JUSTICE McCORMICK delivered the opinion of the court.
This is an appeal from an order of the Municipal Court of Chicago sustaining the motion of defendants Shinner Realty Company (hereafter referred to as "Shinner") and Ernest G. Shinner to dismiss a suit brought by plaintiff Howard T. Fisher & Associates, Inc. (hereafter referred to as plaintiff). The court entered a final judgment dismissing the suit out of court. The trial court ruled that the issues involved in the case before it had been tried and adjudicated in a prior case.
Plaintiff's statement of claim in the Municipal Court was in two counts. In the first count plaintiff alleged that it and defendant Shinner had entered into a certain written contract on October 6, 1949, under the terms of which the plaintiff had agreed to perform certain services for Shinner for a sum of money equal to five percent of the cost of constructing and installing certain buildings and other improvements described in the written contract, less the sum of $5,000 to be paid to one Sailor by Shinner in accordance with the terms of the written contract, a copy of which was attached to the statement of claim as an exhibit. The plaintiff alleged that it had received payments from the defendant Shinner on account of the contract totaling $9,625. The plaintiff further alleged that it had fully performed all of the obligations under the contract until prevented by the failure of Shinner to make the payments required thereunder and by Shinner's action in breaching and repudiating the written contract, and the plaintiff prayed for a money judgment.
Defendants Shinner and Ernest G. Shinner filed a motion to dismiss both causes of action on the ground that the causes of action alleged are barred by a prior judgment and the matters and things complained of in count one are res judicata and plaintiff is estopped by the decree entered in the prior case from reasserting the said cause of action or any part thereof. In the motion the defendants set up that on December 28, 1951, an action by plaintiff was brought against Lincoln Village Shopping Center, Inc., and Ernest G. Shinner in the Circuit Court of Cook County upon the same cause of action and that the defendants in the action now before the court are the same defendants, since the Shinner Realty Company is the successor of Lincoln Village Shopping Center, Inc., and in addition alleged that as to count two of the statement of claim any action against Ernest G. Shinner is barred by the statute of limitations. In support of their motion to dismiss, the defendants filed an affidavit of Raymond I. Suekoff, one of the attorneys for the defendants. In addition the defendants filed as exhibits all pleadings in the Circuit Court case, together with a copy of the decree entered therein, an order entered in the Circuit Court taxing master's fees as costs against the plaintiff, the opinion of the Appellate Court of Illinois, First District (sustaining the Circuit Court decree entered March 28, 1957), reported as an abstract opinion in 17 Ill.App.2d 418, a final letter from the Clerk of the Supreme Court of Illinois advising that the petition for leave to appeal in that
The plaintiff thereupon filed an answer to the defendants' motion to dismiss denying that the action in the Circuit Court was the same cause of action as that alleged in count one of the statement of claim, inasmuch as the action in the Circuit Court was brought solely to foreclose a mechanic's lien upon certain Chicago real estate and for a declaratory judgment, and also alleged that in the Circuit Court a decree had been entered on May 20, 1953, that the plaintiff had a right to a mechanic's lien, that the decree entered on March 28, 1957, was null and void, and that the present cause of action in the Municipal Court of Chicago was not barred by the prior judgment or decree in the Circuit Court of Cook County. In the answer the plaintiff also denied that the cause of action alleged in count two against defendant Ernest G. Shinner was barred by the statute of limitations inasmuch as the action is for a "tortious action of Defendant, Ernest G. Shinner, which commenced in 1950 and continued to the date of the filing of the Statement of Claim herein." With the answer the plaintiff filed a counteraffidavit of Thomas H. Fisher, one of the attorneys for the plaintiff. Attached was a copy of the decree entered in the Circuit Court of Cook County on May 20, 1953.
The trial court entered a final judgment on January 15, 1959, ordering that the suit be dismissed. From that judgment order this appeal is taken.
Plaintiff took an appeal from the judgment and decree of March 28, 1957, to the Appellate Court, which
The defendants urge that plaintiff's suit in the Municipal Court raises the same issues which were raised in the suit to foreclose the mechanic's lien in the Circuit Court, to-wit: (1) whether plaintiff's contract of October 6, 1949, was a valid contract; (2) whether defendant Shinner had not properly terminated the contract for plaintiff's failure to perform; and (3) whether there was anything due the plaintiff under that contract.
The plaintiff argues that a decree dismissing for want of equity a suit for foreclosure of a mechanic's lien under the Illinois Mechanic's Lien Act is never a bar to a subsequent action at law in assumpsit to recover money damages for breach of the same contract, and in support relies upon Geary v. Bangs, 138 Ill. 77. In that case the plaintiff sued at law in assumpsit to recover a balance claimed to be due from the defendant to the plaintiff for work and labor performed and materials furnished by the plaintiff to defendant in the erection of a building. The defendant pleaded non assumpsit and also added a special plea of res judicata based upon prior proceedings in equity in a mechanic's lien suit previously brought by the plaintiff against the defendant to foreclose a mechanic's lien on the same property, in which mechanic's lien suit a decree was originally rendered in the trial court
In Cheevers v. Stone, 10 Ill.App.2d 39, the court held that the dismissal of the complaint in chancery to foreclose a mechanic's lien may be raised as a defense of res judicata in an action brought on the same contract in another court, since the issues in both courts were the same, and the court further points out that the dismissal of a suit based on a technical deficiency in a pleading will not bar another action for the same cause, but where a judgment is a judgment on the merits of plaintiff's cause of action, whether raised by a motion to dismiss or otherwise, such judgment will be res judicata as to a subsequent action raising the same issues.
In 23 I.L.P., Judgments, sec. 322, the rule is laid down that a judgment is on the merits when it amounts to a decision as to the respective rights and liabilities of the parties, based on the ultimate facts or state of facts disclosed by the pleadings or evidence, or both, and on which the right of recovery depends, irrespective
"`... The plea of res judicata applies not only to the point upon which the court was required by the parties to form an opinion and pronounce a judgment, but to every point which properly belonged to the subject of litigation, and which the parties, exercising a reasonable diligence, might have brought forward in time.' [Quoting from Henderson v. Henderson, 3 Hare, 115.] The principle `extends not only to questions of fact and law which were decided in the former suit, but also to the grounds of recovery or defense which might have been but were not presented.' (Town of Beloit v. Morgan, 7 Wall. 619.) The language of these decisions has been quoted as announcing the true doctrine in Litch v. Clinch, 136 Ill. 410, and Harmon v. Auditor of Public Accounts, 123 Ill. 122."
See also Life Printing & Publishing Co., Inc. v. Marshall Field III, 327 Ill.App. 486, and Marie Methodist Episcopal Church of Chicago v. Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church of Chicago, 253 Ill. 21.
The second count of plaintiff's statement of claim in the Municipal Court alleging that Ernest G. Shinner induced defendant Shinner to breach the contract and has interfered with and prevented performance of the same is, in our opinion, also barred by the decree entered in the mechanic's lien suit in the Circuit Court, and it is also barred by the statute of limitations, which was properly set up by the defendants in their motion to dismiss. In their affidavit in support of the motion the defendants state that the cause
In the answer to defendants' motion to dismiss the present cause and in the affidavit by the plaintiff's attorney filed on January 15, 1959, it is stated that the decree entered March 28, 1957, in the heretofore referred to Circuit Court suit is null and void and that the decree of May 20, 1953, was in full force and effect. It passes our understanding how such an allegation could have been made unless it was for the purpose of confusing the court. The Appellate Court sustained the decree of March 28, 1957, and held that
The judgment of the Municipal Court of Chicago is affirmed.
Judgment affirmed.
DEMPSEY, P.J. and SCHWARTZ, J., concur.
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