Griffin v. Griffin/Dissent Frankfurter

by Harlan F. Stone

United States Supreme Court

327 U.S. 220

Griffin  v.  Griffin

 Argued: Dec. 10, 1945. --- Decided: Feb 25, 1946

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER dissenting.

My brother RUTLEDGE has discussed in detail difficulties involved in the Court's disposition of this case and I shall state briefly the grounds for my support of his conclusion.

The opportunity to defeat a claim-the right to notice before a court can determine liability-is a safeguard guaranteed by the Due Process Clause. But money judgments are not like peas in a pod. Because of differences in the source and function of liability, the demand of fairness which underlies the requirement of notice may well be satisfied by different procedures. A judgment for future alimony, as one of the incidents of jurisdiction to decree a divorce, is very unlike a judgment for the ordinary lump sum indebtedness. It is in effect an ambulatory judgment for each instalment as it becomes due. The obligation to pay arrears flows from the original judgment and may be pursued upon that judgment elsewhere than in the rendering State. Barber v. Barber, 21 How. 582, 16 L.Ed. 226; Sistare v. Sistare, 218 U.S. 1, 30 S.Ct. 682, 54 L.Ed. 905, 28 L.R.A.,N.S., 1068, 20 Ann.Cas. 1061. For purposes of suability as a judgment elsewhere, the accrued instalments need not be reduced to judgment anew in the State of the original decree, whatever may be the requirements for the execution of that judgment in the rendering State.

But it is said that the State rendering the original judgment for alimony may allow, as New York has done here, mitigation of such judgment even as to accrued instalments. If so, such mitigating defenses may be set up when the decree for alimony is sued on in a sister State as well as when enforced in the rendering State. A judgment may have been paid and yet a suit thereon may be brought in another tate. While such a defense, if well founded, precludes a second recovery on that judgment anywhere, the availability of such a defense does not bar suit on such a judgment in a sister State. It runs counter to no requirement of Due Process to make a judgment debtor defend a suit on that judgment by claiming discharge of its liability, whether through payment or otherwise. Such a procedure is entirely consonant with the full faith and credit which 'shall be given in each State to the * * * Judicial Proceedings of every other State.' Article IV, § 1 of the Constitution; see the concurring opinion in Barber v. Barber, 323 U.S. 77, 86 at 87, 65 S.Ct. 137, 141, 157 A.L.R. 163. Moreover, the District of Columbia, as is true of a State, see Thompson v. Thompson, 226 U.S. 551, 33 S.Ct. 129, 57 L.Ed. 347, may as a matter of conflict of laws go beyond what is required by the Full Faith and Credit Clause. If, perchance, relief from accrued instalments is based on considerations of policy peculiarly within the local understanding and discretionary determination of judges of the originating jurisdiction, sister State tribunals have ample power of abstention to respect such local qualifications. In any event, access to this Court is always open on such a federal issue.

I agree therefore with my brother RUTLEDGE that the judgment below should be affirmed in its entirety. While formally the suit was on the New York judgment of 1938, this in turn was based on the original judgment for alimony. That judgment is in the record and is the real source of these proceedings. If a misdescription of a criminal prosecution is deemed a formal irrelevance so long as an offense is intrinsically charged, Williams v. United States, 168 U.S. 382, 18 S.Ct. 92, 42 L.Ed. 509, a misdescription by the pleader of the basis of a suit for accrued instalments on a judgment for alimony can hardly be too tight a knot for courts to untie.

Pleadings, particularly in a case of this sort, are no longer to be dealt with in the spirit of Baron Parke. See L. Hand, The Deficiencies of Trials to Reach the Heart of the Matter (1921), in 3 Lectures on Legal Topics, Association of the Bar of the City of New York (1926) 89. A suitor is entitled to have relief justified by the facts he has pleaded, whether he has accurately described his pleading or has asked for relief appropriate to the pleaded facts. See United States v. Memphis Cotton Oil Co., 288 U.S. 62, 68, 69, 53 S.Ct. 278, 280, 281, 77 L.Ed. 619; Bemis Bro. Bag Co. v. United States, 289 U.S. 28, 34, 53 S.Ct. 454, 456, 77 L.Ed. 1011. The purpose of a complaint is to give the defendant fair notice of the claim against him. If it does that, the complaint is legally sufficient. Griffin could have had no doubt that his wife was suing in The District of Columbia for unpaid instalments of alimony which New York, as part of the divorce proceedings, had decreed in her favor. Upon the record before us the petitioner disclaimed liability for these arrears on grounds which do not save him. We ought not to deny liability flowing from a live judgment by assuming that the petitioner has better grounds for avoiding liability than those that he has already asserted. If, perchance, he could satisfy the district court that he has failed to set up a valid defense through a reasonable misconception of what was the essence of his wife's suit, namely a suit for arrears of alimony which were her due, it would not be casting an unreasonable burden on the petitioner to require him to move to set aside the judgment on appropriate grounds.

Notes