Dubin v. Department of Registration & Education

71 N.E.2d 785, 396 Ill. 276, 1947 Ill. LEXIS 314
CourtIllinois Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 22, 1947
DocketNo. 28916. Reversed and remanded.
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 71 N.E.2d 785 (Dubin v. Department of Registration & Education) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Illinois Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Dubin v. Department of Registration & Education, 71 N.E.2d 785, 396 Ill. 276, 1947 Ill. LEXIS 314 (Ill. 1947).

Opinion

Mr. Justice Fulton

delivered the opinion of the court:

At' a previous term of this court, in cause No. 26387, this case was heard on direct appeal from a judgment entered in the circuit court of Cook county. As was more fully stated in the opinion in that cause, a complaint was filed against appellee, A. A. Dubin, charging him with improper, unprofessional and dishonorable conduct in the practice of dentistry. A hearing was had before an examining committee of the Department of Registration and Education which resulted in a recommendation that the license of appellee be revoked. After a petition for rehearing had been overruled the appellee filed a petition for writ of certiorari to the circuit court of Cook county, to which the Department duly filed a return. Upon a hearing, the circuit court quashed the return and the Department appealed. This court reversed the order quashing the return for the reason that it did not indicate or specify the grounds upon which it was based, as required by statute, and remanded the case with directions to enter á new judgment in conformity with the statute. (Dubin v. Department of Registration and Education, 380 Ill. 57.) Being a statutory certiorari proceeding, it was there held that it is necessary for the judgment to show the court had jurisdiction by finding it was based upon some point set out in the motion for rehearing, whether of law or fact, or both.

After remandment, the circuit court, on January 15, 1945, entered a new order again quashing the Department’s return to the writ, specifying in detail the grounds upon which the judgment was based, from which order the Department prosecutes this second appeal. By stipulation, and under an order entered by this court on May 9, 1945? the original record, as filed in case No. 26387, has been refiled in this case, supplemented by a transcript of the proceedings had in the circuit court after the remandment in the earlier appeal.

The appeal is taken under the provisions of section 7-h of the Dental Practice Act, (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1939, chap. 91, par. 62h,) and on the additional ground that the constitutionality of section 7-d of the same act is necessarily involved.

The amended complaint charged the appellee with carrying on certain direct advertising during the year 1936, in violation of the provisions of 18b of the Dental Practice Act; with practicing dentistry under the name of “Madison Dental Laboratory” in the year 1939, in violation of certain provisions of section 18 of the said Dental Practice Act; and with practicing dentistry in the year 1939 in offices where dental services were then and there being contracted for and rendered in violation of certain other provisions of said section 18.

In his petition for rehearing, filed with the Department, appellee raised some 27 alleged errors in support of his motion, challenging the authority of the committee to act, errors in the procedure, the sufficiency of the evidence, the constitutionality of the Dental Practice Act, and pleading res judicata to so much of the complaint as charged offenses during the year 1936. The circuit court found the issues for the appellee, and, as above stated, specified the grounds upon which its decision was based, which contained all the questions discussed in this opinion.

Some of the most serious charges against appellee are contained in sections 2(b) and 2(e) of the amended complaint. There it is alleged that the appellee on September 10, 1936, violated the statutory provisions against direct advertising. The charges are set forth in detail and, if proved, would no doubt constitute grounds for revocation of license.

It is contended, however, by the appellee that on September 21, 1938, offenses charged in the exact language of the present complaint resulted in an order of revocation by the Department; that the proceedings were reviewed by the circuit court of Cook county on certiorari and the order of revocation vacated and set aside; that no appeal was taken from that order of the circuit court and it, therefore, became final and is res judicata and a bar to any further proceedings between the same parties involving the same subject matter. This defense is set up by way of pleading in paragraph 13(d) of appellee’s petition for rehearing filed with the Department on June 27, 1940, and is set forth as one of the grounds upon which the circuit court based its, finding, designated as 1 (d) in-the judgment order entered by that court on January 15, 1945. It is asserted in the briefs and not denied that during the hearings before the special committee of the Department the appellee objected to any evidence concerning violations in the year 1936, because of the bar created by the adjudication of the former suit, and such evidence was admitted over his objection. It is the contention of the Department that this was not sufficient to show what was determined in the earlier case or in what way the matters there adjudicated are common to the present action.

We believe that in this statutory proceeding the action of the appellee amounted to a plea of former adjudication and when the circuit court quashed the Department’s return to the writ of certiorari, this was a judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction and was final as to all matters litigated between the parties. The rules applicable to the doctrine of former adjudication have been clearly defined by this court in many cases. In the recent case of City of Elmhurst v. Kegerreis, 392 Ill. 195, we said: “The rule deducible from the decisions of this and other courts on the subject of former adjudication and estoppel by verdict is that if the first suit was between the same parties and involved the same cause of action, the judgment in the former suit is conclusive, not only as to all questions actually decided but as to all questions which might properly have been litigated and determined in that action.”

The record in this case discloses that the former suit was brought for the same purpose as the present proceeding, both seeking to revoke the license of the appellee to practice dentistry and, so far as the year 1936 was concerned, relying on the identical charges of violations of the Illinois Dental Practice Act. The inclusion of those charges in the present suit was an attempt .to relitigate questions settled by a court of competent jurisdiction. There being an identity of parties and cause of action in the two suits, the former judgment operates as a bar to the alleged violations occurring during the year 1936.

The complaint further charges that appellee, beginning in February, 1939, and continuing until about the first of December, 1939, practiced dentistry under the name, “Madison Dental Laboratory,” in violation of section 18 of the Dental Practice Act, which in part provides: “It shall be unlawful for any person or persons to practice dentistry under the name of a corporation, company, association or trade name; or under any name except his or her own proper name, which shall be the n|me used in his or her license as issued by the Department of Registration and Education; * *

Prior to 1939, appellee in his own name had owned and operated a main dental office at 84 West Madison Street, Chicago, where laboratory work on dentures was performed, and some six local or branch offices.

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Related

Collins v. People ex rel. Stephens
213 N.E.2d 770 (Appellate Court of Illinois, 1966)
Parker v. Department of Registration & Education
125 N.E.2d 494 (Illinois Supreme Court, 1955)

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Bluebook (online)
71 N.E.2d 785, 396 Ill. 276, 1947 Ill. LEXIS 314, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/dubin-v-department-of-registration-education-ill-1947.