439 U.S. 322 (1979) Cited 4,251 times 8 Legal Analyses
Holding that district courts have discretion to refuse to apply offensive non-mutual collateral estoppel against a defendant if such an application of the doctrine would be unfair
Finding no claim preclusion in a Title VII case where the prior litigation involved failure to process a COBRA request for post-termination medical coverage
Concluding that the same cause of action can exist in two cases only where the same set of transactional facts are involved in those cases and that, where the transactional facts differ, the doctrine of claim preclusion does not apply
Holding that a previous final judgment on a claim extinguishes "all rights of the plaintiff to remedies against the defendant with respect to all or any part of the transaction, or series of connected transactions, out of which the action" arose
Explaining that a party is "not at liberty to split up his demand, and prosecute it by piecemeal, or present only a portion of the grounds upon which special relief is sought, and leave the rest to be presented in a second suit, if the first fail. There would be no end to litigation if such a practice were permissible."
Stating that the term privity "is simply a shorthand way of saying that nonparty [i.e. , a party not named in a prior action] will be bound by the judgment in that action"
15 U.S.C. § 1052 Cited 1,585 times 271 Legal Analyses
Granting authority to refuse registration to a trademark that so resembles a registered mark "as to be likely, when used on or in connection with the goods of the applicant, to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive"