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(3) Collateral estoppel may be invoked against parties
and their privies to the prior judgment.
(4) The parties must actually have litigated the issues
and the resolution of these issues must have been
essential to the prior decision.
(5) The controlling facts and applicable legal rules
must remain unchanged from those in the prior
litigation. [Peck v. Commissioner, supra at 166-167;
citations omitted.]
Additionally, where collateral estoppel premised on a State court
proceeding is sought to be used offensively in Federal court,
reference is made to the controlling State law to determine the
propriety of such offensive use. Bertoli v. Commissioner, 103
T.C. 501, 508 (1994). California courts have sanctioned use of
offensive collateral estoppel. See Imen v. Glassford, 247 Cal.
Rptr. 514, 518-519 (Cal. 1988); Estate of Gump v. Gump, 2 Cal.
Rptr. 2d 269, 286 (Cal. Ct. App. 1991).
C. Analysis
Having considered the state of the record in these cases,
the points as to which respondent would have us apply collateral
estoppel, and the matters which could remain for trial, we
conclude that the purposes of the doctrine would not be served at
this juncture by resort to issue preclusion. On a fundamental
level, as previously discussed, collateral estoppel exists to
prevent unnecessary and redundant litigation. Yet given the
particular facts under review, we see little to be gained when
measured against this standard.
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