Rule 1:6.Res Judicata Claim Preclusion.

Rule 1:6 codifies claim preclusion — what lawyers call res judicata — as a rule of court rather than leaving it to case law alone. When a party’s claim for relief arising from a particular course of conduct, transaction, or occurrence is decided on the merits by a final judgment, that party is barred forever from bringing any later action against the same opposing party or parties on any claim arising from that same conduct, transaction, or occurrence. It does not matter whether the legal theory or rights asserted in the later suit were raised the first time, what elements or evidence the earlier claim depended on, or what remedies were sought. The bar reaches claims brought as a complaint, counterclaim, cross-claim, or third-party pleading.

The rule applies to Virginia judgments entered in civil actions commenced after July 1, 2006, and it carves out two exceptions. It does not bar a party, or that party’s insurer, from bringing separate suits for personal injury and property damage arising from the same conduct, transaction, or occurrence. And it does not bar a party who pursued mechanic’s lien remedies from later pursuing relief that the mechanic’s lien proceeding did not recover, to whatever extent the law otherwise allowed that before this rule existed.

Rule 1:6 leaves Virginia’s existing law of privity untouched — the rule’s bar extends to parties in privity with the party who litigated the first claim, but the substance of what counts as privity is still governed by case law, not by this rule.