## Facts

- George Ison and Anthony Thomas were involved in an automobile collision on Kentucky Highway 9 in July 2003.
- In August 2003, Ison sued Thomas and Thomas’s insurer seeking compensation for property damage to Ison’s vehicle and statutory damages for alleged bad-faith handling of the property-damage claim.
- A jury awarded Ison approximately $5,000 for property losses, and the trial court entered a final judgment in October 2004, including dismissal of the bad-faith claim against the insurer.
- In April 2005, Ison filed a separate action against Thomas seeking personal-injury damages arising from the same collision.
- The Pendleton Circuit Court granted summary judgment to Thomas, ruling the personal-injury suit was barred by res judicata through the rule against splitting a cause of action.
- Thomas did not plead res judicata in his answer but later raised it in a summary-judgment motion about five months into the case, before substantial discovery.

## Issues

1. Whether a plaintiff may maintain a second lawsuit for personal-injury damages after obtaining a final judgment for property damages against the same defendant arising from the same automobile accident, or whether the second suit is barred by res judicata/claim-splitting.
2. Whether the res judicata defense was waived because it was not pleaded in the answer, despite being raised later by summary-judgment motion.

## Decision

- The Kentucky Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment for Thomas.
- The court held Ison’s personal-injury claim arose from the same transaction as the earlier property-damage action and merged into the first final judgment, barring the later suit.
- The court held the res judicata defense was not waived because it was raised by a timely, nonprejudicial motion and did not unfairly surprise or prejudice Ison.

## Legal Principles

- A plaintiff must present the entire claim arising from a single transaction or series of connected transactions against a single defendant in one action; a plaintiff may not litigate damages categories in separate suits arising from the same event.
- A final judgment merges all remedies and claims that were or could have been brought in the first action related to the same transaction.
- Res judicata is an affirmative defense ordinarily pleaded in the answer, but failure to do so does not require waiver when the defense is asserted in a timely manner that causes no unfair prejudice.
- Preclusion rules are applied in a manner consistent with policies favoring reduced, repetitive litigation over motor-vehicle accidents.

## Conclusion

The court held that, because both suits arose from the same collision and involved the same defendant, Ison was required to pursue property and personal-injury damages in a single action; his later personal-injury lawsuit was barred by merger/claim-splitting, and Thomas’s res judicata defense was permitted despite not being pleaded in the answer because it was raised timely and without prejudice.


Ison v. Thomas, No. 2006-CA-000289-MR, 2007 WL 1194374 (Ky. Ct. App. Apr. 13, 2007)