Waggaman v. Franklin Life Insurance

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that because Waggaman had the opportunity to litigate the ownership of his life insurance policy in an earlier divorce action, res judicata barred him from filing a later action against the insurance company and his ex-wife for a declaratory judgment that he owned the policy
• affirming the grant of summary judgment on res judicata grounds where the appellee introduced sufficient certified portions of the record of the prior proceeding, as well as an affidavit, to carry her burden to establish the elements of res judicata
• plaintiff “had the opportunity to litigate the issue in the [first] proceeding, and his failure to do so bars him from filing a second action to relitigate”
• “[r]es judicata is an affirmative defense which must be established by the pleader”
• \A prior action may bar a subsequent action under the doctrine of res judicata if the prior action resulted in an adjudication by a court of competent jurisdiction and the two actions have an identity of parties and subject matter.\
• “As [the proponent of the defense] clearly showed that [she] and the party against whom it was asserted were the parties engaged in the earlier action, the trial court did not err when it sustained the affirmative defense against the attack on identity of parties.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).