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Campos v. Houtum9/10/1998
Judgment, Preclusive effect.
The pivotal question here involves issue preclusion: whether it was error in this civil matter to permit the parties to relitigate the issue whether the plaintiff was the defendant's employee, where the defendant had been convicted criminally for failure to carry workers' compensation insurance, but the criminal conviction was on appeal at the time of the civil trial. A Superior Court Judge ruled that, because of the pendency of the criminal appeal, principles of issue preclusion did not apply, and thus the question whether there was an employee-employer relationship was open for determination by the jury. The Judge's ruling was erroneous.
To three special questions, the civil jury responded in the following manner: (1) that the plaintiff was not the defendant's employee; (2) that based on question (1), they need not answer the question whether the injury occurred during the course of employment; and (3) that total damages were $125,000. The plaintiff's motion for a new trial was denied on March 20, 1996. On June 5, 1996, this court affirmed the defendant's criminal conviction for failure to carry workers' compensation insurance. The plaintiff then filed a motion for relief from judgment, calling the court's attention to this court's affirmance of the defendant's conviction. That motion was denied.
The Supreme Judicial Court decided O'Brien v. Hanover Ins. Co., 427 Mass. 194, 200-201 (1998), on April 8, 1998. Acknowledging in that case that it had not decided the question whether a judgment of a lower court should be considered final while it is on appeal so as to have preclusive effect, the court proceeded to adopt the Federal rule, which it noted is followed by a majority of the States, "that a trial court judgment is final and has preclusive effect regardless of the fact that it is on appeal." Id. at 201. Applying that ruling to the instant case, preclusion principles apply, and the Judge should not have given effect to the jury's Conclusion that the plaintiff was not the defendant's employee.
We do not need to remand this matter because the finding of the Department of Industrial Accidents that the plaintiff's injury occurred during the course of employment has not been challenged here or otherwise collaterally attacked. See note 2, supra.
Accordingly, the judgment is vacated, and a new judgment is to be entered for the plaintiff in the amount found by the jury.
So ordered.
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