Hilton v. Guyot/Dissent Fuller

by Melville Fuller

United States Supreme Court

159 U.S. 113

Hilton  v.  Guyot

Mr. Chief Justice FULLER, dissenting.

Plaintiffs brought their action on a judgment recovered by them against the defendants in the courts of France, which courts had jurisdiction over person and subject-matter, and in respect of which judgment no fraud was alleged, except in particulars contested in and considered by the French courts. The question is whether under these circumstances, and in the absence of a treaty or act of congress, the judgment is re-examinable upon the merits. This question I regard as one to be determined by the ordinary and settled rule in respect of allowing a party who has had an opportunity to prove his case in a competent court to retry it on the merits; and it seems to me that the doctrine of res judicata applicable to domestic judgments should be applied to foreign judgments as well, and rests on the same general ground of public policy, that there should be an end of litigation.

This application of the doctrine is in accordance with our own jurisprudence, and it is not necessary that we should hold it to be required by some rule of international law. The fundamental principle concerning judgments is that disputes are finally determined by them, and I am unable to perceive why a judgment in personam, which is not open to question on the ground of want of jurisdiction, either intrinsically or over the parties, or of fraud, or on any other recognized ground of impeachment, should not be held, inter partes, though recovered abroad, conclusive on the merits.

Judgments are executory while unpaid, but in this country execution is not given upon a foreign judgment as such, it being enforced through a new judgment obtained in an action brought for that purpose.

The principle that requires litigation to be treated as terminated by final judgment, properly rendered, is as applicable to a judgment proceeded on in such an action as to any other, and forbids the allowance to the judgment debtor of a retrial of the original cause of action, as of right, in disregard of the obligation to pay arising on the judgment, and of the rights acquired by the judgment creditor thereby.

That any other conclusion is inadmissible is forcibly illustrated by the case in hand. Plaintiffs in error were trading copartners in Paris as well as in New York, and had a place of business in Paris at the time of these transactions and of the commencement of the suit against them in France. The subjects of the suit were commercial transactions, having their origin, and partly performed, in France, under a contract there made, and alleged to be modified by the dealings of the parties there, and one of thej claims against them was for goods sold to them there. They appeared generally in the case, without protest, and by counterclaims relating to the same general course of business, a part of them only connected with the claims against them, became actors in the suit, and submitted to the courts their own claims for affirmative relief, as well as the claims against them. The courts were competent, and they took the chances of a decision in their favor. As traders in France they were under the protection of its laws, and were bound by its laws, its commercial usages, and its rules of procedure. The fact that they were Americans and the opposite parties were citizens of France is immaterial, and there is no suggestion on the record that those courts proceeded on any other ground than that all litigants, whatever their nationality, were entitled to equal justice therein. If plaintiffs in error had succeeded in their cross suit and recovered judgment against defendants in error, and had sued them here on that judgment, defendants in error would not have been permitted to say that the judgment in France was not conclusive against them. As it was, defendants in error recovered, and I think plaintiffs in error are not entitled to try their fortune anew before the courts of this country on the same matters voluntarily submitted by them to the decision of the foreign tribunal. We are dealing with the judgment of a court of a civilized country, whose laws and system of justice recognize the general rules in respect to property and rights between man and man prevailing among all civilized peoples. Obviously, the last persons who should be heard to complain are those who identified themselves with the business of that country, knowing that all their transactions there would be subject to the local laws and modes of doing business. The French courts appear to have acted 'judicially, honestly, and with the intention to arrive at the right conclusion,' and a result thus reached ought not to be disturbed.

The following view of the rule in England was expressed by Lord Herschell in Nouvion v. Freeman, 15 App. Cas. 1, 9, quoted in the principal opinion: 'The principle upon which I think our enforcement of foreign judgments must proceed is this: That in a court of competent jurisdiction, where, according to its established procedure, the whole merits of the case were open, at all events, to the parties, however much they may have failed to take advantage of them or may have waived any of their rights, a final adjudication has been given that a debt or obligation exists, which cannot thereafter in that court be disputed, and can only be questioned in an appeal to a higher tribunal. In such a case it may well be said that, giving credit to the court of another country, we are prepared to take the fact that such adjudication has been made as establishing the existence of the debt or obligation.' But in that connection the observations made by Mr. Justice Blackburn in Godard v. Gray, L. R. 6 Q. B. 139, 148, and often referred to with approval, may usefully again be quoted:

'It is not an admitted principle of the law of nations that a state is bound to enforce within its territories the judgments of a foreign tribunal. Several of the continental nations (including France) do not enforce the judgments of other countries, unless where there are reciprocal treaties to that effect. But in England, and in those states which are governed by the common law, such judgments are enforced, not by virtue of any treaty nor by virtue of any statute, but upon a principle very well stated by Parke, B., in Williams v. Jones, 13 Mees. & W. 633: 'Where a court of competent jurisdiction had adjudicated a certain sum to be due from one person to another, a legal obligation arises to pay that sum, on which an action of debt to enforce the judgment may be maintained. It is in this way that the judgments of foreign and colonial courts are supported and enforced.' And taking this as the principle, it seems to follow that anything which negatives the existence of that legal obligation, or excuses the defendant from the performance of it, must form a good defense to the action. It must be open, therefore, to the defendant to show that the court which pronounced the judgment had not jurisdiction to pronounce it, either because they exceeded the jurisdiction given to them by the foreign law, or because he, the defendant, was not subject to that jurisdiction; and so far the foreign judgment must be examinable. Probably the defendant may show that the judgment was obtained by the fraud of the plaintiff, for that would show that the defendant was excused from the performance of an obligation thus obtained; and it may be that where the foreign court has knowingly and perversely disregarded the rights given to an English subject by English law, that forms a valid excuse for disregarding the obligation thus imposed on him; but we prefer to imitate the caution of the present lord chancellor in Castrique v. Imrie, L. R. 4 H. L. 445, and to leave those questions to be decided when they arise, only observing in the present case, as in that: 'The whole of the facts appear to have been inquired into by the French courts judicially, honestly, and with the intention to arrive at the right conclusion; and, having heard the facts as stated before them, they came to a conclusion which justified them in France in deciding as they did decide.' * * * Indeed, it is difficult to understand how the common course of pleading is consistent with any notion that the judgment was only evidence. If that were so, every count on a foreign judgment must be demurrable on that ground. The mode of pleading shows that the judgment was considered, not as merely prima facie evidence of that cause of action for which the judgment was given, but as in itself giving rise, at least prima facie, to a legal obligation to obey that judgment, and pay the sum adjudged. This may seem a technical mode of dealing with the question; but in truth it goes to the root of the matter; for, if the judgment were merely considered as evidence of the original cause of action, it must be open to meet it by any counter evidence negativing the existence of that original cause of action. If, on the other hand, there is a prima facie obligation to obey the judgment of a tribunal having jurisdiction over the party and the cause, and to pay the sum decreed, the question would be whether it was open to the unsuccessful party to try the cause over again in a court not sitting as a court of appeal from that which gave the judgment. It is quite clear that this could not be done where the action is brought on the judgment of an English tribunal; and, on principle, it seems the same rule should apply where it is brought on that of a foreign tribunal.'

In any aspect, it is difficult to see why rights acquired under foreign judgments do not belong to the category of private rights acquired under foreign laws. Now, the rule is universal in this country that private rights acquired under the laws of foreign states will be respected and enforced in our courts unless contrary to the policy or prejudicial to the interests of the state where this is sought to be done; and, although the source of this rule may have been the comity characterizing the intercourse between nations, it prevails to-day by its own strength, and the right to the application of the law to which the particular transaction is subject is a juridical right.

And, without going into the refinements of the publicists on the subject, it appears to me that that law finds authoritative expression in the judgments of courts of competent jurisdiction over parties and subject-matter.

It is held by the majority of the court that defendants cannot be permitted to contest the validity and effect of this judgment on the general ground that it was erroneous in law or in fact, and the special grounds relied on are seriatim rejected. In respect of the last of these-that of fraud-it is said that it is unnecessary in this case to decide whether certain decisions cited in regard to impeaching foreign judgments for fraud could be followed consistently with our own decisions as to impeaching domestic judgments for that reason, 'because there is a distinct and independent ground upon which we are satisfied that the comity of our nation does not require us to give conclusive effect to the judgments of the courts of France, and that ground is the want of reciprocity on the part of France as to the effect to be given to the judgments of this and other foreign countries.' And the conclusion is announced to be 'that judgments rendered in France, or in any other foreign country, by the laws of which our own judgments are reviewable upon the merits, are not entitled to full credit and conclusive effect when sued upon in this country, but are prima facie evidence only of the justice of the plaintiff's claim.' In other words, that, although no special ground exists for impeaching the original justice of a judgment, such as want of jurisdiction or fraud, the right to retry the merits of the original cause at large, defendant being put upon proving those merits, should be accorded in every suit on judgments recovered in countries where our own judgments are not given full effect, on that ground merely.

I cannot yield my assent to the proposition that, because by legislation and judicial decision in France that effect is not there given to judgments recovered in this country which, according to our jurisprudence, we whink should be given to judgments wherever recovered (subject, of course, to the recognized exceptions), therefore we should pursue the same line of conduct as respects the judgments of French tribunals. The application of the doctrine of res judicata does not rest in discretion; and it is for the government, and not for its courts, to adopt the principle of retorsion, if deemed under any circumstances desirable or necessary.

As the court expressly abstains from deciding whether the judgment is impeachable on the ground of fraud, I refrain from any observations on that branch of the case.

Mr. Justice HARLAN, Mr. Justice BREWER, and Mr. Justice JACKSON concur in this dissent.