Page:United States Reports, Volume 2.djvu/59

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judgment cannot be reversed here in a collateral action. That the judgments of foreign courts must necessarily bind ours, and be considered as conclusive, at least in those cases, where the aid of this court is not asked to carry their judgments into effect. And that if our courts were to reverse the judgments of foreign courts, they might reverse ours; which would introduce a kind of warfare between the judicatures of different countries, to the risk of the public peace, as well as to the ruin of the contending parties. To this it is answered by the Plaintiffs’ counsel, that however definitive a sentence of a foreign court may be, as between the parties to the suit, it cannot bind third persons. That the present plaintiffs were no parties to that suit, and cannot therefore be bound by any judgment in it; they having had no opportunity of maintaining their right to the property in question.

The discussion of this point on the argument, led to others not taken notice of on the trial; but which must necessarily be considered by the court on a motion for a new trial.

Great reliance has been had on the part of the Plaintiffs, on the manifest equity which they alledge appears on their side of the question; and, it is contended, that the court ought not to set aside a verdict upon a point of summum jus, where it is not to attain the justice of the case.

This has naturally led us to consider the equity, as well as the law, arising upon the case. Taking it up in a general view, there does not appear to us to be any great preponderancy of equity on either side; both Plaintiffs and defendants were fair and honest creditors of Fairchild; the Plaintiffs entrusted him as their agent, the Defendant as his debtor. It was natural and fair for each side to take every legal measure to obtain payment of their demands; and whoever in such a case has got a legal advantage, this court cannot say he is not entitled to hold it.

The notes in question were made payable to Fairchild himself; they were put into the hands of Smith for collection; the money when collected remained in Smith’s hands above a year as the money of Fairchild; there was no assignment of these notes to the Plaintiffs, in any other way than by endorsing a memorandum on the paper which inclosed them, that in case of accident they were obligations on account of Rapalje & Mercier, merchants in New-York. Smith was the agent of Fairchild and not of Rapalje & Mercier. When he received the money on the notes he carried it to the credit of Fairchild, and not to the credit of the Plaintiffs. In the receipt which he gave Fairchild for the notes, he promises to re-deliver them to him or his assignees, and no mention whatever is made of the plaintiffs. In his account current with Fairchild, he charges him with the amount of divers invoices of goods shipt for him, and credits him