Opinion
02-28-1910
SEELEY v. ADAMS et al.
W. I. Garrison, for complainant. I. Morton Adams, for defendants.
Bill by Silas S. Seeley against Israel G. Adams and others. Dismissed.
W. I. Garrison, for complainant.
I. Morton Adams, for defendants.
HOWELL, V. C. The bill of complaint in this case alleges that certain real estate transactions took place between the complainant and the defendants out of which has arisen an indebtedness from the defendants to the complainant, and concerning this indebtedness the complainant demands that the defendants should account.
The defendants filed a plea in which they set up that five years or thereabouts before the bill was filed in this case the complainant brought suit in this court against the same defendants, making the same allegations of fact and praying for an accounting, and that certain real estate should be conveyed by the defendants to the complainant upon an ascertainment of the amount due on the accounting and tender of the sum, and that that cause went to a final hearing, and was disposed of by a dismissal of the bill. A replication was filed to this plea, and the cause came on for hearing on bill, plea, replication, and proofs. The defendants offered in evidence the record of the former suit, from which it appears that the allegations of fact in the present bill are copied literally from the first bill, excepting that in the first bill there are additional averments relating to the reconveyance of the lands in question. It is therefore manifest that the second bill, as far as it goes, covers exactly the same ground as that covered by the first bill; the first bill being for an accounting with a reconveyance of lands, and the second bill being for an accounting only. The first bill was dismissed on final hearing (Seeley v. Adams, 55 Atl. 820), and a decree entered to that effect nearly five years ago.
In Cromwell v. Sac County, 94 U. S. 351, 24 L. Ed. 195, Mr. Justice Field says: "In considering the operation of this judgment, it should be borne in mind that there is a difference between the effect of a judgment as a bar or estoppel against the prosecution of a second action upon the same claim or demand, and its effect as an estoppel in another action between the same parties upon a different claim or cause of action. In the former case, the judgment, if rendered upon the merits, constitutes an absolute bar to a subsequent action. It is a finality as to the claim or demand in controversy, concluding parties and those in privity with them, not only as to every matter which was offered and received to sustain or defeat the claim or demand, but as to any other admissible matter which might have been offered for that purpose. * * * But, where the second action between the same parties is upon a different claim or demand, the judgment in the prior action operates as anestoppel only as to those matters in issue or points controverted upon the determination of which the finding or verdict was rendered. In all cases, therefore, where it is sought to apply the estoppel of a judgment rendered upon one cause of action to matters arising in a suit upon a different cause of action, the inquiry must always be as to the point or question actually litigated and determined in the original action, not what might have been thus litigated and determined." The judgment in that case was followed by Vice Chancellor Van Fleet in the case of Paterson v. Baker, 51 N. J. Eq. 49, 26 Atl. 324; by Vice Chancellor Reed in Clark Thread Co. v. William Clark Company, 55 N. J. Eq. 658, 37 Atl. 599; by Vice Chancellor Grey in Wooster v. Cooper, 59 N. J. Eq. 204, 45 Atl. 381; by the Court of Errors and Appeals in Water Commissioners v. Cramer, 61 N. J. Law, 270, 39 Atl. 671, 68 Am. St. Rep. 705.
Applying the rule to the case in hand, we find that all the matters contained in the present bill were directly in issue and litigated in the former suit, that they were there considered, passed upon, and decided. They cannot be relitigated or again brought in question in this suit.
The complainant's bill must therefore be dismissed.