Legal Question in Business Law in California

Re: Civil action being filed in another court after being dismissed.

Not only should you immediately notify the court through a pleading of the "vexatious litigant" designation, you should also file a statement of related cases, and identify all of the other cases. It should be assigned to the same judge who designated him/her as a vexatious litigant.

Re: Civil action being filed in another court after being dismissed.

Sorry, but no. Applications for restraining orders are separate from civil actions, and denial of such an application is not enough to bar a civil suit based upon the alleged conduct.

Denial of the application means only that the judge hasn't been persuaded the defendant will harass or otherwise improperly bother the plaintiff in the future. It has nothing to do with whether she is entitled to damages for what happened in the past.

Further, restraining order applications are heard by a judge rather than a jury. Plaintiffs have the right to a jury trial (except in small claims court), so a proceeding in which no jury is available cannot deprive them of this right.

More fundamentally, denial of a restraining order seldom involves any findings of fact. If the original court made no factual findings, then the subsequent court cannot be bound by such findings.

Re: Civil action being filed in another court after being dismissed.

Perhaps you should go on the offensive and sue for abuse of process or malicious prosecution. The doctrines that you referred to will not bar further litigation. Call me directly at 6192223504 to discuss remedies.

Re: Civil action being filed in another court after being dismissed.

Res judicata and collateral estoppel apply to cases that have been decided on the merits, and not to cases which have been dismissed without prejudice.

A dismissal without prejudice has only one significant consequence, and that is to terminate the action. It is not a bar to reinstituting the same claim in a different action in the same or another court.

The previous answers assume a particular kind of restraining order, such as domestic violence, harrassment, etc. These are usually not associated with civil actions, because they can be requested and obtained without filing a true lawsuit. There is also another, more general kind of restraining order, i.e. the temporary restraining order or TRO, which is a request for a provisional remedy within a civil lawsuit, and thus necessarily involves filing a suit for some remedy, such as a preliminary and/or permanent injunction, damages, etc. You haven't said what kind of restraining orders have been sought against you, which is a bit of an obstacle to advising you correctly on LawGuru.

A court's rejection of a request for a restraining order presented on February 10 for domestic violence during January would not be a bar under the doctrines of res judicata or collateral estoppel to its consideration of a request for domestic violence during February filed on March 10. However, a bunch of these unsuccessfully filed one after another could be, I think, a ground for finding that the applicant was a vexatious litigant.

In other words, res judicata means, in legal Latin, "decided matters," and in order for something to be decided, there must be a trial on the merits, or in some cases, a dismissal with prejudice will have the same effect. When there is no civil action, or the action is dismissed for reasons other than a decision on its merits, it isn't res judicata.