Legal Definitions - relitigate

Relitigate (verb)

To relitigate means to bring a legal case or a specific legal issue before a court for a decision again, after it has already been decided by a court. It refers to the act of trying to re-argue or re-examine a matter that has previously gone through the legal process and reached a final judgment.

Relitigation (noun)

Relitigation is the act or process of litigating a matter again.

Here are some examples:

• Imagine a small business owner who sued a former employee for stealing trade secrets. After a full trial, the court ruled that there was insufficient evidence to prove the theft. The business owner cannot then file a completely new lawsuit in a different court, making the exact same claims about the same alleged theft, hoping for a different judge or jury to decide in their favor. This attempt would be an effort to relitigate the trade secret dispute, which courts generally prevent to ensure finality in legal proceedings.

• Consider a situation where a homeowner sued their contractor for faulty construction work. The court heard all the evidence and issued a judgment stating the contractor was not liable for the specific issues raised. If the homeowner later tries to sue the same contractor again for the very same defects, arguing the original decision was wrong, they would be attempting to relitigate the issue of the contractor's liability for those specific defects. This is typically not allowed unless new evidence or circumstances arise that were not part of the original case.

• In a criminal case, if an individual is tried for a specific crime, like robbery, and is found "not guilty" by a jury, the prosecution cannot then bring the exact same robbery charges against that same person for the same incident in another court. This is a fundamental principle known as double jeopardy, which prevents the state from relitigating the question of the person's guilt for that specific crime after an acquittal.