You represent an appellant in a state court action who claims the action is precluded by a prior federal court action because the plaintiff split his cause of action between the two lawsuits. Your first argument is under the longstanding “primary rights” standard applied by the California courts. Your second is that the court should apply the federal “transaction” standard, which is far more favorable to your position. Only one standard can apply, and you are asking the appellate court to apply a federal standard not previously applied by the California courts. Throw into the mix the fact that the continuing vitality of the California “primary rights” standard was recently reaffirmed by the California Supreme Court, and you can see you’ve got your work cut out for you.
That is the uphill climb that appellant faced in FujiFilm Corp. v. Yang, case no. B243770 (2d Dist., Jan. 24, 2014). The Court of Appeal rejects the invitation to apply the federal “transaction” standard and holds that under the California “primary right” standard, there was no splitting of the cause of action, and thus no preclusion.
One can debate the best way to argue for application of the federal standard — if at all — in such circumstances. Perhaps unique underlying facts or the federal-state dichotomy between the two actions would give an opening to argue that the federal standard should be applied in this particular instance. But nothing like that is mentioned in the Court of Appeal’s rather uncharitable assessment of the appellant’s effort (emphasis mine):
Appellant urges that we apply the “transaction” doctrine of federal law, instead of California’s primary rights theory, to find Fuji wrongfully split its cause of action. We need not linger on appellant’s request, however, because she does not cite any California authority applying the transaction doctrine to define a cause of action. Instead of pertinent case law to support her position, her appellant’s brief relies solely on an eight-and-a-half page block quotation from a 15-year-old law review article. But our Supreme Court as recently as three years ago affirmed that the primary rights theory applies in California. [Citation.] We are not free to depart from binding Supreme Court precedent, and we decline appellant’s invitation to make new law by adopting the federal transaction doctrine. [Citation.]
That’s some quotation!
Was the appellant just trying to tee the case up for review by the California Supreme Court? We’ll see. I’ll update this post if a petition for review is filed.
UPDATE (3/28/2014): The remittitur issued today. No petition for review was filed with the Supreme Court.