Storrs v. Robinson

• Decision Date: 12 August 1904
• Citation: 77 Conn. 207,58 A. 746
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: STORRS v. ROBINSON et ux.

58 A. 746

77 Conn. 207

STORRS

v. ROBINSON et ux.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

Aug. 12, 1904.

Appeal from Superior Court, New Haven County; William S. Case, Judge.

Action by Carlos H. Storrs, as administrator, against William T. Robinson and wife. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendants appeal. Reversed.

A. Heaton Robertson, for appellants.

Charles S. Hamilton and Carlos H. Storrs, for appellee.

TORRANCE, C. J. This case was before this court at a former terra. Storrs v. Robinson, 74 Conn. 566, 51 Atl. 516. And the new trial then ordered resulted in the judgment from which the present appeal is taken.

The plaintiff sues as the administrator of Lucius Russell, and one of the defendants is a daughter of Russell and the other defendant is her husband. This suit is brought to recover possession of two pieces of land now standing of record in the name of the defendant Mrs. Robinson, with damages in the shape of mesue profits, and to have a cloud removed from the title to said land. As one of their defenses in the present case, the defendants set up the existence of a former judgment in their favor, rendered in an action at law between themselves and the present plaintiff, concerning these same two pieces of land, and the right to the possession thereof. The trial court held that the former judgment was not a bar to the present suit, and that it did not estop the plaintiff from proving in this case certain controlling facts which the defendants claimed were in issue and were determined in their favor in the former case. Whether the trial court erred in so holding is substantially the only question upon this appeal.

The main facts out of which grows the controversy between these parties concerning these two pieces of land are few and simple. In August, 1893, Russell, then in full life, owned and was in possession of the land, and he remained in possession up to the time of his death, in March, 1895. On the 15th of August, 1893, Russell caused to be drawn up and duly executed a deed of conveyance of said two pieces of land to his daughter, the defendant Mrs. Robinson, reserving to himself the life use of said land. It is upon the question whether this is a valid deed of conveyance that the whole controversy as to this land hinges. The plaintiff contends, and alleges in his complaint, (1) that this deed was made by Russell to defraud his creditors; (2) that it was never delivered, save as a testamentary disposition of his property; while the defendants contend that the deed was duly delivered by Russell in his lifetime to the grantee named therein, and that it was not made by the grantor to defraud his creditors. The trial court has not specifically and in terms found that the deed is void as to creditors because of fraud, but it has found that it never was delivered as a deed of conveyance; and its judgment appears to rest upon that fact, and not upon the other. Now, if these two facts concerning this deed, namely, fraud and nondelivery, were in issue and were determined in favor of the defendants in the former suit, then we think the trial court erred in permitting them to be again litigated in this suit. "It is an established rule in the administration of justice that all controversies between parties, once litigated and fully and impartially determined, shall cease; and, to that end, no fact involved in such litigated controversy, shown by the record to be material to its determination, and to have been put in issue and decided, whether the proceeding was at law or in equity, shall again be litigated between the same parties." Munson v. Munson, 30 Conn. 425-433; Huntley v. Holt, 59 Conn. 102, 22 Atl. 34, 21 Am. St. Rep. 71; Sargent v. New Haven Steamboat Co., 65 Conn. 116, 31 Atl. 543; Wildman v. Wildman, 70 Conn. 700, 41 Atl. 1. The complaint in the former suit alleged that ...