res judicata of Countervailing Defense

Abstract

Article 216 of the Civil Procedure Act stipulates that in paragragh 1, a final judgement has res judicata only if it is included in the order. Even if the judgement is confirmed, if the judgement in the grounds of judgement is not binding, the dispute may be reproduced and the judgements in the grounds of judgement may be contradictory, so it is a question of whether to recognize the res judicata in the grounds of judgement. On the other hand, as an exception, the determinatioin of whether or not a claim claiming offset in paragragh 2 is established is determined to have res judicata only for the amount opposed to offset. The purpose of acknowledging the res judicata in the court’s judgement on the offset claim is that if the res judicata is not recognized, the dispute over the existence of the plaintiff’s claim will be transformed into a dispute over the existence of the counterclaim filed in another lawsuit, preventing the counterclaim from double exercising the counterclaim. Therefore, in order to understand the legal principles according to the purpose in detail, this paper examined the res judicata power of the countervailing defense. First, the requirements for recognizing res judicata will be divided into automatic bonds and passive bonds. In the former, we will examine whether the court's practical judgement on automatic bonds is necessary, whether the precedent (suspension condition theory) that the judicial effect of the countervailing defense is appropriate, and whether the expression of intention to set off, which is the originally effective time, reaches the other party (revocation condition theory). In the latter case, the existence of passive bonds and whether the passive claims are claims judged as litigation items (or equivalent thereto) are problematic. And, in the case where the defendant makes a defense of set-off, we will review whether it is lawful for the plaintiff to submit a set-off (namely, litigation set-off and non-litigation set-off) as a re-defense. This will be considered in consideration of not only the substantive legal aspect that passive claims must exist, but also the litigation policy aspect of maintaining the stability of the litigation process and eliminating complexity. In addition, we examine the objective scope of the substrate power recognized in countervailing defense, especially if the automatic bond exceeds the passive bond amount, and if the court recognizes only a part of the claim (manual) bond amount, some of the multiple automatic bonds are recognized and some are not recognized. Furthermore, we will look at the positive and negative theories on whether res judicata are recognized in countervailing disputes other than litigation.