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Petitioner urges res judicata to bar property claims; appellees say prior process left merits undecided
Summary
At the West Virginia Intermediate Court of Appeals, counsel for Robin Goodwin argued the 2018 suit should be dismissed under res judicata because an earlier 2015 action was dismissed with prejudice; opposing counsel said the earlier proceeding never decided prescriptive‑easement claims and cited attorney failures and missing indispensable parties.
Buddy Turner, representing petitioner Robin Goodwin, asked the court to dismiss the 2018 action under res judicata, arguing the same cause of action had been decided in an unappealed 2015 proceeding. Turner told the court he would reserve two minutes for rebuttal and argued that the earlier 12(b)(6) dismissal meant the matter had been finally adjudicated "on the merits," citing Sprouse v. Clay and Blake v. Charleston Area Medical Center as controlling precedent. "Res judicata ... bars this action," Turner said in oral argument.
Opposing counsel Lisa Hyer told the panel the earlier proceeding had not reached a final adjudication on the substantive prescriptive‑easement question because the 2015 matter was decided in a telephonic hearing early in the case and did not resolve the merits on adverse possession or prescriptive easement. Hyer emphasized that her clients had limited time and an attorney who later was disbarred, and that several additional lot owners who might have been indispensable parties were not given a chance to litigate. "It would be fundamentally unfair for this court to apply res judicata to this case," Hyer said.
The justices probed whether enforcing preclusion here would "defeat the ends of justice," noting case law that courts do not rigidly apply res judicata where doing so would be inequitable. Counsel debated whether the plaintiffs had the opportunity to appeal the 2015 disposition and whether the legal right at issue was identical across cases. The court submitted the matter after argument; no ruling was announced from the bench at the hearing's close.
