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Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover
A piece of background helps for this case. Traditionally, equity provided a remedy to a party who was threatened with a multitude of allegedly vexatious lawsuits. To clarify, suppose R2D2 sues, or threatens to sue, C3PO in five diferent courts at law over the same transaction or occurrence. Recall that claim preclusion would not extinguish any lawsuits until at least one of them goes to judgment "on the merits." C3PO could sue R2D2 in equity. If the equity court believed that R2D2 had no reason for filing five different lawsuits (even if all of them complied with applicable SMJ, IPJ, venue, and other required doctrines), the chancellor could enjoin R2D2 from proceeding (or filing, if C3PO filed the equity lawsuit early enough) in more than one court.
In this case, one party threatens another with a lawsuit. The threatened party attempts to twist the equity doctrine described in the previous paragraph into a combination declaratory judgment/equity case. Among other things, it requests an injunction to prevent the first party from suing it (even though the first party had threatened to file only one, not a multitude, of lawsuits).
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