Buford v. Bunn

• Decision Date: 26 June 1967
• Docket Number: No. 477,477
• Citation: 247 Md. 203,230 A.2d 636
• Parties: Phillip N. BUFORD v. Erna M. BUNN.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 203

247 Md. 203

230 A.2d 636

Phillip N. BUFORD v. Erna M. BUNN.

No. 477.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

June 26, 1967.

Harold J. Rogers, Riverdale (Alfred S. Fried, Riverdale, on the brief), for appellant.

Charles E. Wehland, Ellicott City (C. Orman Manahan, Ellicott City. on the brief), for appellee.

Before HAMMOND, C. J., and HORNEY, MARBURY, OPPENHEIMER, BARNES, McWILLIAMS and FINAN, JJ.

OPPENHEIMER, Judge.

The appellant contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion to dismiss the paternity action against him instituted by the appellee under the Maryland statutory Paternity Proceedings on the ground of res judicata, because, in a previous action for annulment of marriage brought by the appellant against the appellee, the appellee did not raise the issue of paternity, support and custody of the child. We think the trial court was correct.

The appellant and the appellee were allegedly married on October 31, 1964 at Ellicott City. On November 12, 1964, the appellant filed an annulment proceeding in the Circuit Court for Howard County. In his petition, the appellant alleged that he never intended to and did not enter into a marriage contract and did not participate in a marriage ceremony with the appellee at any time. The appellee's answer denied all the material allegations of the appellant's petition. At the time of the filing of her answer, the appellee, to her knowledge, was some months pregnant. However, she did not raise the issue of paternity or ask for support of her child in her answer or at any time during the annulment proceedings. The child was born on March 5, 1965, eight months before the hearing.

It is unnecessary to set forth the testimony adduced at the hearing on the annulment proceedings. In brief, Judge Mayfield found as facts that the parties had engaged in sexual intimacy for some months prior to the purported ceremony, that the appellant had denied paternity of the appellee's child, that the appellee obtained a marriage license, and that a member of the clergy, acting, in his view, in loco parentis of the appellee, pronounced the parties man and wife, without asking the appellant's consent and without any consent by the appellant, expressed or implied. The court concluded that the purported creremony did not constitute a valid existing marriage.

Thereafter, on January 12, 1966, several months after the decree of annulment, a paternity proceeding was brought against the appellant under Code (1966 Replacement Volume) Article 168 Section 66A et seq., in the same court and before the same judge, to obtain a judicial determination of the paternity of the appellee's child. Testimony was taken and Judge Mayfield found that the appellant was the child's father. Custody of the child was awarded to the appellee and provision made as to its support. The appellee contends that, in the paternity proceedings, the question of res judicata or estoppel by judgment was not adequately raised and was waived, but we assume, arguendo, that the question is properly before this Court.

The appellant contends that res judicata is a complete bar to subsequent actions between parties involving the same claim or demands and prevents the consideration, not only of those issues which were litigated, but also those which might have been litigated, in the first action. The rule is not applicable in the situation here presented.

Judge Markell, for the Court, stated the principle in LeBrun v. Marcey, 199 Md. 223, 86 A.2d 512 (1952):

"The scope of the estoppel of a judgment depends upon whether the question arises in a subsequent action between the same parties upon the same claim or demand or upon a different claim or demand. In the former case a judgment upon the merits is an absolute bar to the subsequent action. In the latter the inquiry is whether the point or question to be determined in the later action is the same as that litigated and determined in the original action (citing cases)' Tait v. Western Maryland Ry. Co., 289 U.S. 620, 623, 53 S.Ct. 706, 707, 77 L.Ed. 1405. '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 an estoppel only as to those matters in issue or points controverted upon the determination of which the findings 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. Only upon such matters is the judgment...