Smith v. Public Def. Serv. for the DC, No. 95-CV-363.

• Docket Nº: No. 95-CV-363.
• Citation: 686 A.2d 210
• Case Date: December 12, 1996
• Court: Court of Appeals of Columbia District

686 A.2d 210

Percy William SMITH, Appellant,
v.
PUBLIC DEFENDER SERVICE FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA and Avis E. Buchanan, et al., Appellees.

No. 95-CV-363.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Submitted October 3, 1996.

Decided December 12, 1996.

686 A.2d 211

Percy William Smith, pro se.

Mark S. Carlin, Washington, DC, was on the brief for appellee Public Defender Service.

Thomas B. Mason was on the brief, for appellees Avis E. Buchanan, et al.

Before STEADMAN and SCHWELB, Associate Judges, and NEWMAN, Senior Judge.

NEWMAN, Senior Judge:

Appellant Percy William Smith appeals the trial court's grant of appellees', Public Defender Service's and Avis E. Buchanan's, motions to dismiss his civil action against them with prejudice. In an amended complaint Smith claims Buchanan, then a member of the Public Defender Service, committed legal malpractice in her representation of him in a criminal case. He asserts that Buchanan's errors are actionable under theories of breach of contract, negligence, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and deprivation of rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. We affirm.

I.

On August 16, 1988, Smith was convicted of carnal knowledge and sodomy of a four-year-old girl. United States v. Percy Smith, Crim. No. F-5736-88. Following his conviction, Smith alleged ineffective assistance of counsel contending that Buchanan was negligent in investigating his claim that he was on blood pressure medication that rendered him impotent and thus unable to commit the crime charged.

Judge Gladys Kessler held an evidentiary hearing in response to Smith's ineffective assistance of counsel motion under D.C.Code § 23-110 (1989). Smith testified that Buchanan failed to investigate his claims of impotency and failed to present an available and meritorious defense at trial. Smith did not call his doctor or any other expert witness to testify at the hearing. Buchanan testified that she had contacted Smith's doctor, who indicated that Smith had not been taking the medication long enough nor in a large enough quantity to produce impotence. Buchanan also testified that she told Smith that his doctor indicated that he (the doctor) could not testify favorably about the medicine causing impotence. Judge Kessler ruled against Smith and found that Buchanan's level of representation met the constitutional standards and the court's high standards for adequacy of representation.

Smith subsequently appealed both his conviction and Judge Kessler's denial of relief under § 23-110. We affirmed both the conviction and the ruling. (Percy W.) Smith v. United States, Nos. 88-1518 & 89-264 (D.C. Oct. 29, 1990). On December 20, 1993, Judge Kessler denied another § 23-110 motion and, a year and a half later, denied Smith's request for a writ of coram nobis which alleged his attorney failed to investigate his impotence from medication. Smith then filed his amended complaint alleging malpractice. The trial court granted the defendants' motions to dismiss.

II.

The doctrine of collateral estoppel bars "relitigation of issues of fact or law determined in a prior proceeding which were essential to that judgment." Oubre v. District of Columbia Dep't of Employment Servs., 630 A.2d 699, 703 (D.C.1993). The determination of the prior proceeding "`is conclusive in a subsequent action between the parties, whether on the same or a different claim.'" Ali Baba Co. v. WILCO, Inc., 482 A.2d 418, 421 (D.C.1984) (quoting RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF JUDGMENTS § 27).

Smith is barred from relitigating his claims because all of the issues of fact were litigated and determined before Judge Kessler in the § 23-110 hearing. After Smith presented all his evidence and Buchanan testified, Judge Kessler found Buchanan had investigated Smith's claim and determined that Smith's doctor's testimony would not have helped Smith's case in part because Smith had not been taking the medicine for a

686 A.2d 212

long enough time or in a large enough quantity to be rendered impotent. In fact, the doctor did not know whether Smith was taking medication at the time of the alleged incident. Judge Kessler's findings from the ineffective counsel hearing preclude Smith's legal malpractice claims that Buchanan failed to investigate his medical condition and introduce at trial evidence of impotence. Smith's amended complaint was properly dismissed based on the doctrine of collateral estoppel

II. (A)

Our holding today is not inconsistent with our decision in Brown v. Jonz, 572 A.2d 455 (D.C.1990). There a convicted criminal defendant sued his attorney for malpractice and the trial court dismissed the claim because the statute of limitations had expired. We reversed after finding the statute had been tolled because of the defendant's imprisonment. Previously we had decided that defendant Brown's Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 686, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 2063-64, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984) had not been violated. We noted in the malpractice case that this prior decision did not preclude the...