Herington v. City of Wichita

• Decision Date: 17 December 2021
• Docket Number: No. 120,329,120,329
• Citation: 500 P.3d 1168
• Parties: Dawn HERINGTON, Individually, and as Mother and Next Friend of B.D.J.L., Minor Child and Heir-at-Law of Troy Lanning II, and as Special Administrator of the Estate of Troy Lanning II, Appellant, v. CITY OF WICHITA, Appellee, and City of Wichita Police Department Officer Randy Williamson, Individually, Defendant.
• Court: Kansas Supreme Court

500 P.3d 1168

Dawn HERINGTON, Individually, and as Mother and Next Friend of B.D.J.L., Minor Child and Heir-at-Law of Troy Lanning II, and as Special Administrator of the Estate of Troy Lanning II, Appellant,

v. CITY OF WICHITA, Appellee,and City of Wichita Police Department Officer Randy Williamson, Individually, Defendant.

No. 120,329

Supreme Court of Kansas.

Opinion filed December 17, 2021

James A. Thompson, of Malone, Dwire & Thompson, LLC, of Wichita, argued the cause and was on the briefs for appellant.

David R. Cooper, of Fisher Patterson, Sayler & Smith, L.L.P., of Topeka, argued the cause, and Samuel A. Green and J. Steven Pigg, of the same firm, were with him on the briefs for appellee.

Marcia A. Wood, of Martin, Pringle, Oliver, Wallace & Bauer, L.L.P., of Wichita, was on the brief for amicus curiae Kansas Association of Defense Counsel.

Theodore J. Lickteig, of Lickteig Law Firm, LLC, of Lenexa, and Donald N. Peterson II and Sean McGivern, of Graybill & Hazlewood, LLC, of Wichita, were on the brief for amicus curiae National Employment Lawyers Association, Kansas City Chapter.

The opinion of the court was delivered by Standridge, J.

Following the shooting death of her son by Wichita Police Officer Randy Williamson, Dawn Herington, as mother and administrator of her deceased son's estate (Herington), sued the City of Wichita and Williamson (defendants) in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas, alleging federal civil rights violations and several state law tort claims. The federal district court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants on Herington's federal claims and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over her state law claims, dismissing them without prejudice. Herington refiled her state law claims in Sedgwick County District Court. Relying on claim preclusion principles established in Stanfield v. Osborne Industries, Inc. , 263 Kan. 388, 949 P.2d 602 (1997), and approved in Rhoten v. Dickson , 290 Kan. 92, 223 P.3d 786 (2010), the district court held that Herington's state law tort claims were barred by res judicata, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. On review, Herington asks this court to reconsider our decisions in Stanfield and Rhoten.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Wichita Police Officer Randy Williamson fatally shot Troy Lanning II following a high-speed car chase and foot pursuit. Herington, Lanning's mother, sued the defendants in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas. In the complaint, Herington alleged violations of Lanning's federal civil rights as well as several state law tort claims.

The federal district court granted summary judgment in the defendants' favor on the federal claims. The court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over any of Herington's state law claims under 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3) (2012) and dismissed them without prejudice, never reaching the merits of those claims.

Herington refiled the state law claims in Sedgwick County District Court. Relying on Stanfield and Rhoten , the district court granted summary judgment to the defendants on all the state law claims, dismissing them as barred by res judicata.

The Court of Appeals affirmed the district court, holding that both courts were bound by Stanfield and Rhoten. See Herington v. City of Wichita , 59 Kan. App. 2d 91, 92-93, 479 P.3d 482 (2020). In a concurring opinion, Judge G. Gordon Atcheson agreed that the court was constrained by our prior decisions but challenged them as "eccentric and exceedingly unfair," "lack[ing] any anchor in the law," and arguably unconstitutional. 59 Kan. App. 2d at 93-94, 105, 479 P.3d 482 (Atcheson, J., concurring). He encouraged this court to reexamine our decision in Stanfield and to realign Kansas' application of res judicata with conventional preclusion principles. 59 Kan. App. 2d at 94, 479 P.3d 482 (Atcheson, J., concurring).

We granted Herington's petition for review.

ANALYSIS

Herington argues that Stanfield and Rhoten should be overruled. She asserts that the application of res judicata adopted in Stanfield and endorsed in Rhoten is contrary to widely accepted claim preclusion principles, violates the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, and implicates her constitutional right to due process. The National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA) filed an amicus brief on behalf of Herington, asking this court to overrule Stanfield and Rhoten.

The defendants, for their part, contend that Stanfield and Rhoten correctly applied federal preclusion law and that the district court properly relied on those decisions to bar Herington's state law claims. The Kansas Association of Defense Counsel (KADC) filed an amicus brief on behalf of the defendants, arguing that Stanfield and Rhoten should be followed and not overruled.

Whether the doctrine of res judicata applies in a certain case is an issue of law over which appellate courts exercise unlimited review. Cain v. Jacox , 302 Kan. 431, 434, 354 P.3d 1196 (2015). Before deciding whether res judicata applies to preclude Herington's state law claims in this case, however, we first must decide whether state or federal law applies to determine the preclusive effect of the federal court's decision on those state law claims.

Choice of law

Before our 1997 decision in Stanfield , this court relied on Kansas common-law res judicata principles to hold that a federal court's dismissal of a state law supplemental claim would not have a preclusive effect. See Jackson Trak Group, Inc. v. Mid States Port Authority , 242 Kan. 683, 691, 751 P.2d 122 (1988) ("[A] judgment is not res judicata as to any matters which a court expressly refused to determine, and which it reserved for future consideration, or which it directed to be litigated in another forum or in another action.").

In Stanfield , however, this court redefined the application of res judicata in Kansas. There, the plaintiff filed an action in federal court for trademark infringement violations under the federal Lanham Act and included one state law claim alleging "slander, disparagement, and misappropriation of the plaintiff's personal name." 263 Kan. at 391-92, 949 P.2d 602. The federal court granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment on the merits of the federal claims. The court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the plaintiff's state law claim. When the plaintiff refiled his state tort claim in the Osborne County District Court, the court held it was barred by res judicata.

On appeal, the plaintiff pointed out the differences between his federal and state law claims and argued that claim preclusion should not apply to bar his state law claim because the federal court never resolved it. At the beginning of our analysis, we recognized that " ‘[s]tate courts are bound to apply federal rules in determining the preclusive effect of federal-court decisions on issues of federal law.’ " 263 Kan. at 396, 949 P.2d 602 (quoting Heck v. Humphrey , 512 U.S. 477, 488 n.9, 114 S. Ct. 2364, 129 L. Ed. 2d 383 [1994] ). Departing from our previous holding in Jackson Trak that applied Kansas common law res judicata principles, we applied federal—not state—res judicata law to resolve the identical issue. In doing so, we turned to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals' "transactional approach" test to define whether a claim is barred by res judicata. We held that, under federal law, transactions arising out of the same factual situation constitute one claim "regardless of the number of substantive legal theories that may be available to the plaintiff based on those facts." Stanfield , 263 Kan. at 401, 949 P.2d 602 (citing comments to the Restatement [Second] of Judgments §§ 24 - 25 [1980] ). Although acknowledging the plaintiff's state law tort claim presented a different legal theory than the federal trademark claim, we applied the federal transactional approach and concluded the state law tort claim still arose out of the same transaction and therefore was barred under the federal rules of res judicata. 263 Kan. at 402, 949 P.2d 602.

Finally, we considered whether an exception to this rule was warranted in cases like the one before us, where a federal court declines to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the plaintiff's state law legal theories and never rules on their merits. 263 Kan. at 402-03, 949 P.2d 602. Citing with approval to the analysis in Mattson v. City of Costa Mesa , 106 Cal. App. 3d 441, 164 Cal. Rptr. 913 (1980), we declined to create an exception: "The fact that the federal court did not consider the plaintiff's state law theories does not prevent claim preclusion from applying to the theories, since the theories arose out of the same claim or factual transaction which the federal court did determine." 263 Kan. at 403-04, 949 P.2d 602. In so holding, we did not reference any contrary authority or otherwise purport to overrule Jackson Trak.

More often than not, Kansas courts thereafter cited Stanfield generally without acknowledging its specific application of res judicata. See, e.g., In re City of Wichita , 277 Kan. 487, 506, 86 P.3d 513 (2004) (citing Stanfield for a standard of review); Fowler v. State , 37 Kan. App. 2d 477, 479-80, 154 P.3d 550 (2007) (same). But a handful of cases did rely on Stanfield to bar state law claims based on prior federal litigation. See, e.g., Rhoten v. Dickson , 40 Kan. App. 2d 433, 441-44, 192 P.3d 679 (2008) (plaintiff's state law claim barred by res judicata because it arose out of same transaction as prior federal lawsuit); O'Keefe v. Merrill Lynch & Co. , 32 Kan. App. 2d 474, 480-82, 84 P.3d 613 (2004) (plaintiffs' state law claim barred by res judicata because same claim had been litigated in prior federal arbitration proceeding); Braxton v. Henderson , No. 100,276, 2009 WL 77988, at *3 (Kan. App. 2009) (unpublished opinion) ("We can find no way to distinguish Stanfield and are bound to follow it.").

In 2010, this court accepted review in Rhoten ,...