Administrative Law, Regulatory Compliance & Enforcement

Although few attorneys are likely to get excited over litigating an issue involving “standing,” this is often an important and outcome-determinative hurdle that challengers to a zoning reclassification must overcome. In early 2013, the Court of Appeals of Maryland, in Ray v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, re-examined and distilled the caselaw on this issue in the context of a decision by the Baltimore City Council’s approval of a Planned Unit Development (“PUD”) which would bring a Wal-Mart to Baltimore’s Remington and Charles Village neighborhoods. As explained below, Ray is a critically important opinion for zoning and land-use attorneys, because, although purporting to peg standing as an issue “that it is based on a fact-intensive, case-by-case analysis,” the Court of Appeals – intentionally or not – may have created a bright-line test for proximity that challengers to a zoning reclassification must pass.

On June 25, 2012 -- while Constitutional Law wonks waited with bated breath for the Supreme Court’s decision on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which came just three days later -- the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rendered an interesting opinion on the relationship between the U.S. government and the States, which basically went unnoticed.   

The doctrines of double jeopardy, collateral estoppel, and res judicata, "are different; they apply in different circumstances and they prevent different things."  Colandrea v. Wilde Lake Cmty. Assoc., Inc., 361 Md. 371, 390, 761 A.2d 899, 909 (2000).  Although they may not sleep in the same bed, they should at least be thought of as residing on the same floor in the dormitory, as collateral estoppel and res judicata are two "branches of a doctrine known as estoppel by judgment," Klein v. Whitehead, 40 Md. App. 1, 13, 389 A.2d 374, 381 (1978), and both res judicata and collateral estoppel are "two of the individual members of a larger doctrinal family, known collectively as the law of double jeopardy."²  Burkett v. State, 98 Md. App. 459, 463, 633 A.2d 902, 904 (1993) (internal citation omitted); see Crist v. Bretz, 437 U.S. 28 (1978) ("A primary purpose of [double jeopardy] is akin to that served by the doctrines of res judicata and collateral estoppel -- to preserve the finality of judgments.").  Further, collateral estoppel and res judicata are based on "the sound and obvious principle of judicial policy that a losing litigant deserves no rematch after a defeat fairly suffered . . . on an issue identical in substance to the one he subsequently seeks to raise."  Astoria Fed. Sav. and Loan Ass’n v. Solimino, 501 U.S. 104 (1991).  Because the policies underlying the three doctrines are similar, it is not uncommon for litigants to argue more than one of them concurrently.