Harris v. Fortin

¶1 The doctrine of judicial estoppel prevents a party from asserting a particular position in a judicial proceeding and later taking a clearly inconsistent position in order to gain an advantage. Here, throughout their bankruptcy proceedings, appellants maintained that a promissory note, on which respondent agreed to pay them a principal amount of $400,000.00, had no value and was uncollectable. Less than a year later, appellants sued respondent in state court to recover the amount owed on that same promissory note. Under these circumstances, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in…