Wildman v. Wildman

• Decision Date: 26 July 1898
• Citation: 70 Conn. 700,41 A. 1
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: WILDMAN v. WILDMAN.

41 A. 1

70 Conn. 700

WILDMAN

v. WILDMAN.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

July 26, 1898.

Appeal from superior court, Fairfield county; Milton A. Shumway, Judge.

Suit by Alexander Wildman against Susan B. Wildman for an injunction and for the delivery and cancellation of certain deeds. Judgment for defendant, and plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

Robert E. De Forest, Henry a. Purdy, and James E. Walsh, for appellant.

Lewis E. Stanton, Lyman D. Brewster, and Samuel A. Davis, for appellee.

ANDREWS, C. J. Of the very numerous assignments of error presented by this appeal, those arising upon that part of the record which pertains to the third defense are controlling of the whole case. The trial court, in finding the issue made by the denial of that defense, in favor of the defendant, decided, as a matter of fact, that the same cause of action as is set forth in this complaint had been adjudicated and decided between the same parties in the former actions mentioned in said defense; and, in sustaining the defendant's demurrer to the plaintiff's replication to that defense, the court decided the same question, in the same way, as a matter of law. If the latter decision is without error, then there is no harmful error anywhere in the entire record.

"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 have been 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. "The rule of res judicata does not rest wholly on the narrow ground of a technical estoppel, nor on the presumption that the former judgment was right and just, but on the broad ground of public policy that requires a limit to litigation,—a curb on the litigiousness of the obstinate litigant. Like the statute of limitations, it is a rule of rest. As expressed by Judge Pardee in Supples v. Cannon, 44 Conn. 424, 428: 'The policy of the law is that, if a claim has once been passed upon by a court of competent jurisdiction, it shall not be thereafter controverted between the same parties, and this in the interest of peace.'" Sargent v. Steamboat Co., 65 Conn. 116, 126, 31 Atl. 543, 547, Hamersley, J. "The judgment of a court of concurrent jurisdiction directly upon the point is, as a plea, a bar, or as evidence, conclusive between the same parties, upon the same matter, directly in question in another court." Duchess of Kingston's Case, 2 Smith, Lead. Cas. *573. The binding force of the rule stated in these authorities is not in any degree disputed by the appellant. He admits it. But he contends that this case does not come within it. It is difficult, however, to reconcile the plaintiff's claim in this behalf made in this court with his claims made in the court below. We learn from the finding of facts that "the plaintiff offered in evidence the entire record, pleadings, finding of facts, and files of the judgment in two previous trials between the same parties, claiming the same as conclusive upon the parties in regard to the facts in this suit, and offered the same to prove the allegations of the complaint"; and that he "offered no other evidence than said record, pleadings, findings, and judgments in proof of the allegations of his complaint, and thereupon rested his case." Claiming, as he did, that the record in the former case was conclusive upon the parties in this case, he thereby claimed (for otherwise the record would not have had that effect) that the same point was directly in issue in this case which was directly passed upon in the former case.

Duchess of Kingston's Case, supra. The application for an injunction against using the deeds was a part of that suit and nothing else.

Every action is brought in order to obtain some particular result, which is termed the "remedy." This final result is not the "cause of the action"; it is rather the "object of the action." Every judicial action has in it certain necessary elements,—a primary right belonging to the plaintiff, and a corresponding primary duty devolving upon the defendant; a delict or wrong done by the defendant, which consisted in a breach of such primary right and duty; a remedial right in favor of the plaintiff, and a remedial duty resting on the defendant springing out of this delict; and, finally, the remedy or relief itself. Every action, however simple, must contain these essential elements, and, however, complicated, it has no more. Of these elements the primary right and duty, and the delict or wrong, constitute the cause of action. They are the legal cause or foundation whence the cause of action springs. Pom. Rem. § 453. Stated in brief, a cause of action may be said to consist of a right belonging to the plaintiff, and some wrongful act or omission done by the defendant, by which that right has been violated. Veeder v. Baker, 83 N. Y. 156, 160; Yale Law J. March, 1898, p. 240, Prentice, J.; Phil. Code PI. § 31.

An inspection of the record in this action, and a comparison of its averments with the record in the former one, show that this action is between the same parties as was the former one, and that in each action the parties are litigating in the same right, the plaintiff as the owner of certain lands,—the same in the former action as in this one,—and the defendant in her individual right; that the deeds which it is sought to set aside in this action are the very same deeds which it was sought to set aside in the former one; that the sole delict or wrongful act of which the plaintiff complained in the former suit, and the main delict of which he now complains, i. e. the putting of the said deeds on record, is the same in this action as in the former one; and that the main part of the relief claimed, 1. e. that the said deeds be delivered up to be canceled, is the same in this action as in that.

In each of the actions we are comparing the plaintiff declares as the owner of certain land. The primary right of ownership of land includes in it certain special rights, as the right to use the land in any manner permitted by law, and to have the unmolested occupation of it, as well as to have an unmolested title to it. And these primary rights belonging to the plaintiff impose the correlative primary duty on the part of all mankind to forbear from molesting him in such use, occupation, or title. In each of these actions the defendant is charged with putting certain deeds on the town record in the town where the land lies; and it is in each case the same deeds and the same act of putting them upon the record that is charged. It is this act of putting these deeds upon the record which is complained of in each action as violating the plaintiff's primary right to have an unmolested title to his lands. In both actions it is the same primary right belonging to the plaintiff which is averred, and one and the same act done by the defendant by which that primary right is said to be violated. Going back to the definition of a cause of action given a little above, we are not able to see why "the legal cause or foundation whence the cause of action springs" is not the same in the former action as in this one.

It is true that the relief claimed is not a part of the cause of the action. But the relief claimed may serve to determine what the cause of action is. The cause of action is the existence of that state of facts, or the existence of a state of facts, which entitles the plaintiff to the relief claimed. The plaintiff sued as the owner of certain lands. Such ownership clothed him with the primary right to have an unclouded title to those lands. The relief claimed was that deeds of those lands which the defendant has put on the town record be delivered up to be canceled. He would not be entitled to that relief unless he had such a title to the lands described in them that the act of the defendant in putting those deeds on the town record violated his primary right to have such an unclouded title thereto. And this he must, of course, set out in the complaint. It was a part of his case. Without it, he would have no right to the...