Kathleen Lindas, Plaintiff-Appellant-Petitioner v. Elmer Cady, Robert Hable, State of Wisconsin Department of…

Summary

The Wisconsin Supreme Court held that the Wisconsin Personnel Commission's unreviewed determination that there was no probable cause to believe DHSS discriminated against Kathleen Lindas because of her sex precluded her from relitigating the issue of sex discrimination in her subsequent 42 U.S.C. sec. 1983 action. Applying the two-step analysis of University of Tennessee v. Elliott, the court concluded the commission acted adjudicatively on an issue properly before it, that its proceedings gave Lindas an adequate opportunity to litigate, and that Wisconsin issue preclusion — rather than the claim preclusion-based estoppel by record relied on below — barred relitigation; it rejected her Chevron Oil retroactivity and exhaustion-based fairness arguments and modified and affirmed the court of appeals. Justice Abrahamson, joined by Chief Justice Heffernan and Justice Bablitch, dissented, contending the newly announced administrative preclusion rule was applied retroactively and fundamentally unfairly to a plaintiff who reasonably relied on then-existing law.