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v. Boston & Maine Railroad, 196 Massachusetts, 575, 581; Pinkerton v. Randolph, 200 Massachusetts, 24, 28. There is no right of contribution between joint wrongdoers, where they are in pari delicto with each other. Churchill v. Holt, 127 Massachusetts, 165. They are equally culpable, and the wrong complained of results from their joint effort."

The cause of action was one arising ex delicto and the liability of Lewisohn and Bigelow was several as well as joint. In many cases this court has held that a judgment without satisfaction against one of two joint trespassers is no bar to another action against the other for the same tort. The common law imposes upon each joint tortfeasor the burden of bearing the entire loss which he, in coöperation with another, has inflicted. The injured person may sue those who coöperated in the commission of the tort together, or he may sue them singly. He may recover against less than all if he sue them jointly, and may have a judgment for unequal sums against all who are joined in the suit. Or, if he sue one such wrongdoer and recover judgment, he is not estopped from suing another upon the same facts unless his first judgment has been fully satisfied. Lovejoy v. Murray, 3 Wall. 1; Sessions v. Johnson, 95 U. S. 347, 348; The Beaconsfield, 158 U. S. 303. If Lewisohn and Bigelow were severally liable, and a judgment against one without full satisfaction was not a bar to a suit against the other, it is difficult to see why a failure to obtain a judgment against one should be an answer to a suit against the other, who was not a party to the first suit. That a failure to recover in one suit against one such tort-feasor is not a bar to a suit in the courts of another State against another, who was not a party to the first suit, seems to be supported by considerations of justice and the weight of authority.

But did the Massachusetts court deny full faith and credit to the New York judgment by denying to it the

225 U. S.

Opinion of the Court.

effect of estoppel which attached to it in the courts of New York, or may it determine for itself under principles of general law whether the judgment was a bar to the suit against Bigelow?

The answer must turn upon the construction and effect of the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution, and the act of Congress giving effect thereto. Section 1, Article IV of the Constitution reads as follows:

"Full faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and Judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof." The act of Congress of May 26, 1790 (1 Stat. 122, c. 11), now § 905, Revised Statutes, reads as follows:

"The acts of the legislature of any State or Territory, or of any country subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, shall be authenticated by having the seals of such State, Territory, or country affixed thereto. The records and judicial proceedings of the courts of any State or Territory, or of any such country, shall be proved or admitted in any other court within the United States, by the attestation of the clerk, and the seal of the court annexed, if there be a seal, together with a certificate of the judge, chief justice, or presiding magistrate, that the said attestation is in due form. And the said records and judicial proceedings, so authenticated, shall have such faith and credit given to them in every court within the United States as they have by law or usage in the courts of the State from which they are taken."

The effect of this clause is to put the judgment of a court of one State, when sued upon, or pleaded in estoppel, in the courts of another State, upon the plane of a domestic judgment in respect of conclusiveness as to facts adjudged. But for this provision such state judgments would stand upon the footing of foreign judg

the

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ments which are examinable when sued on in the courts of another country, being only prima facie evidence of the matter adjudged. D'Arcy v. Ketchum, 11 How. 165, 175. Thus in Hanley v. Donoghue, 116 U. S. 1, 4, it is said:

"Judgments recovered in one State of the Union, when proved in the courts of another, differ from judgments recovered in a foreign country in no other respect than that of not being reëxaminable upon the merits, nor impeachable for fraud in obtaining them, if rendered by a court having jurisdiction of the cause and of the parties." Citing Buckner v. Finley, 2 Pet. 592; M'Elmoyle v. Cohen, 13 Pet. 312, 324; D'Arcy v. Ketchum, 11 How. 165, 176; Christmas v. Russell, 5 Wall. 290, 305; Thompson v. Whitman, 18 Wall. 457.

The requirement of full faith and credit is to be read and interpreted in the light of well-established principles of justice protected by other constitutional provisions which it was never intended to modify or override.

It is therefore well settled that the courts of one State are not required to regard as conclusive any judgment of the court of another State which had no jurisdiction of the subject or of the parties. D'Arcy v. Ketchum, 11 How. 165; Board of Public Works v. Columbia College, 17 Wall. 521, 528; Thompson v. Whitman, 18 Wall. 457; Hanley v. Donoghue, 116 U. S. 1, 4; Huntington v. Attrill, 146 U. S. 657, 685; Hall v. Lanning, 91 U. S. 160.

Mr. Justice Story, in his commentaries on the Conflict of Laws, § 609, says:

"It (the Constitution) did not make the judgments of other states domestic judgments to all intents and purposes, but only gave a general validity, faith, and credit to them as evidence. No execution can issue upon such judgments without a new suit in the tribunals of other states. And they enjoy not the right of priority, or privilege, or lien which they have in the state where they are pronounced, but that only which the lex fori gives to

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225 U.S.

Opinion of the Court.

them by its own laws in their character of foreign judgments."

The general effect of a judgment of a court of one State when relied upon as an estoppel in the courts of another State is that which it has, by law or usage, in the courts of the State from which it comes. But the faith and credit to be accorded does not preclude an inquiry into the jurisdiction of the court which pronounced the judgment, or its right to bind the persons against whom the judgment is sought to be enforced.

Referring to the case of Mills v. Duryee, 7 Cranch, 481, where the language used was supposed to indicate that the effect to be given to the judgment of one State by the courts of another was in all respects that which attached to domestic judgments, Mr. Justice Bradley, speaking for this court in Thompson v. Whitman, 18 Wall. 457, 462, said that Mills v. Duryee had never been departed from "where the questions were not questions of jurisdiction. But where the jurisdiction of the court which rendered the judgment has been assailed, quite a different view has prevailed. Justice Story, who pronounced the judgment in Mills v. Duryee, in his Commentary on the Constitution, after stating the general doctrine established by that case with regard to the conclusive effect of judgments of one State in every other State, adds: 'But this does not prevent an inquiry into the jurisdiction of the court in which the original judgment was given, to pronounce it; or the right of the State itself to exercise authority over the person or the subject-matter. The Constitution did not mean to confer (upon the States) a new power or jurisdiction, but simply to regulate the effect of the acknowledged jurisdiction over persons and things within their territory.""

The conclusiveness of the judgment relied upon in

Thompson v. Whitman depended upon the locality of a

certain seizure by the authorities of New Jersey under an act regulating the fisheries of that State. The question

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was whether a record finding of jurisdictional facts could be contradicted. The holding of the court was that the jurisdiction could be assailed by evidence of facts contradicting those found to exist by the record pleaded as an estoppel. That case has since been accepted as determining that the binding effect of a judgment of one State, when pleaded as an estoppel in the courts of another, is open to challenge by assailing an officer's return of service, or the authority of one who assumed to accept service, or to enter an appearance, even though the judgment includes a finding of the facts necessary to confer jurisdiction. It would seem to follow that the Massachusetts court had the legal right to inquire, not only whether Bigelow was a party to the New York judgment in the sense that he might have appeared and defended, or appealed from it, but whether the cause of action and the relation of Bigelow to it, or to the parties, was such that the New York court could pronounce a judgment which would bind him, or conclude the plaintiff from suing him upon the same facts. Knowles v. Gaslight Co., 19 Wall. 58; Cooper v. Newell, 173 U. S. 555, 556.

Bigelow was a citizen of and domiciled in Massachusetts. He was not found within the State of New York. Indeed, the pleadings in the New York court stated that he was not sued because he did not reside within the State. A judgment rendered upon constructive service against one domiciled within the State may be a good judgment in personam in that State, though void when sued upon outside the State. Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U. S. 714. In Goldey v. Morning News, 156 U. S. 518, 521, it is said:

"It is an elementary principle of jurisprudence, that a court of justice cannot acquire jurisdiction over the person of one who has no residence within its territorial jurisdiction, except by actual service of notice within the jurisdiction upon him or upon some one authorized to accept service in his behalf, or by his waiver, by general appear

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