Abstract
Res judicata law in the United States of America has a long, extensive and complex history. The aim of this paper is to provide at least a working summary of some of the most important aspects of the current res judicata law in the federal court system of the United States. The flexible discovery, pleading and joinder rules have given rise to more expansive res judicata law. The paper will discuss what exactly constitutes a judgment; how the federal courts deal with finality of judgments in multiple party and multiple claim cases; the final judgment rule; the form of judgments; the methods to enter judgments and significance of entry of judgments; together with a detailed overview of the doctrine of res judicata itself, including the separate, but related twin doctrines of claim preclusion and issue preclusion.
Highlights
The aim of this article is to explore the status of the effects of a prior judgment in the federal court system of the United States of America
The aim of this paper is to provide at least a working summary of some of the most important aspects of the current res judicata law in the federal court system of the United States
The paper will discuss what exactly constitutes a judgment; how the federal courts deal with finality of judgments in multiple party and multiple claim cases; the final judgment rule; the form of judgments; the methods to enter judgments and significance of entry of judgments; together with a detailed overview of the doctrine of res judicata itself, including the separate, but related twin doctrines of claim preclusion and issue preclusion
Summary
The aim of this article is to explore the status of the effects of a prior judgment in the federal court system of the United States of America (hereinafter: United States). The older case law held that “the principle of mutuality conferred the preclusion benefits of a favorable judgment only on persons who would have been bound by an unfavorable judgment, apart from special rules for derivative liability relationships” (Wright and Miller and Cooper, 1981: § 4449). The twin doctrines of “privity” and “mutuality” have both fallen out of favor in recent res judicata jurisprudence law In their place, the courts have employed a more “functional analysis” so that, rather than examining whether parties are in privity, more recent court decisions instead focus the inquiry on the “reasons for holding a person bound by a judgment” (Wright and Miller and Cooper, 1981: § 4448). Since most of the problems resulting in substantial litigation have occurred with respect to nonparties, and the circumstances in which nonparties can be bound, despite the “general rule” that states they are not, the section shall deal with that issue and will be explored in the context of a fairly recent Supreme Court decision that dealt with these problems
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