## Facts

- A citywide power outage on July 13–14, 1977 cut electrical service to most of New York City for about 25 hours, leading to extensive losses and emergency-response costs.
- Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. (Con Ed) was the primary electric utility serving the affected area.
- In prior litigation arising from the same blackout, a jury found Con Ed’s gross negligence to be a proximate cause of the outage and awarded damages to private plaintiffs.
- The City of New York and multiple public authorities later sued Con Ed seeking blackout-related damages.
- The City moved for partial summary judgment, asserting Con Ed was collaterally estopped from relitigating gross negligence based on the prior jury finding.
- The trial court granted partial summary judgment on gross negligence, and the Appellate Division affirmed.

## Issues

1. Whether a nonparty to the prior action may offensively invoke collateral estoppel to preclude Con Ed from relitigating gross negligence.
2. Whether Con Ed had a full and fair opportunity to litigate gross negligence in the prior action.
3. Whether alleged inconsistent small-claims outcomes, purported new evidence, alleged jury compromise, comparative negligence, or due process concerns make estoppel improper.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals affirmed.
- Con Ed was collaterally estopped from relitigating the issue of gross negligence in the City’s action.
- The prior gross-negligence determination was treated as identical and necessarily decided, and Con Ed had a full and fair opportunity to contest it.
- Small-claims determinations favoring Con Ed did not bar estoppel because they were rendered in a forum whose judgments lack preclusive effect in later litigation.
- Claims of new evidence and jury compromise were insufficient to defeat preclusion.
- Comparative negligence did not bar estoppel on gross negligence where the City was not meaningfully alleged to have contributed to causing the blackout.
- Offensive nonmutual estoppel did not violate due process given Con Ed’s prior opportunity to litigate.

## Legal Principles

- New York permits offensive nonmutual collateral estoppel when (1) the identical issue was necessarily decided in a prior action and (2) the party to be bound had a full and fair opportunity to litigate, subject to fairness considerations.
- Mutuality is not required; the controlling inquiry is the adequacy and fairness of the prior litigation opportunity for the party to be bound.
- A prior Supreme Court jury trial, with ordinary procedural safeguards and meaningful incentive to litigate, can support issue preclusion in later actions involving different plaintiffs.
- Small-claims judgments, entered under simplified procedures and statutory limits, generally do not have collateral-estoppel effect and therefore do not create the type of inconsistent adjudications that defeat estoppel.
- Assertions of newly discovered evidence or speculative claims about jury compromise do not, without a concrete showing undermining reliability of the prior determination, defeat issue preclusion.

## Conclusion

The court held that the City could use a prior private verdict to conclusively establish Con Ed’s gross negligence, because the issue was identical and Con Ed previously litigated it fully and fairly; the case proceeded with gross negligence established and other issues left for further proceedings.


Koch v. Consolidated Edison Co. of New York, Inc., 62 N.Y.2d 548, 479 N.Y.S.2d 163, 468 N.E.2d 1 (N.Y. 1984)