prior action, while res judicata may be invoked to preclude any issue which could have been raised in the prior action
(16) When an issue is properly raised and is determined, the issue is actually litigated for purposes of collateral estoppel
(17) Where issues of the defendants' negligence were neither collateral nor incidental to the prior arbitrator's award and it did not appear that the award may have been based on more than one of several distinctive matters in litigation the issues of the defendants' negligence were actually litigated and essential to the prior judgment
(18) Because identity of the parties or their privies was not established, collateral estoppel was inapplicable
(19) Summary judgment may be granted where the movant demonstrates there is no genuine issue as to any material fact, and the record, viewed in a light most favorable to the non-moving party, reveals that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law, the burden of proof being upon the movant, and all doubts resolved in favor of the non-movant.
Thomas Hurd, Esquire, for Plaintiff
Norman Weaver, Esquire, for Defendant City of Philadelphia
Wendell H. Livingston, Esquire, for Defendants Grant Rawdin and Rardea Gordon
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
Presently before the Court is defendant City of Philadelphia's (" The City" ) Motion for Summary Judgment, concurred in by additional defendants Grant Rawdin and Rardea Gordon, and additional defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment. Both movants contend that plaintiff is estopped from proceeding further in her suit to recover damages for personal injuries by the doctrines of res judicata and collateral estoppel. We find that the requisites for the invocation of res judicata and collateral estoppel have not been met; we therefore deny these Motions.
In this action plaintiff filed suit against the City of Philadelphia alone to recover damages for personal injuries allegedly sustained in a two vehicle accident which occurred on April 18, 1979 in which she was the operator of one of the automobiles. The Complaint alleges, inter alia, that the City negligently maintained defective traffic control signals. The City thereafter joined Rardea Gordon and Grant Rawdin, owner and operator, respectively, of the other vehicle involved in the accident, as additional defendants.
A prior action captioned Rardea Gordon v. Rose Mazurak, a/k/a Rose Gessay, was instituted in Common Pleas Court, November Term, 1979, No. 4097 by Rardea Gordon to recover for property damage sustained by her automobile in the same accident. As original defendant in that action, plaintiff Gessay there joined the City of Philadelphia as an additional defendant, asserting the same theory of liability as is alleged in the instant action; negligent maintenance of defective traffic control signals. The City thereafter joined Grant Rawdin, operator of plaintiff Gordon's automobile, as an additional defendant. On August 21, 1981, Gordon v. Gessay was tried before an Arbitration Panel, which entered an award in favor of defendant City of Philadelphia and additional defendant Grant Rawdin, and against plaintiff Gordon. Defendant Gessay, plaintiff in the instant case, settled with plaintiff Gordon prior to that hearing.
The City contends that because the identity of the parties and theory of liability against the City is the same in both actions, the unappealed from Arbitration Award is a conclusive and final judgment on the merits which acts to bar plaintiff's present action by the doctrine of res judicata. In the alternative, the City asserts that the arbitration award in its favor in the case of Gordon v. Gessay conclusively determined the issue of the City's negligence in maintaining its traffic control signals, and that the doctrine of collateral estoppel therefore applies to prevent relitigation of this issue. Additional defendants concur in the above arguments, and further argue that in the absence of any independent allegation by the City of negligence on the part of Gordon in the instant case, her negligence would have to be only that vicariously attributed based on that of Rawdin, operator of her car. Since the arbitrators found that Rawdin was not negligent, additional defendants assert that such finding must likewise apply to Gordon and bar relitigation of the issue of both Rawdin's and Gordon's negligence.
Plaintiff contends that the requisites for the application of the doctrine of res judicata have not been demonstrated, in that: 1) the causes of action are not identical; and 2) the two suits involve different parties, both because plaintiff settled with defendant prior to the arbitration hearing and was not a party to that action at the time the award was entered, and because plaintiff's insurance carrier was the real party in interest in the prior suit. Plaintiff argues that because defendants have failed to prove the identities required for the application of the doctrine of res judicata, the issue of whether plaintiff had an opportunity to litigate the City's negligence need not be reached. As to the assertion of collateral estoppel, plaintiff contends that it is impossible to ascertain from the record before us which issues were distinctly put in issue and directly determined in the arbitration proceeding; that the parties to the two actions are different; and that plaintiff should not be considered to have had a full and fair opportunity to litigate her claims in the earlier action.
In order to preserve the finality of judgment from collateral relitigation, the common law has developed two major preclusive doctrines: issue preclusion, often called collateral estoppel, and claim preclusion, also called " merger and bar", " res judicata", or " the rule against splitting a cause of action." Carbonaro v. Johns-Manville Corporation, 526 F.Supp 260, 262 (E.D. Pa. 1981). The policies underlying both doctrines are the same; " to minimize the judicial energy devoted to individual cases, establish certainty and...
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