United States v. Throckmorton (98 U.S. 61) is an 1878 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court on civil procedure, specifically res judicata, in cases heard at equity. A unanimous Court affirmed an appeal of a decision by the District Court for California upholding a Mexican-era land claim, holding that collateral estoppel bars untimely motions to set aside the verdict where the purportedly fraudulent evidence has already been considered and a decision reached. In the opinion it distinguished between that kind of fraud, which it called intrinsic, and extrinsic fraud, in which deceptive actions exterior to the proceeding prevented a party, or potential party, to the action from becoming aware of the possibility they could vindicate their rights in court.
The land claim at issue had been filed with the district court in the early 1850s by Richardson, a settler who had lived in California since 1838. He had followed Mexican procedures; Mexican government records verified this and suggested that he would receive the grant but the final decree had never been sent. So, the U.S. federal government claimed, he went to former Mexican governor Manuel Micheltorena with his land claim pending and obtained from him a backdated decree, supported by perjured affidavits from purported witnesses to the signing. Only in the 1870s, while reviewing other paperwork, did government lawyers in the Attorney General's office learn of this and bring the case.
Justice Samuel Freeman Miller found little precedent supporting the government's position, and much in opposition, including not only decisions of American courts but those of English courts dating to the beginning of the 18th century. He also cited established legal principles of double jeopardy and the state's interest in not having litigation continue indefinitely. On the facts of the case, he noted that the original petition had taken the court five years to approve, and it was thoroughly inspected, or could have been, by the government's lawyers at the time. Nor did the government offer any new evidence of the fraud, or indicate that the Attorney General had authorized the new litigation.
The rule laid down in Throckmorton has been seen as problematized by Marshall v. Holmes, a decision issued 13 years later in a similar case seeking to revisit a result due to the use of allegedly forged evidence; in it a dictum suggested that courts could set aside verdicts in cases of intrinsic fraud if they found the results obtained to be unconscionable. A circuit split developed over which case was controlling during the late 1930s, but the Court declined to resolve it, although it has modified and clarified the rule in several decisions since then; Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b) has also limited Throckmortons applicability. The Third Circuit and several states have rejected Throckmorton in favor of Marshall.
Underlying dispute
At some time prior to 1838, W.A. Richardson settled in what was then Alta California, under Mexican sovereignty. After establishing himself, he petitioned the Mexican governor to grant him title to the land he had been living on. Records from the governor's office, and Richardson's espediente, showed that there was no objection or previous claim to the property or Richardson's continued residence there, and that the petition would likely be granted. But Richardson never received the actual decree from the governor's office.
After California became a U.S. state in 1850, Richardson petitioned its Board of Land Commissioners to have his title accepted under its laws, which the board granted in 1853. Afterwards, it was appealed to the federal District Court for California, which affirmed it in 1856; an appeal to the Supreme Court was withdrawn by the Attorney General the following year. Richardson's petition was supported by a decree signed by Manuel Micheltorena, former Mexican governor of Alta California, and affidavits from eyewitnesses attesting to his having signed the document on a date when he was governor.
Richardson died and his heirs sold the land. By the 1870s, it came to the attention of the Attorney General's office that he had actually obtained Micheltorena's signature in 1852, during the pendency of the land claim before the board of land commissioners, long after the former governor had any authority to sign such a decree, and backdated it. The affidavits supporting his signature were likewise allegedly perjured. Howard, a lawyer representing the government at the board, had apparently been aware of this ruse, or at least its possibility, but did not inform the commissioners.Throckmorton, at 69
Howard by then owned some of the Richardson land. In 1876, the federal government filed a petition in the district court, naming him and the other landowners, with Throckmorton as the lead defendant, asking to have the land claim invalidated on the grounds that it had been fraudulently obtained. The court declined; the government appealed to the Supreme Court.
Supreme Court
Writing for a unanimous court that ruled against the government, Justice Samuel Freeman Miller first took note of the fact that at the time of the disputed grant, Richardson had already been living on his land for almost 20 years; the Court also had never held in any other cases arising from claims in formerly Mexican lands that receipt of the final documentation was absolutely necessary to prove title, especially when the claimant was already in possession. While the government's brief had discussed the fraud upon the court in the original proceeding at great length, Miller also noted, it made no allegations of malfeasance against Howard,Throckmorton, 62–63 an omission suggesting the government believed that he had merely been negligent.
Miller turned next to the government's arguments. He agreed that unlike a private plaintiff the government was not bound by a statute of limitations, but that would not suffice to sustain the motion. The question was whether the Court had jurisdiction. He agreed that "fraud vitiates the most solemn contracts, documents, and even judgments", but also that the "lapse of time ... the difficulty of proving the fraud, and ... the protection which the law throws around rights once established by formal judicial proceedings in tribunals established by law, according to the methods of the law" make it difficult to expose older frauds.Throckmorton, 64–65
This led Miller to two Latin legal maxims: interest rei publicae, ut sit finis litium ("there is a public interest in there being an end to litigation") and nemo debet bis vexari pro una et eadam causa ("no one shall be punished or tried twice for the same cause"). The procedures to remedy mistakes of law or fact in trials, such as appeals or retrials, were well-established and did not offend these principles as long as the procedures were followed. "But there is an admitted exception to this general rule in cases where, by reason of something done by the successful party to a suit, there was in fact no adversary trial or decision of the issue in the case", he continued. These would include situations where deception was employed to keep evidence out of the case, or to prevent the defendant from being aware of the action, corrupt behavior by an attorney—situations that, Miller said, kept a party from presenting a full case in court, and thus there was greater latitude for allowing a new proceeding, citing many state and federal precedents.Throckmorton, 64–65
By contrast, "the doctrine is equally well settled that the court will not set aside a judgment because it was founded on a fraudulent instrument, or perjured evidence, or for any matter which was actually presented and considered in the judgment assailed" Miller wrote, quoting a work on res judicata, since it was usually the parties' responsibility to unearth evidence of fraud during the original action. There was only one American precedent that suggested otherwise.Throckmorton, 65–66
Miller reviewed some of the precedents in the case, starting with Tovey v Young, a 1702 case heard by the English Court of Chancery, where a merchant who had unsuccessfully sought to recover from a cheesemonger who had sold to his agent even after the merchant had let the cheesemonger know he had revoked the buyer's purchasing authority asked for a new trial, having learned since the judgment that the supposedly primary defense witness was a partner of the cheesemonger's. The case had already been unsuccessfully appealed to the Master of the Rolls, and Miller quoted the opinion of Lord Keeper Nathan Wright: "New matter may in some cases be ground for relief, but it must not be what was tried before; nor, when it consists in swearing only, will I ever grant a new trial, unless it appears by deeds, or writing, or that a witness on whose testimony the verdict was given was convicted of perjury, or the jury attainted."
That passage had been cited in an 1814 opinion of New York's Court of Chancery, denying a new trial to a salt merchant. After a judgment against him for breach of contract, the man had learned that the plaintiff had arranged a fictitious salt sale with one of his witnesses at a price over market value in order to win a higher damage award. Chancellor James Kent noted that the merchant had to have known that the price of salt would be an issue at trial, and could reasonably have been expected to prepare evidence of that.Throckmorton, 66–67
"The best discussion" of this issue, Miller said, was in an 1854 divorce case heard by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The plaintiff sought to have the divorce granted to her former husband five years earlier reversed due to fraud and collusion. The court's chief justice, Lemuel Shaw, had reviewed the earlier precedents and distinguished intrinsic fraud, which was what the government alleged in the instant case, from extrinsic fraud, the actions he had described earlier which would serve to prevent a truly honest and fair trial and thereby justify ordering a new trial. "We think these decisions establish the doctrine on which we decide the present case", Miller concluded.Throckmorton, 67–68
Miller believed this rule was in the greater interest of the judicial system: "That the mischief of retrying every case in which the judgment or decree rendered on false testimony, given by perjured witnesses, or on contracts or documents whose genuineness or validity was in issue, and which are afterwards ascertained to be forged or fraudulent, would be greater, by reason of the endless nature of the strife, than any compensation arising from doing justice in individual cases." Again, he noted that the government had offered no proof that Howard's supposed failure to inform the courts of the falsification of the decree and the perjury supporting it had come from any deliberate intent on his part, which if it had might have allowed relief.
Lastly Miller found another reversible error. By statute, only the Attorney General or someone he explicitly authorized to do so could bring this kind of action. Yet the paperwork bore only the name of Walter Van Dyke, then U.S. Attorney for the District of California. It did not appear as if he or anyone in the government was even very interested in the case, as no lawyer representing its side had appeared at oral argument.Throckmorton, 70