| Venue: | OR SC |
| Facts: | Fire in the skip box spreads to neighboring sheds, warehouses. |
| Posture: | A total of over 50 lawsuits get filed. Three go to trial. First: verdict for defendant. Reversed on appeal and remanded for new trial. Second: verdict for defendant, no appeal. Third: verdict for plaintiff, affirmed on appeal. On re-trial of the first, verdict for the plaintiff, affirmed on appeal. Now 48 of the plaintiffs amend their complaints seeking issue preclusion. Trial court rules in their favor. Appeal from 13 judgments for damages. |
| Issue: | To preclude, or not to preclude, that is the question. |
| Holding: | Not to preclude. Reversed. |
| Rule: | When you have inconsistent determinations, it's unfair to preclude relitigation. |
| Reasoning: | The idea of collateral estoppel is that we have confidence in our adjudicative process. When we've got inconsistent results, we're not free to ignore them. |
| Dicta: | |