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Barackman v. Anderson2/18/2004
Argued and submitted April 12, 2002.
Reversed and remanded.
Defendant appeals from a judgment for plaintiff in a personal injury action that arose from an automobile accident. Among other things, plaintiff sought damages from defendant for alleged injuries to her teeth. Defendant asserted as an affirmative defense that plaintiff's claim for damages for her injured teeth was barred by issue preclusion because arbitrators had found in an arbitration proceeding between plaintiff and her automobile insurance company that her teeth had not been injured in the accident. The trial court granted summary judgment to plaintiff on the defense. Defendant assigns error to the order granting summary judgment. We review for legal error and reverse.
"Because this is a summary judgment proceeding, we view the evidence and all reasonable inferences that may be drawn from the evidence in the light most favorable to [defendant], who is the party opposing the motion." Jones v. General Motors Corp., 325 Or 404, 408, 939 P2d 608 (1997). Plaintiff filed a personal injury action against defendant for injuries that she allegedly sustained in an automobile accident with defendant. She also sought personal injury protection (PIP) benefits from her insurer in an arbitration proceeding conducted pursuant to ORS 742.520(6). As noted, the PIP arbitrators denied plaintiff an award of PIP benefits for alleged injuries to her teeth based on their determination that her teeth were not injured in the accident. Based on that decision, defendant pleaded an affirmative defense of issue preclusion as a bar to plaintiff's claim for damages for injuries to her teeth. Plaintiff moved for summary judgment on that defense. The trial court granted the motion, and a jury ultimately awarded plaintiff damages, including damages for injuries to her teeth.
As we noted in Shuler v. Distribution Trucking Co., 164 Or App 615, 623, 994 P2d 167 (1999), rev den, 330 Or 375 (2000), "whether, in principle, issue and claim preclusion apply to arbitration proceedings has not been seriously doubted for decades." Plaintiff nevertheless contends that the PIP arbitration award should not be given preclusive effect in her personal injury action against defendant. She advances several arguments in support of that contention. We consider them in turn.
Plaintiff first argues that ORS 742.522(1) limits the preclusive effect of PIP arbitration decisions to proceedings in which both the party seeking to have a PIP arbitration decision be given preclusive effect and the party against whom it is to be given that effect were parties to the arbitration proceeding. We do not interpret the statute to have that effect. ORS 742.522(1) provides that a PIP " rbitration under ORS 742.520(6) is binding on the parties to the arbitration." That language simply establishes that a PIP arbitration proceeding under ORS 742.520(6) is a binding rather than a non-binding proceeding. It does not alter the basic preclusive principles that generally apply to binding arbitration proceedings.
Plaintiff next argues that PIP arbitration proceedings are intended to provide a relatively quick and inexpensive way for PIP beneficiaries to obtain PIP benefits. She contends that it would undermine those policies to give preclusive effect to PIP arbitration decisions because PIP claimants would have to invest more time and effort in PIP arbitration proceedings in order to avoid having factually erroneous decisions applied against them in other proceedings.
There is statutory support for the proposition that PIP arbitration proceedings are intended to be less costly for PIP claimants than for insurers. ORS 742.522 provides that PI
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