The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held for the first time that federal res judicata law recognizes the alternative determinations doctrine and held that a district court erred in dismissing an artist’s case against the Eastern States Exposition on preclusion grounds.
In what the court called a “lengthy path to this appeal,” began in January 2018 when the plaintiff, Cynthia Foss, alleged that Eastern committed plagiarism and copyright infringement by using artwork that the exposition had commissioned from Foss for an exhibit at a fair, according to the opinion filed May 10.
