Fed Court - Administrative Proceedings Can Be Given Preclusive Effect

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Here is where it all goes wrong. You think simple... I will appeal to a hearing and it will all be over. Wrong! The city makes money giving out questionable citations. If you were really a big problem they would prosecute you or abate the issue. This is all about $100 here, and $500 there that goes into the city checking account.

JUST REMEMBER - If you go down the road of a administrative hearing and then state court, you will have set your path and most likely harmed a federal case where you will get a real judge. Litigation is strategy not aimless attempts at defense until someone belives you. No one cares but you. Federal judges take their job very seriously.

GHAZARYAN v. County of Madera, Dist. Court, ED California 2024

An unreviewed state administrative decision may have preclusive effect in federal court as a matter of federal common law if they meet the fairness requirements described in United States v. Utah Constr. & Mining Co., 384 U.S. 394 (1966). Miller v. Cnty. of Santa Cruz, 39 F.3d 1030, 1032 (9th Cir. 1994); see also Alarcon v. Bostic, No. 15cv1606-MMA (RBM), 2018 WL 6417655, at *2 (S.D. Cal. Dec. 6, 2018). Furthermore, an unreviewed state administrative decision has preclusive effect when a state agency is "acting in a judicial capacity" and "resolves disputed issues of fact properly before it which the parties have had an adequate opportunity to litigate." University of Tennessee v. Elliot, 487 U.S. 788, 799 (1986).

Under Utah Construction, it is fair to give preclusive effect to an administrative decision if (1) the administrative agency acted in a judicial capacity; (2) the agency "resolv[ed] disputed issues of fact properly before it;" and (3) "the parties . . . had an adequate opportunity to litigate." Utah Constr., 384 U.S. at 422. If an administrative proceeding is sufficiently judicial in character under Utah Construction, federal courts turn to the state's rules of preclusion to define the preclusive effect of the administrative decision. White v. City of Pasadena, 671 F.3d 918, 926 (9th Cir. 2012); Eaton v. Siemens, No. 2:07-CV-00315-MCE, 2012 WL 1669680, at *5 (E.D. Cal. May 11, 2012), aff'd, 571 F. App'x 620 (9th Cir. 2014).