Collateral Estoppel

"Legal Lexicon":
COLLATERAL ESTOPPEL - The federal courts have traditionally adhered to the related doctrines of res judicata 【claim preclusion】 and collateral estoppel 【issue preclusion】. Under collateral estoppel, once a court has decided an issue of fact or law ncessary to its judgment, that decision may preclude relitigation of the issue in a suit on a different cause of action involving a party to the first case.
The collateral estoppel bar is inapplicable when the claimant did not have a 'full and fair opportunity to litigate' the issue decided by the other court. Thus, a claimant can file a federal suit to challenge the adequacy of state procedures.
The Supreme Court has expressly rejected the idea that 'every person asserting a federal right is entitled to one unencumbered opportunity to litigate that right in a federal district court, regardless of the legal posture in which the federal claim arises.' Allen v. McCurry, 449 U.S. 90, 103 (1980) (holding that the state law of collateral estoppel applies in civil rights actions brought under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983). This is so even if 'the state court's decision may have been erroneous.' Id. at 101.
Ordinarily, collateral estoppel is an affirmative defense that must be raised by the party seeking to use it, or else it is waived. See, e.g., Kern Oil & Ref. Co. v. Tenneco Oil Co., 840 F.2d 730, 35 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 948 (1988).
The preclusive effect of a state court judgment in a federal proceeding is governed by state law. Intel Corp. v. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., 12 F.3d 908, 914-15 (9th Cir.'93), cert. denied, 114 S.Ct. 2675 (1994); see also 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1738.
In California, there are four criteria for application of collateral estoppel: (1) the prior conviction must have been for a serious offense so that the defendant was motivated to fully litigate the charges; (2) there must have been a full and fair trial to prevent convictions of doubtful validity from being used; (3) the issue on which the prior conviction is offered must of necessity have been decided at the criminal trial; and (4) the party against whom collateral estoppel is asserted was a party or in privity with a party to the prior trial. Ayers, 895 F.2d at 1271 (upholding use of collateral estoppel to prevent a defendant from bringing a S 1983 action alleging he had been illegally arrested). In Ayers, the court held that suppression rulings in the original criminal proceeding met these criteria. Id.
With the exception of federal habeas corpus review of state convictions under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2254, the determination of federal constitutional questions in state court systems may not be reviewed or repeated in the federal systems. The Court in Allen v. McCurry, 449 U.S. 90, 94, 104 (1980) said that '【t】he federal courts have traditionally adhered to the related doctrines of res judicata and collateral estoppel,' excepting only 'a federal writ of habeas corpus, the purpose of which is not to redress civil injury but to release the applicant from unlawful physical confinement.'
The Supreme Court has said that claimants are not always entitled to vindicate federal rights in federal court. For example, in Allen v. McCurry, 449 U.S. 90, 92 (1980), a criminal defendant moved to suppress evidence allegedly obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Court concluded collateral estoppel barred a subsequent Sec. 1983 suit asserting the same Fourth Amendment violation. Id. at 105. 'There is . . . no reason to believe that Congress 【through passage of Sec. 1983】 intended to provide a person claiming a federal right an unrestricted opportunity to relitigate an issue already decided in state court simply because the issue arose in a state proceeding in which he would rather not have been engaged at all.' Id. at 104.
Doctrine of nonmutual offensive collateral estoppel:
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