In Dearborn Heights School Dist No 7 v. Wayne Co MEA/NEA, 233 Mich. App. 120, 125; 592 N.W.2d 408 (1998), the plaintiff school district in 1994 filed a complaint concerning the defendant teacher with the State Tenure Commission, pursuant to the teacher tenure act, MCL 38.71 et seq.; MSA 15.1971 et seq. The commission affirmed the hearing referee's preliminary decision that the defendant teacher had assaulted a colleague and ordered the defendant teacher to serve a three-semester suspension, which decision this Court subsequently affirmed. The defendant teacher's union then filed grievances alleging that the plaintiff's suspension of the defendant teacher violated the school district's collective bargaining agreement. The arbitrator revisited the defendant teacher's alleged misconduct, disregarding the commission's earlier decision and concluding that the defendant teacher did not commit a battery and should receive only a one-month suspension. The plaintiff then filed a circuit court complaint seeking to vacate the arbitrator's award. The defendant teacher's union filed a countercomplaint to enforce the arbitration award. Dearborn Heights, 233 Mich. App. at 122-123. The Court concluded that the defendant teacher and the union were "estopped from relitigating the commission's factual conclusion that the defendant teacher had intentionally struck a fellow teacher." Dearborn Heights, 233 Mich. App. at 123. The Court discussed as follows whether the Legislature intended that the State Tenure Commission's factual determinations be final "in the absence of, or affirmance upon, an appeal": Even if the teacher tenure act is silent concerning whether a determination by the State Tenure Commission is to be given preclusive effect, in the absence of legislative intent to the contrary, the applicability of principles of preclusion is presumed. . . . It is instructive that, pursuant to the Administrative Procedures Act, the only procedure available to a party aggrieved by a final decision of the commission is direct review by the courts. MCL 24.301; MSA 3.560(201). Because the appeal process, by its very nature, does not contemplate a new, original action, the commission's decision is clearly intended to be a final decision on the merits. . . . The union's position in this case would leave this Court in the precarious position of having two different panels issue two potentially opposing opinions concerning one factual issue. Such circumstances are but one type of the "repetitious and needless litigation" that the doctrine of collateral estoppel is designed to prevent. Dearborn Heights, 233 Mich. App. at 129-130.