Monahan v. Eagle Picher Industries, Inc.
| Decision Date | 12 December 1984 |
| Docket Number | No. C-830809,C-830809 |
| Citation | 486 N.E.2d 1165,21 Ohio App.3d 179,21 OBR 191 |
| Parties | , 21 O.B.R. 191 MONAHAN, Admx., Appellant, v. EAGLE PICHER INDUSTRIES, INC. et al., Appellees. |
| Court | Ohio Court of Appeals |
Syllabus by the Court
1. In order to assert collateral estoppel successfully, a party must plead and prove the following elements: (1) The party against whom estoppel is sought was a party or in privity with a party to the prior action; (2) there was a final judgment on the merits in the previous case after a full and fair opportunity to litigate the issue; (3) the issue must have been admitted or actually tried and decided and must be necessary to the final judgment; and (4) the issue must have been identical to the issue involved in the prior suit.
2. Where the identical issues raised by a plaintiff's state court complaint have not been previously litigated in federal court, the doctrine of collateral estoppel does not preclude relitigation of those same issues.
Baskin & Sears, Antonio D. Pyle, Pittsburgh, Pa., and Fredric F. Tilton, Cincinnati, for appellant.
Benjamin, Faulkner, Tepe & Sack, Robert H. Sack and Thomas R. Yocum, Cincinnati, for appellee Eagle Picher Industries, Inc.
Dinsmore & Shohl, Nancy A. Lawson, Cincinnati, Fuller & Henry, Thomas L. Dalrymple, Robert A. Bunda and Allan J. Miller, Toledo, for appellee Owens-Illinois, Inc.
This cause came on to be heard upon an appeal from the Court of Common Pleas of Hamilton County.
On November 10, 1980 plaintiff, in her own right and as administratrix of her husband's estate, filed two wrongful death actions. One suit, from which this appeal follows, was filed against three state defendants in the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas. The other suit, naming five different federal defendants, was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. The federal case went to jury trial in July 1982 against three of the five federal defendants. All three were found not liable. Monahan v. Johns-Manville Sales Corp. (July 28, 1982), S.D. Ohio No. C-1-80-609, unreported. On the basis of the federal court's judgment the three state defendants, in July 1983, moved for summary judgment claiming that plaintiff's state suit was barred by collateral estoppel. The trial court, in a single order, granted the motions, dismissing plaintiff's causes of action as both administratrix of her husband's estate and in her own right.
On appeal plaintiff asserts the single assignment of error that the trial court erred when it granted defendants' motions for summary judgment. We find that plaintiff's assignment of error has merit. The federal issues, as defined by the judge's jury instructions and the specific questions answered on the jury's verdict form, were whether the asbestos-containing products manufactured by each of the three federal defendants proximately caused the death of plaintiff's decedent. The issues to be litigated in state court are whether the asbestos-containing products manufactured by each of the individual state defendants proximately caused plaintiff's decedent's death. We hold that the two sets of issues are not the same and that therefore the doctrine of collateral estoppel does not operate as a bar to plaintiff's state cause of action. 1
Plaintiff's husband, Paul D. Monahan, had a twenty-two-year career as an asbestos insulation mechanic. During the course of that career he worked as an independent contractor at numerous industrial and power station facilities installing asbestos insulation around large industrial boilers. According to the federal trial testimony of one of Monahan's co-workers, the entire asbestos installation procedure was shrouded in a cloud of asbestos dust.
Dr. Bertram Carnow, plaintiff's expert medical witness, testified at the federal trial that in his opinion Monahan's prolonged exposure to asbestos resulted in the cumulative absorption of asbestos fibers in his lungs. The fibers eventually spread throughout Monahan's body, causing adenocarcinoma of his colon and finally resulting in adenocarcinomatosis, the spread of cancer throughout many of his organ systems. Dr. Carnow testified that five years of consistent asbestos exposure would have been sufficient to cause Monahan's asbestos-related cancer.
The federal defendants called Monahan's own treating physicians as their expert witnesses. Both doctors testified that in their opinions Monahan's cancer was attributable to causes other than exposure to asbestos.
After all of the evidence had been presented, the federal judge carefully instructed the jury that in order for plaintiff to prevail she had to prove by a preponderance of all the evidence that Monahan was not only exposed to the product or products of one or more defendants but that the proximate cause of his colon cancer was exposure to a particular defendant's product. Accordingly, the jury's verdict form had three specific questions, one addressed to each of the federal defendants, as follows:
The jury answered each of these interrogatories in the negative and the trial court entered judgment holding that none of the federal defendants were liable. This judgment does not collaterally estop plaintiff's state court suit.
In order to assert collateral estoppel successfully, a party must plead and prove the following elements:
(1) The party against whom estoppel is sought was a party or in privity with a party to the prior action;
(2) There was a final judgment on the merits in the previous case after a full and fair opportunity to litigate the issue (3) The issue must have been admitted or actually tried and decided and must be necessary to the final judgment; and
(4) The issue must have been identical to the issue involved in the prior suit.
See Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore (1979), 439 U.S. 322, 326, 99 S.Ct. 645, 649, 58 L.Ed.2d 552; Hicks v. De La Cruz (1977), 52 Ohio St.2d 71, 74-75, 369 N.E.2d 776 .
Accordingly, where the identical issues raised by a plaintiff's state court complaint have been previously litigated in federal court, the doctrine of collateral estoppel precludes litigation of those same issues. Bahramian v. Murray (Oct. 26, 1983), Hamilton App. No. C-820870, unreported. See, also, Calhoun v. Supreme Court of Ohio (1978), 61 Ohio App.2d 1, 399 N.E.2d 559 . In the instant case, the first two elements of collateral estoppel are plainly satisfied, because plaintiff was the same party in both...
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