Griffin v. Griffin

• Decision Date: 25 February 1946
• Docket Number: No. 86,86
• Citation: 90 L.Ed. 635,327 U.S. 220,66 S.Ct. 556
• Parties: GRIFFIN v. GRIFFIN
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

327 U.S. 220

66 S.Ct. 556

90 L.Ed. 635

GRIFFIN

v GRIFFIN.

No. 86.

Argued Dec. 10, 1945.

Decided Feb. 25, 1946.

Rehearing Denied April 29, 1946.

See 328 U.S. 876, 66 S.Ct. 975.

[Syllabus from pages 220-222 intentionally omitted] Mr. Wm. H. Griffin,pro se.

Mr. A. M. Goldstein, of New York City, for respondent.

Mr. Chief Justice STONE delivered the opinion of the Court.

This is a suit brought in the District Court of the District of Columbia, in which respondent sought to recover the amount of a judgment which she had secured against petitioner in 1938 in the Supreme Court of New York for arrears of alimony. The question for decision is the extent to which due process permits the New York adjudication to be made the basis for recovery in another jurisdiction.

The record abounds in confusing and irrelevant matter, but the following facts may be gleaned from the papers in the New York court proceedings which it contains. On June 24, 1924, the Supreme Court of the State of New York entered its interlocutory judgment divorcing respondent from petitioner, which judgment was, in 1926, modified to provide that petitioner should pay to respondent alimony in the sum of $3,000 annually in equal monthly installments. Both parties were then residents of New York, and the divorce action was contested. Petitioner left New York in 1929, and though he has returned to the jurisdiction intermittently since that time, the record does not show whether he ever again took up residence there. Petitioner was a resident of the District of Columbia at the time this suit was begun.

In 1935 respondent moved in the original divorce proceeding to punish petitioner for contempt for his failure to pay installments of alimony as directed by the decree of divorce, and petitioner, in conformity to New York procedure, made a cross-motion to modify the original judgment by reducing past due and future installments of alimony. Thereupon the New York court entered an order referring to a referee for determination two of the issues of fact raised by the motions, (a) the amount of unpaid installments of alimony due from petitioner to respondent, and (b) petitioner's then ability to pay them. These questions were litigated by the parties in contested hearings before the referee, whose report of January 7, 1936, found the amount then due from petitioner to respondent as arrears of alimony, and that petitioner had failed to present any credible testimony showing his inability to pay. The New York Supreme Court then entered its order of February 25, 1936, declaring that there was due from petitioner to respondent for the period ending October 25, 1935 alimony arrears and accrued interest in the sum of $18,493.64. Petitioner's appeal from this order to the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court was dismissed for want of prosecution.

Some time later, respondent made a further motion in the Supreme Court for an order directing the county clerk to enter as a money judgment the arrears of alimony due and unpaid under the judgment of divorce. This motion was granted, and an order was entered February 19, 1938 directing the clerk to docket a judgment in favor of respondent against petitioner in the sum of $25,382.75. As indicated in the order this amount was made up of the following items:

A judgment that respondent recover this amount from petitioner and have execution upon it was entered by the clerk on February 23, 1938. Both the order of February 19, 1938 and the judgment upon it were entered ex parte, without noti e to petitioner, as then seems to have been permitted under § 538 of the New York Civil Practice Act. Thayer v. Thayer, 1st Dept., 145 App.Div. 268, 129 N.Y.S. 1035.¹ Petitioner, by his answer in the present suit on this judgment set up as defenses that the judgment of February 1938 was entered without notice to him, and was for that reason null and void for want of due process, and also 'because of gross fraud in its incidence and procurement, and in its making and entry, and in its monetary contents, and in the amount claimed to be due and owing under it,' and so was not entitled to any recognition in the District of Columbia.

On motion for summary judgment, supported by pleadings, affidavit and admissions establishing the several judgments, orders and records of the New York Supreme Court to which we have referred, the district court ordered summary judgment in the sum of $25,382.75, with interest from February 23, 1938. The Court of Appeals for the District affirmed without opinion. We granted certiorari, 326 U.S. 705, 66 S.Ct. 22, on a petition which urges the sufficiency of the defenses raised below.

By Rule 56(d) of the Rules of Civil Procedure, 28 U.S.C.A. following section 723c, the court, on a motion for summary judgment, is required to ascertain by examination of the pleadings and the evidence before it what material facts exist without substantial controversy and what material facts are actually and in good faith controverted, and thereupon to make an order specifying the facts that appear without substantial controversy, and directing such further proceedings in the action as are just. For the purposes of the trial it is provided that the facts so specified shall be deemed established and the trial conducted accordingly. In the present state of the record, and in order that the summary judgment procedure may be properly followed, it becomes necessary to determine what facts appear without substantial controversy, and in the light of those facts to direct such further proceedings in the action as are just.

Of controlling significance in this case are the following uncontroverted facts of record: the judgment or decree rendered by the New York Supreme Court in 1926 directing annual payments of alimony in the sum of $3,000; the order of the New York Supreme Court in the same proceeding determining as a result of an active litigation between the parties that as of February 25, 1936, there was due and payable from petitioner to respondent arrears of alimony in the sum of $18,493.64, representing installments accrued to October 25, 1935, with interest to that date, and that petitioner was not entitled to any reduction in the amount due; and finally, the judgment of the New York Supreme Court of 1938, which incorporated in the amount adjudged to be due the arrears of alimony with interest found by the 1936 order to have accrued to October 25, 1935.

We have examined the New York law, and conclude that the 1926 New York alimony decree was, under the New York practice, subject to some power of modification nunc pro tunc as to alimony accrued but unpaid up to the time of modification. See New York Civil Practice Act Sec. 1170, Laws 1925, Ch. 240.² Under the local practice, alimony which has accrued under a decree of divorce may not be collected by execution unless and until a judgment for the amount of alimony accrued but unpaid is docketed by order of the court which issued the decree. Thayer v. Thayer, supra; Ostrin v. Posner, 127 Misc. 313, 215 N.Y.S. 259. And upon a motion to docket as a judgment, arrears of alimony awarded under a prior decree, the husband may defend on the grounds that the alimony or some part of it is not due because of the death or remarriage of the wife, Kirkbridge v. Van Note, 275 N.Y. 244, 9 N.E.2d 852, 112 A.L.R. 243; or that the obligation has been discharged by payment or otherwise, Karlin v. Karlin, 280 N.Y. 32, 19 N.E.2d 669; or that circumstances have so changed as to justify a reduction of alimony already accrued by modification of the alimony decree, Van Dusen v. Van Dusen, 3rd Dept. 258 App.Div. 1020, 17 N.Y.S.2d 96; Cunningham v. Cunningham, 2d Dept., 261 App.Div. 973, 25 N.Y.S.2d 933, 934; Eisinger v. Eisinger, 3rd Dept., 261 App.Div. 1031, 26 N.Y.S.2d 22.

Concededly the 1938 judgment was entered without actual notice to or appearance by petitioner, and without any form of service of process calculated to give him notice of the proceedings. Compare International Shoe Co. v. State of Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 66 S.Ct. 154. Because of the omission, and to the extent that petitioner was thus deprived of an opportunity to raise defenses otherwise open to him under the law of New York against the docketing of judgment for accrued alimony, there was a want of judicial due process, and hence want of that jurisdiction over the person of petitioner prerequisite to the rendition of a judgment in personam against him. McDonald v. Mabee, 243 U.S. 90, 37 S.Ct. 343, 61 L.Ed. 608, L.R.A.1917F, 458; cf. Webster v. Reid, 11 How. 437, 459, 13 L.Ed. 761. The only indication in the record as to petitioner's residence at the time of the entry of the 1938 judgment is a recitation in the judgment itself that he was then a resident of the District of Columbia. But it is immaterial for present purposes whether or not petitioner was a domiciled resident of New York at the time, either within or temporarily without the state, or a resident of some other jurisdiction. It is plain in any case that a judgment in personam directing execution to issue against petitioner, and thus purporting to cut off all available defenses, could not be rendered on any theory of the state's power over him, without some form of notice by personal or substituted service. Wuchter v. P zzutti, 276 U.S. 13, 18-20, 48 S.Ct. 259, 260, 261, 72 L.Ed. 446, 57 A.L.R. 1230; Restatement of Conflict of Laws, § 75; and compare Milliken v. Meyer, 311 U.S. 457, 61 S.Ct. 339, 85 L.Ed. 278, 132 A.L.R. 1357. Such notice cannot be dispensed with even in the case of judgments in rem with respect to property within the jurisdiction of the court rendering the judgment. Roller v. Holly, 176 U.S. 398, 409, 20 S.Ct. 410, 414, 44 L.Ed. 520.

A judgment obtained in violation of procedural due process is not entitled to full faith and credit when sued upon in another jurisdiction. National Exchange Bank v. Wiley, 195 U.S. 257, 25 S.Ct. 70, 49 L.Ed. 184...