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McCallum v. North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service of N.C.2/6/2001
te v. Arrington, 311 N.C. 633, 643, 319 S.E.2d 254, 260 (1984)). Plaintiff contends that since " ur courts . . . when construing provisions of the North Carolina Constitution, are not bound by opinions of the federal courts 'construing even identical provisions in the Constitution of the United States[,]'" defendants' collateral estoppel argument fails. Evans, 122 N.C. App. at 183-84, 468 S.E.2d at 577. Plaintiff also bases his argument upon our recent decision in City-Wide Asphalt Paving, Inc. v. Alamance County, 132 N.C. App. 533, 513 S.E.2d 335, appeal dismissed and disc. review denied, 350 N.C. 826, 537 S.E.2d 815 (1999), which held that neither res judicata nor collateral estoppel barred plaintiff's state constitutional claims, even though plaintiff's claims under the federal constitution had been previously litigated in federal court.
We find neither Evans nor City-Wide controlling in the instant case. Unlike the case before us, the issue before the Evans Court was "whether plaintiff's state constitutional claims against defendants are barred by res judicata" -- not by collateral estoppel. Evans, 122 N.C. App. at 183, 468 S.E.2d at 577. In Evans, plaintiff's claims, based on violations of both the federal and the state constitutions, were initially litigated in federal court, which granted summary judgment to defendants as to all but the state constitutional claims. On remand to state court, defendants argued that plaintiff's claims under the state constitution were identical to plaintiff's claims under the federal constitution, and therefore plaintiff's subsequent litigation was barred under the doctrine of res judicata. Affirming that North Carolina courts "'have the authority to construe our own constitution differently from the construction . . . of the Federal Constitution,'" this Court held that "the claims asserted by the plaintiff in the State Court on the basis of the North Carolina Constitution are not identical to the claims asserted by the plaintiff in the Federal Court on the basis of the United States Constitution . . . ." Evans, 122 N.C. App. at 184, 468 S.E.2d at 577. Thus, concluded the Court, the doctrine of res judicata did not bar plaintiff's claim.
We also find the decision in City-Wide distinguishable from the instant case. There, plaintiff appealed its state constitutional law claims to this Court from the trial court's grant of defendants' summary judgment motion. Confusing the principles of collateral estoppel with those of res judicata, defendants argued that, because plaintiff's claims under the U.S. Constitution had been previously determined, and because those claims were identical to plaintiff's claims based on violations of the North Carolina Constitution, plaintiff was collaterally estopped from re-litigating "identical issues . . . determined by the federal court." City-Wide, 132 N.C. App. at 536, 513 S.E.2d at 337. Defendants failed to specify, however, what the "identical issues" decided by the federal court were. This Court rejected defendants' argument, reaffirming Evans' principle that claims brought under the North Carolina Constitution must be independently determined from claims brought under the U.S. Constitution. Thus, neither res judicata nor collateral estoppel barred plaintiff's claims.
Like the defendants in City-Wide, plaintiff in the instant case conflates the doctrines of collateral estoppel and res judicata. The City-Wide defendants argued that, because the claims in the federal and state courts were essentially identical, the issues to be decided by each court were necessarily the same and collateral estoppel barred their re-litigation. Here, plaintiff contends that, because his claims in federal and state court are different, th
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