Heidemann v. Sweitzer, 84-1773

• Citation: 375 N.W.2d 665
• Decision Date: 16 October 1985
• Docket Number: No. 84-1773,84-1773
• Parties: Robert Milton HEIDEMANN, Appellee, v. Gordon A. SWEITZER, Director Motor Vehicle Division, and the Department of Transportation, Motor Vehicle Division, Appellants.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Iowa

Page 665

375 N.W.2d 665

Robert Milton HEIDEMANN, Appellee, v. Gordon A. SWEITZER, Director Motor Vehicle Division, and the Department of Transportation, Motor Vehicle Division, Appellants.

No. 84-1773.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Oct. 16, 1985.

Thomas J. Miller, Atty. Gen., and Robin G. Formaker, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellants.

Dale E. Goeke, Waverly, for appellee.

Considered by REYNOLDSON, C.J., and McCORMICK, LARSON, CARTER, and WOLLE, JJ.

WOLLE, Justice.

The Iowa Department of Transportation and its director (collectively referred to as the department) have appealed and petitioner Robert Milton Heidemann has cross-appealed from a judicial review decision overturning the department's revocation of Heidemann's driver's license. The department had based revocation on Heidemann's refusal to provide a urine sample pursuant to the implied consent procedures of Iowa Code chapter 321B (1981). The district court held that issue preclusion barred the department from establishing that Heidemann had refused to submit to chemical testing, because evidence of his refusal had earlier been suppressed in a criminal prosecution of Heidemann for driving while intoxicated. The department contends that issue preclusion was inapplicable and that substantial evidence supported its revocation of the driver's license for Heidemann's refusal to submit to chemical testing. By his cross-appeal Heidemann challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to support revocation and also contends that the agency should have admitted into evidence a transcript of testimony given at the suppression hearing. We reverse on the department's appeal and affirm on Heidemann's cross-appeal.

Both the driver's license revocation proceeding and a criminal charge of driving while intoxicated resulted from the arrest of Heidemann in Chickasaw County on August 15, 1981. A deputy sheriff arrested Heidemann and determined that he had refused to submit to chemical testing when he would not provide a requested urine sample. Pursuant to Iowa Code section 321B.3 (1981), the department notified Heidemann that his driver's license would be revoked. Heidemann requested and received a hearing on the revocation of his license, pursuant to Iowa Code section 321B.8 (1981), but that contested case evidentiary hearing was not held until May 20, 1982. In the meantime, Heidemann had been charged in Chickasaw County district court with the crime of operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated in violation of Iowa Code section 321.281 (1981). In that criminal action Heidemann moved to suppress the use in evidence of the implied consent form showing his refusal to submit to chemical testing. The district court ruled that the sheriff had failed to comply with implied consent procedures and granted Heidemann's motion to suppress. The state did not request discretionary review of that ruling, but instead on January 6, 1982, the county attorney voluntarily dismissed the criminal charge.

During the administrative license revocation hearing before the department, the hearing officer refused to give preclusive effect to the district court's ruling on the motion to suppress in the criminal proceeding, and the hearing officer also sustained the department's objection to use in evidence of a partial transcript of testimony given in the criminal proceeding. The hearing officer then found that the arresting officer had complied with chapter 321B procedures, that Heidemann had refused chemical testing, and that the department had properly revoked Heidemann's driver's license. That decision was subsequently upheld by order of the department's director.

On judicial review of that final agency decision the district court rejected Heidemann's attempts to supplement the agency record, but it allowed the transcript to be made part of the record as an offer of proof. The district court then overturned the department's revocation decision solely on the ground of issue preclusion, explaining that the issue whether the deputy sheriff had complied with chapter 321B procedures was the same in the criminal case and related agency proceeding, thus "one adjudication should be binding and controlling on the parties."

In reviewing that judicial review decision we are governed by and apply the guidelines set forth in Iowa Code sections 17A.19 and .20 (1981). We address first the question of issue preclusion, then the question whether the agency should have considered Heidemann's offer of evidence presented at the earlier criminal proceeding, and finally the question whether substantial evidence supported the department's revocation of Heidemann's driver's license.

I. Issue Preclusion.

Issue preclusion, one application of the broader concept of res judicata, prevents a party to a prior action from relitigating in a subsequent action an issue raised and resolved in the prior action. Israel v. Farmers Mutual Insurance Association of Iowa, 339 N.W.2d 143, 146 (Iowa 1983); Hunter v. City of Des Moines, 300 N.W.2d 121, 123 (Iowa 1981). In recent cases, we have listed four well-recognized prerequisites for the application of issue preclusion, id., as well as holding that there are exceptions to its use. See Kjos v. City of Sioux City, 346 N.W.2d 25, 28-30 (Iowa 1984) (applying exception in Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 83 (1982); two independent state agencies should be free separately to adjudicate similar claims arising from the same facts).

We conclude that issue preclusion was not applicable here because the circumstances of this case fall within two exceptions to that doctrine. The Restatement (Second) of Judgments provides in section 28(3) and (4):

Although an issue is actually litigated and determined by a valid and final judgment, and the determination is essential to the judgment, relitigation of the issue in a subsequent action between the parties is not precluded in the following circumstances:

....

(3) A new determination of the issue is warranted by differences in the quality or extensiveness of the procedures followed in the two courts or by factors relating to the allocation of jurisdiction between them; or

(4) The party against whom preclusion is sought had a significantly heavier burden of persuasion with respect to the issue in the initial action than in the subsequent action; the burden has shifted to his adversary; or the adversary has a significantly heavier burden than he had in the first action....

We adopt both exceptions and find both established under the circumstances of this case.

A. The exception pertaining to allocation of jurisdiction between two decision-making bodies applies because license revocation proceedings are separate and distinct from criminal charges arising from the same incident, and "[e]ach action proceeds independently of the other." Krueger v. Fulton, 169 N.W.2d 875, 877 (Iowa 1969); see, e.g., Severson v. Sueppel, 260 Iowa 1169, 1176, 152 N.W.2d 281, 285 (1967) ("Acquittal of the criminal charge of operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated did not preclude [the department] from revoking plaintiff's driver's license [for refusing chemical testing]."); Gottschalk v. Sueppel, 258 Iowa 1173, 1180, 140 N.W.2d 866, 870 (1966) (question of whether evidence would be admissible in criminal proceeding for OMVUI is of no concern in driver's license revocation proceeding).

The legislature by enacting chapter 321B has specifically vested the department with jurisdiction to revoke a driver's license for refusal to submit to chemical testing under Iowa's implied consent statute, thereby recognizing that the department has special competency to resolve the relatively narrow issues which arise in such license revocation proceedings. The department's administrative decision-making authority should not be undercut by the fortuitous circumstance that a parallel criminal proceeding may result in an evidentiary ruling concerning compliance with implied consent requirements.

This exception to issue preclusion based on the allocation of jurisdiction between two decision-making bodies was recognized and explained by Professor Allen Vestal, a recognized authority on issue preclusion. Vestal wrote:

There are some situations, however, where the second adjudicating body is a body with some unusual competency in a particular matter. In such cases the legislature has made a determination that a particular body is the one to make a particular decision. If the legislative branch of the government has given a special power to an agency, it would seem that no court should be able to foreclose litigation of the issue before the agency. Perhaps some weight should be given to the decision handed down by the court, but certainly the agency has the right to exercise the power given to it by the legislature. Any other conclusion would allow a court to infringe on the grant of power to the agency. This then becomes an exception to the general concept of issue preclusion. Here the agency has the right to reexamine a matter which normally would be considered settled by the earlier decision.

Vestal, Preclusion/Res Judicata Variables: Adjudicating Bodies, 54 Geo L.J. 857, 886-87 (1966).

We conclude that under Iowa's statutory scheme the department was free to make an independent determination whether the deputy sheriff followed proper procedures in requesting that Heidemann submit to chemical testing, regardless what ruling on that question had been entered in parallel criminal proceedings.

B. The exception pertaining to burden of proof, found in Restatement (Second) of Judgments section 28(4) and quoted above, also is applicable here. At the suppression hearing in the criminal case the state had the burden to prove those foundational facts necessary for the admission of results of tests conducted pursuant to chapter 321B or proof that defendant refused testing. State v. Hershey, 348 N.W.2d 1, 2 (Iowa 1984); State v. Schlemme, 301 N.W.2d 721, 722 (Iowa 1981); see State v....