## Facts

- Lenore Rush was a passenger on a motorcycle operated by her husband on Schreiber Road in the City of Maple Heights.
- Rush alleged the motorcycle hit defects in the roadway (holes, bumps, and dips), causing her to be thrown and injured.
- Rush alleged the city negligently failed to keep the road in repair, failed to warn of dangerous conditions, and had notice of the defects.
- The same incident damaged a motorcycle owned by Rush.
- Rush first sued the city in the Cleveland Municipal Court for property damage to the motorcycle and obtained a $100 judgment; the court found the city had notice, was negligent in failing to repair, and that negligence proximately caused the property damage.
- Rush later filed a separate action in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas seeking damages for personal injuries from the same accident.
- The common pleas court treated negligence as res judicata based on the municipal court judgment and tried only damages; a jury awarded $12,000, and the court of appeals affirmed.

## Issues

1. Whether a plaintiff may maintain separate suits for property damage and personal injuries arising from a single wrongful act, or whether the claims constitute one cause of action that must be brought in a single suit.
2. Whether a final judgment for property damage from the accident bars a later action seeking personal-injury damages from the same accident.

## Decision

- The Ohio Supreme Court reversed the judgment for Rush and entered final judgment for the City of Maple Heights.
- The court held that a single wrongful act causing both personal injury and property damage gives rise to only one cause of action.
- Because Rush had already reduced her property-damage claim to final judgment, her later personal-injury action was barred as an impermissible splitting of a cause of action.
- The court overruled prior authority to the extent it treated personal injury and property damage from the same tort as separate causes of action permitting separate suits.

## Legal Principles

- Where one wrongful act causes both personal injuries and property damage, only a single cause of action arises; the different harms are items of damage within that single claim.
- Claim preclusion bars a later suit seeking additional categories of damages arising from the same tort once a final judgment has been obtained on that cause of action.
- A court may not cure improper claim splitting by giving issue-preclusive effect to findings in the first action; the second action itself is barred when it arises from the same cause of action.

## Conclusion

The court held that all damages—personal and property—resulting from one tort must be pursued in one action, and that a prior property-damage judgment precluded a subsequent personal-injury suit arising from the same accident.


Rush v. City of Maple Heights, 167 Ohio St. 221, 147 N.E.2d 599 (Ohio 1958)