## Facts

- Bertha and Jessie Parks were injured when their automobile collided with a train operated by Illinois Central Gulf Railroad (ICG) and engineered by Robert L. Waltrip.
- Two separate lawsuits followed, both against ICG and Waltrip, and each was venued to a different county.
- In the first action, Bertha sought damages for her personal injuries, and Jessie sought damages for loss of Bertha’s services/consortium and related expenses.
- The jury in the first action awarded Bertha $30,000 against ICG, found for Waltrip, and found against Jessie on his consortium-related claim.
- In the second action, Jessie sued for damages for his own personal injuries from the same collision.
- After judgment in the first action, ICG and Waltrip sought summary judgment in the second action, asserting claim preclusion and, alternatively, issue preclusion based on Jessie’s alleged contributory negligence.
- The trial court ruled interlocutorily that ICG was estopped to deny its negligence (based on the first judgment), but that Jessie was not precluded from litigating contributory negligence in his personal-injury case.

## Issues

1. Whether the prior judgment on Jessie’s loss-of-consortium claim barred his later personal-injury action under claim preclusion (res judicata/estoppel by judgment).
2. Whether the prior general verdict against Jessie necessarily determined Jessie’s contributory negligence, barring relitigation of that issue under issue preclusion (collateral estoppel).

## Decision

- The court affirmed the interlocutory order.
- Claim preclusion did not bar Jessie’s personal-injury action because it was a different cause of action from his earlier consortium-based claim.
- Issue preclusion did not bar litigation of Jessie’s contributory negligence because the defendants did not show that the issue was actually litigated and necessarily decided in the first action.
- The general verdict against Jessie on his consortium claim was ambiguous and could have rested on grounds other than a finding of contributory negligence.

## Legal Principles

- Claim preclusion bars relitigation only of the same claim or cause of action previously reduced to a final judgment on the merits between the same parties.
- A spouse’s claim for loss of services/consortium is legally distinct from that spouse’s claim for his own personal injuries, even if both arise from the same accident.
- Issue preclusion applies only to facts or issues that were actually litigated and necessarily determined in the prior action.
- The party invoking issue preclusion bears the burden of showing that the prior judgment could not have been rendered without deciding the specific issue asserted as preclusive.
- A general verdict does not establish issue preclusion when multiple independent grounds could support the verdict and the record does not show which ground the factfinder adopted.

## Conclusion

Jessie Parks’s earlier adverse judgment on a consortium-related claim did not bar his later personal-injury suit, and the railroad could not treat the prior general verdict as a conclusive determination that Jessie was contributorily negligent because it failed to prove that issue was necessarily decided in the first case.


Illinois Cent. Gulf R.R. Co. v. Parks, 181 Ind. App. 141, 390 N.E.2d 1078 (Ind. Ct. App. 1979)