Bennett v. Holmes

• Decision Date: 30 June 1836
• Citation: 18 N.C. 486
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: SAMPSON BENNETT v. RICHARD C. HOLMES.

18 N.C. 486

SAMPSON BENNETT

v.RICHARD C. HOLMES.

SUPREME COURT OF NORTH CAROLINA

JUNE TERM, 1836.

A judgment is conclusive between parties and privies, as to those facts only which it directly established, but does not tend to prove those which map be inferred from it. As in trespass quare clausum fregit, unless entered upon the plea of liberum tenementum, it is not even admissible in another action, between the same parties, or their privies, to prove title to the locus in quo.

TRESPASS QUARE CLAUSUM FREGIT, tried before Norwood, J., at SAMPSON, on the last circuit. Pleas—1, not guilty; 2, a judgment in a former action of trespass, in which Ann Holmes had recovered damages of the present plaintiff for a trespass upon the locus in quo, with an averment that the defendant entered by the direction of the said Ann.

The plaintiff having made out a prima facie case upon the general issue, the defendant, upon the issue presented by

his second plea, produced the record of a judgment in the same court, whereby Ann Holmes recovered damages of the plaintiff for a trespass to the premises in dispute, and proved his entry to have been made under her authority. In this latter action the present plaintiff had pleaded not guilty, a license, the statute of limitations, and an accord and satisfaction. The presiding Judge intimated that this judgment was conclusive between the parties, and in submission to this opinion the plaintiff submitted to a nonsuit and appealed.

GASTON, J. We are of opinion that the record offered in evidence by the defendant was not admissible, either as conclusive or prima facie evidence of a title to the freehold in Ann Holmes. As the parties to the present suit were also parties or privies to the suit referred to in that record, the objection to its admission rests wholly upon its irrelevancy to establish the fact for which it was offered. It has been well remarked that a record is in no case direct and positive evidence of any fact which it recites as having been found by a jury or been otherwise ascertained. Itabsolutely establishes no more than that those who passed upon the fact believed it to be as they have declared. 1 Star., 213. But public policy, awake to the necessity of preventing continual litigation upon the same subject-matter, requires that a matter once solemnly decided by a court of competent jurisdiction shall not be again brought into dispute between the same parties or their representatives. Therefore, a judgment of such a court directly upon the point is, as a plea, a bar, and as evidence conclusive, between the same parties and their privies; by De Grey, C. J., in Duchess of Kingston's case, 11 St. Trials, 261. Every allegation of record upon which issue has been taken and found is, between the parties taking it and their privies, conclusive, according to the finding thereof, so as to estop them from again litigating that fact once so tried and found. Outram v. Morewood, 3 East, 357. But for this purpose it is necessary that the judgment should be direct upon the...