Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 9.djvu/250

 HOLMES V. OBEOON & OALIFOBNIA B. CO. 235 �in the exercise of Jurisdiction, and is conclusive when brought collat- erally before another court. �Try the case under consideration by the tests thus repeatedly laid down, and reasserted and reaffirmed over and over again by the supreme court for a period of more than 50 years. Did not the "petitioner present such a case in her petition that on demurrer the court would render judgment in her favor?" There can be but one answer to this question. Then, says the supreme court "it was an undoubted case of jurisdiction." Was the court required to act upon the petition? Then, "any movement of the court" in acting upon it was "the exercise of jurisdiction." The law, as we have seen, required a petition stating the jurisdictienal facts to be pre- sented to the court, and required the court to act upon it. The proper representation of the fact of inhabitancy in the petition is strictly jurisdictional ; the actual existence of the fact, jurisdictional only svh modo. The determination of the truth of the representation depends upon evidence and the exercise of jurisdiction. See Haggart V. Morgan, 5 N. Y. 429. The petition filed in this case represented all the jurisdictional facts. �"The decision upon it," says the supreme court, was the exercise of jurisdiction which was conferred by the representation ;" for " when- ever that was before the court they must determine whether it was true or not." "It was a subject upon which there might be judicial action." The determination and granting letters — �"Is an adjudication upon all the facts necessary to give jurisdiction, and whether they existed or not is wholly immaterial if no appeal is taken. The rule is the same, whether the law gives an appeal or not. If none is given from the final decree it is conclusive on all whom it may concem. The rec- ord is absolute verity, to contradict which there can be no averaient or evi- dence; the court having power to make the decree, it can be impeached only by fraud in the party who obtained it." 2 How. 340. �The court eertainly had power, because it was required to do so, to act upon the petition of Mrs. Eiggs, and determine the truth of the matters alleged, and to make a decree to give eliect to that determi- nation. Otherwise, to what end is it to consider the petition at all ? And in the language of Chief Justice Marshall, "the judgment in its nature eoncludes the subject on which it is rendered, and. pronounces the law of the case. The judgment of a court of record, whose juris- diction is final, is as conclusive on all the world as the judgment of this court would be. * * * It puts an end to all inquiry into the fact by deciding it." Those are the conditions found in this case, ��� �