This case presents the question whether a party who has had issues of fact adjudicated adversely to it in an equitable action may be collaterally estopped from relitigating the same issues before a jury in a subsequent legal action brought against it by a new party.
The respondent brought this stockholder's class action against the petitioners in a Federal District Court. The complaint alleged that the petitioners, Parklane Hosiery Co., Inc. (Parklane), and 13 of its officers, directors, and stockholders, had issued a materially false and misleading proxy statement in connection with a merger.
Before this action came to trial, the SEC filed suit against the same defendants in the Federal District Court, alleging that the proxy statement that had been issued by Parklane was materially false and misleading in essentially the same respects as those that had ben alleged in the respondent's complaint. Injunctive relief was requested. After a 4-day
The respondent in the present case then moved for partial summary judgment against the petitioners, asserting that the petitioners were collaterally estopped from relitigating the issues that had been resolved against them in the action brought by the SEC.
I
The threshold question to be considered is whether, quite apart from the right to a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment, the petitioners can be precluded from relitigating facts resolved adversely to them in a prior equitable proceeding with another party under the general law of collateral estoppel. Specifically, we must determine whether a litigant who was not a party to a prior judgment may nevertheless use that judgment "offensively" to prevent a defendant from relitigating issues resolved in the earlier proceeding.
A
Collateral estoppel, like the related doctrine of res judicata,
By failing to recognize the obvious difference in position between a party who has never litigated an issue and one who has fully litigated and lost, the mutuality requirement was criticized almost from its inception.
B
The Blonder-Tongue case involved defensive use of collateral estoppel—a plaintiff was estopped from asserting a claim that the plaintiff had previously litigated and lost against another defendant. The present case, by contrast, involves offensive use of collateral estoppel—a plaintiff is seeking to estop a defendant from relitigating the issues which the defendant previously litigated and lost against another plaintiff. In both the offensive and defensive use situations, the party against whom estoppel is asserted has litigated and lost in an earlier action. Nevertheless, several reasons have been advanced why the two situations should be treated differently.
First, offensive use of collateral estoppel does not promote judicial economy in the same manner as defensive use does. Defensive use of collateral estoppel precludes a plaintiff from relitigating identical issues by merely "switching adversaries." Bernhard v. Bank of America Nat. Trust & Savings Assn., 19 Cal. 2d, at 813, 122 P. 2d, at 895.
A second argument against offensive use of collateral estoppel is that it may be unfair to a defendant. If a defendant in the first action is sued for small or nominal damages, he may have little incentive to defend vigorously, particularly if future suits are not foreseeable. The Evergreens v. Nunan, 141 F.2d 927, 929 (CA2); cf. Berner v. British Commonwealth Pac. Airlines, 346 F.2d 532 (CA2) (application of offensive collateral estoppel denied where defendant did not appeal an adverse judgment awarding damages of $35,000 and defendant was later sued for over $7 million). Allowing offensive collateral estoppel may also be unfair to a defendant if the judgment relied upon as a basis for the estoppel is itself inconsistent with one or more previous judgments in favor of the defendant.
C
We have concluded that the preferable approach for dealing with these problems in the federal courts is not to preclude the use of offensive collateral estoppel, but to grant trial courts broad discretion to determine when it should be applied.
In the present case, however, none of the circumstances that might justify reluctance to allow the offensive use of collateral estoppel is present. The application of offensive collateral
We conclude, therefore, that none of the considerations that would justify a refusal to allow the use of offensive collateral estoppel is present in this case. Since the petitioners received a "full and fair" opportunity to litigate their claims in the
II
The question that remains is whether, notwithstanding the law of collateral estoppel, the use of offensive collateral estoppel in this case would violate the petitioners' Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial.
A
"[T]he thrust of the [Seventh] Amendment was to preserve the right to jury trial as it existed in 1791." Curtis v. Loether, 415 U.S. 189, 193. At common law, a litigant was not entitled to have a jury determine issues that had been previously adjudicated by a chancellor in equity. Hopkins v. Lee, 6 Wheat. 109; Smith v. Kernochen, 7 How. 198, 217-218; Brady v. Daly, 175 U.S. 148, 158-159; Shapiro & Coquillette, The Fetish of Jury Trial in Civil Cases: A Comment on Rachal v. Hill, 85 Harv. L. Rev. 442, 448-458 (1971).
Recognition that an equitable determination could have collateral-estoppel effect in a subsequent legal action was the major premise of this Court's decision in Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover, 359 U.S. 500. In that case the plaintiff sought a declaratory judgment that certain arrangements between it
It is thus clear that the Court in the Beacon Theatres case thought that if an issue common to both legal and equitable claims was first determined by a judge, relitigation of the issue before a jury might be foreclosed by res judicata or collateral estoppel. To avoid this result, the Court held that when legal and equitable claims are joined in the same action, the trial judge has only limited discretion in determining the sequence of trial and "that discretion . . . must, wherever possible, be exercised to preserve jury trial." Id., at 510.
Both the premise of Beacon Theatres, and the fact that it enunciated no more than a general prudential rule were confirmed by this Court's decision in Katchen v. Landy, 382 U.S. 323. In that case the Court held that a bankruptcy court, sitting as a statutory court of equity, is empowered to adjudicate
Thus the Court in Katchen v. Landy recognized that an equitable determination can have collateral-estoppel effect in a subsequent legal action and that this estoppel does not violate the Seventh Amendment.
B
Despite the strong support to be found both in history and in the recent decisional law of this Court for the proposition that an equitable determination can have collateral-estoppel effect in a subsequent legal action, the petitioners argue that application of collateral estoppel in this case would nevertheless violate their Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. The petitioners contend that since the scope of the Amendment must be determined by reference to the common law as it existed in 1791, and since the common law permitted collateral estoppel only where there was mutuality of parties, collateral estoppel cannot constitutionally be applied when such mutuality is absent.
The petitioners have advanced no persuasive reason, however, why the meaning of the Seventh Amendment should depend on whether or not mutuality of parties is present. A litigant who has lost because of adverse factual findings in an equity action is equally deprived of a jury trial whether he is estopped from relitigating the factual issues against the same party or a new party. In either case, the party against whom estoppel is asserted has litigated questions of fact, and has had the facts determined against him in an earlier proceeding.
The Seventh Amendment has never been interpreted in the rigid manner advocated by the petitioners. On the contrary, many procedural devices developed since 1791 that have diminished the civil jury's historic domain have been found not to be inconsistent with the Seventh Amendment. See Galloway v. United States, 319 U.S. 372, 388-393 (directed verdict does not violate the Seventh Amendment); Gasoline Products Co. v. Champlin Refining Co., 283 U.S. 494, 497-498 (retrial limited to question of damages does not violate the Seventh Amendment even though there was no practice at common law for setting aside a verdict in part); Fidelity & Deposit Co. v. United States, 187 U.S. 315, 319-321 (summary judgment does not violate the Seventh Amendment).
The Galloway case is particularly instructive. There the party against whom a directed verdict had been entered argued that the procedure was unconstitutional under the Seventh Amendment. In rejecting this claim, the Court said:
The law of collateral estoppel, like the law in other procedural areas defining the scope of the jury's function, has evolved since 1791. Under the rationale of the Galloway case, these developments are not repugnant to the Seventh Amendment simply for the reason that they did not exist in 1791. Thus if, as we have held, the law of collateral estoppel forecloses the petitioners from relitigating the factual issues determined against them in the SEC action, nothing in the Seventh Amendment dictates a different result, even though because of lack of mutuality there would have been no collateral estoppel in 1791.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST, dissenting.
It is admittedly difficult to be outraged about the treatment accorded by the federal judiciary to petitioners' demand for a jury trial in this lawsuit. Outrage is an emotion all but
The right of trial by jury in civil cases at common law is fundamental to our history and jurisprudence. Today, however, the Court reduces this valued right, which Blackstone praised as "the glory of the English law," to a mere "neutral"
I
The Seventh Amendment provides:
The history of the Seventh Amendment has been amply documented by this Court and by legal scholars,
A
It is perhaps easy to forget, now more than 200 years removed from the events, that the right of trial by jury was held in such esteem by the colonists that its deprivation at the hands of the English was one of the important grievances leading to the break with England. See Sources and Documents Illustrating the American Revolution 1764-1788 and the Formation of the Federal Constitution 94 (S. Morison 2d ed. 1929); R. Pound, The Development of Constitutional Guarantees of Liberty 69-72 (1957); C. Ubbelohde, The Vice-Admiralty Courts and the American Revolution 208-211 (1960). The extensive use of vice-admiralty courts by colonial administrators to eliminate the colonists' right of jury trial was listed among the specific offensive English acts denounced in the Declaration of Independence.
One might justly wonder then why no mention of the right of jury trial in civil cases should have found its way into the Constitution that emerged from the Philadelphia Convention in 1787. Article III, § 2, cl. 3, merely provides that "The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury." The omission of a clause protective of the civil jury right was not for lack of trying, however. Messrs. Pinckney and Gerry proposed to provide a clause securing the right of jury trial in civil cases, but their efforts failed.
The virtually complete absence of a bill of rights in the proposed Constitution was the principal focus of the Anti-Federalists' attack on the Constitution, and the lack of a provision for civil juries featured prominently in their arguments. See Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 433, 445 (1830). Their pleas struck a responsive chord in the populace, and the price exacted in many States for approval of the Constitution was the appending of a list of recommended amendments, chief among them a clause securing the right of jury trial in civil cases.
The foregoing sketch is meant to suggest what many of those who oppose the use of juries in civil trials seem to ignore. The founders of our Nation considered the right of trial by jury in civil cases an important bulwark against tyranny and corruption, a safeguard too precious to be left to the whim of the sovereign, or, it might be added, to that of the judiciary.
B
The Seventh Amendment requires that the right of trial by jury be "preserved." Because the Seventh Amendment demands preservation of the jury trial right, our cases have uniformly held that the content of the right must be judged by historical standards. E. g., Curtis v. Loether, 415 U.S. 189, 193 (1974); Colgrove v. Battin, 413 U. S., at 155-156; Ross v. Bernhard, 396 U.S. 531, 533 (1970); Capital Traction Co. v. Hof, 174 U.S. 1,8-9 (1899); Parsons v. Bedford, supra, at 446. Thus, in Baltimore & Carolina Line v. Redman, 295 U.S. 654, 657 (1935), the Court stated that "[t]he right of trial by jury thus preserved is the right which existed under the English common law when the Amendment was adopted."
To be sure, it is the substance of the right of jury trial that is preserved, not the incidental or collateral effects of common-law practice in 1791. Walker v. New Mexico & S. P. R. Co., 165 U.S. 593, 596 (1897). "The aim of the Amendment, as this Court has held, is to preserve the substance of the common-law right of trial by jury, as distinguished from mere matters of form or procedure, and particularly to retain the common-law distinction between the province of the court and that of the jury. . . ." Baltimore & Carolina Line v. Redman, supra, at 657. Accord, Colgrove v. Battin, supra, at 156-157; Gasoline Products Co. v. Champlin Refining Co., 283 U.S. 494, 498 (1931); Ex parte Peterson, 253 U.S. 300, 309 (1920). "The Amendment did not bind the federal courts to the exact procedural incidents or details of jury trial according to the common law of 1791, any more than it tied them to the common-law system of pleading or the specific rules of evidence then prevailing." Galloway v. United States, 319 U. S., at 390.
To say that the Seventh Amendment does not tie federal courts to the exact procedure of the common law in 1791 does
The guarantees of the Seventh Amendment will prove burdensome in some instances; the civil jury surely was a burden to the English governors who, in its stead, substituted the vice-admiralty court. But, as with other provisions of the Bill of Rights, the onerous nature of the protection is no license for contracting the rights secured by the Amendment. Because " `[m]aintenance of the jury as a fact-finding body is of such importance and occupies so firm a place in our history and jurisprudence . . . any seeming curtailment of the right to a jury trial should be scrutinized with the utmost care.' " Dimick v. Schiedt, supra, at 486, quoted in Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover, 359 U.S. 500, 501 (1959).
C
Judged by the foregoing principles, I think it is clear that petitioners were denied their Seventh Amendment right to a
The Court responds, however, that at common law "a litigant was not entitled to have a jury [in a subsequent action at law between the same parties] determine issues that had been previously adjudicated by a chancellor in equity," and that "petitioners have advanced no persuasive reason . . . why the meaning of the Seventh Amendment should depend on
No doubt parallel "procedural reforms" could be instituted in the area of criminal jurisprudence, which would accomplish much the same sort of expedition of court calendars and conservation of judicial resources as would the extension of collateral estoppel in civil litigation. Government motions for summary judgment, or for a directed verdict in favor of the prosecution at the close of the evidence, would presumably save countless hours of judges' and jurors' time. It can scarcely be doubted, though, that such "procedural reforms" would not survive constitutional scrutiny under the jury trial guarantee of the Sixth Amendment. Just as the principle of separation of powers was not incorporated by the Framers into the Constitution in order to promote efficiency or dispatch in the business of government, the right to a jury trial was not guaranteed in order to facilitate prompt and accurate decision of lawsuits. The essence of that right lies in its insistence that a body of laymen not permanently attached to the sovereign participate along with the judge in the factfinding
Relying on Galloway v. United States, Gasoline Products Co. v. Champlin Refining Co., and Fidelity & Deposit Co. v. United States, 187 U.S. 315 (1902), the Court seems to suggest that the offensive use of collateral estoppel in this case is permissible under the limited principle set forth above that a mere procedural change that does not invade the province of the jury and a defendant's right thereto to a greater extent than authorized by the common law is permissible. But the Court's actions today constitute a far greater infringement of the defendant's rights than it ever before has sanctioned. In Galloway, the Court upheld the modern form of directed verdict against a Seventh Amendment challenge, but it is clear that a similar form of directed verdict existed at common law in 1791. E. g., Beauchamp v. Borret, Peake 148, 170 Eng. Rep. 110 (N. P. 1792); Coupey v. Henley, 2 Esp. 540, 542, 170 Eng. Rep. 448, 449 (C. P. 1797).
By contrast, the development of nonmutual estoppel is a substantial departure from the common law and its use in this case completely deprives petitioners of their right to have a jury determine contested issues of fact. I am simply unwilling to accept the Court's presumption that the complete extinguishment of petitioners' right to trial by jury can be justified as a mere change in "procedural incident or detail." Over 40 years ago, Mr. Justice Sutherland observed in a not dissimilar case: "[T]his court in a very special sense is charged with the duty of construing and upholding the Constitution; and in the discharge of that important duty, it ever must be alert to see that a doubtful precedent be not extended by mere analogy to a different case if the result will be to weaken or subvert what it conceives to be a principle of the fundamental law of the land." Dimick v. Schiedt, 293 U. S., at 485.
II
Even accepting, arguendo, the majority's position that there is no violation of the Seventh Amendment here, I nonetheless would not sanction the use of collateral estoppel in this case. The Court today holds:
In my view, it is "unfair" to apply offensive collateral estoppel where the party who is sought to be estopped has not had an opportunity to have the facts of his case determined by a jury. Since in this case petitioners were not entitled to a jury trial in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit,
First, the use of offensive collateral estoppel in this case runs counter to the strong federal policy favoring jury trials, even if it does not, as the majority holds, violate the Seventh Amendment. The Court's decision in Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover, 359 U.S. 500 (1959), exemplifies that policy. In Beacon Theatres the Court held that where both equitable and legal claims or defenses are presented in a single case, "only under the most imperative circumstances, circumstances which in view of the flexible procedures of the Federal Rules we cannot now anticipate, can the right to a jury trial of legal issues be lost through prior determination of equitable claims."
Second, I believe that the opportunity for a jury trial in the second action could easily lead to a different result from that obtained in the first action before the court and therefore that it is unfair to estop petitioners from relitigating the issues before a jury. This is the position adopted in the Restatement (Second) of Judgments, which disapproves of the application of offensive collateral estoppel where the defendant has an opportunity for a jury trial in the second lawsuit that was not available in the first action.
As is evident from the prior brief discussion of the development of the civil jury trial guarantee in this country, those who drafted the Declaration of Independence and debated so passionately the proposed Constitution during the ratification period, would indeed be astounded to learn that the presence or absence of a jury is merely "neutral," whereas the availability of discovery, a device unmentioned in the Constitution, may be controlling. It is precisely because the Framers believed that they might receive a different result at the hands of a jury of their peers than at the mercy of the sovereign's judges, that the Seventh Amendment was adopted. And I suspect that anyone who litigates cases before juries in the 1970's would be equally amazed to hear of the supposed lack of distinction between trial by court and trial by jury. The Court can cite no authority in support of this curious proposition. The merits of civil juries have been long debated, but I suspect that juries have never been accused of being merely "neutral" factors.
Contrary to the majority's supposition, juries can make a difference, and our cases have, before today at least, recognized this obvious fact. Thus, in Colgrove v. Battin, 413 U. S., at 157, we stated that "the purpose of the jury trial in . . . civil cases [is] to assure a fair and equitable resolution of factual issues, Gasoline Products Co. v. Champlin Co., 283 U.S. 494, 498 (1931) . . . ." And in Byrd v. Blue Ridge
The ultimate irony of today's decision is that its potential for significantly conserving the resources of either the litigants or the judiciary is doubtful at best. That being the case, I see absolutely no reason to frustrate so cavalierly the important federal policy favoring jury decisions of disputed fact questions. The instant case is an apt example of the minimal savings that will be accomplished by the Court's decision. As the Court admits, even if petitioners are collaterally estopped from relitigating whether the proxy was materially false and misleading, they are still entitled to have a jury determine whether respondent was injured by the alleged misstatements and the amount of damages, if any, sustained by respondent. Ante, at 325 n. 2. Thus, a jury must be impaneled in this case in any event. The time saved by not trying the issue of whether the proxy was materially false and misleading before the jury is likely to be insubstantial.
FootNotes
"No satisfactory rationalization has been advanced for the requirement of mutuality. Just why a party who was not bound by a previous action should be precluded from asserting it as res judicata against a party who was bound by it is difficult to comprehend."
"Were there any doubt about the [question whether the petitioners were entitled to a jury redetermination of the issues otherwise subject to collateral estoppel] it should in any event be resolved against the defendants in this case for the reason that, although they were fully aware of the pendency of the present suit throughout the non-jury trial of the SEC case, they made no effort to protect their right to a jury trial of the damage claims asserted by plaintiffs, either by seeking to expedite trial of the present action or by requesting Judge Duffy, in the exercise of his discretion pursuant to Rule 39 (b), (c), F.R.Civ.P., to order that the issues in the SEC case be tried by a jury or before an advisory jury." 565 F. 2d, at 821-822. (Footnote omitted.)
The Court of Appeals was mistaken in these suggestions. The petitioners did not have a right to a jury trial in the equitable injunctive action brought by the SEC. Moreover, an advisory jury, which might have only delayed and complicated that proceeding, would not in any event have been a Seventh Amendment jury. And the petitioners were not in a position to expedite the private action and stay the SEC action. The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 provides for prompt enforcement actions by the SEC unhindered by parallel private actions. 15 U. S. C. § 78u (g).
Holdsworth has written that of all the new methods adopted to strengthen the administration of the British laws, "the most effective, and therefore the most disliked, was the extension given to the jurisdiction of the reorganized courts of admiralty and vice-admiralty. It was the most effective, because it deprived the defendant of the right to be tried by a jury which was almost certain to acquit him." 11 W. Holdsworth, A History of English Law 110 (1966). While the vice-admiralty courts dealt chiefly with criminal offenses, their jurisdiction also was extended to many areas of the civil law. Wolfram 654 n. 47.
"[T]he antifederalists were not arguing for the institution of civil jury trial in the belief that jury trials were short, inexpensive, decorous and productive of the same decisions that judges sitting without juries would produce. The inconveniences of jury trial were accepted precisely because in important instances, through its ability to disregard substantive rules of law, the jury would reach a result that the judge either could not or would not reach. Those who favored the civil jury were not misguided tinkerers with procedural devices; they were, for the day, libertarians who avowed that important areas of protection for litigants in general, and for debtors in particular, would be placed in grave danger unless it were required that juries sit in civil cases." Id., at 671-672.
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