holding that a sanction declaring plaintiff’s allegations as established against defendant was akin to dismissal and default judgment against defendant
How later courts described this case
- holding that a sanction declaring plaintiff’s allegations as established against defendant was akin to dismissal and default judgment against defendant
- holding that the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not require Missouri to apply a Michigan court’s equitable decree against the plaintiffs in a Missouri-based, federal- diversity lawsuit, who were not parties to the Michigan matter
- recognizing lack of jurisdiction as a basis to deny full faith and credit but noting that the Supreme Court’s “decisions support no roving ‘public policy exception’ to the full faith and credit due judgments”
- finding that the “animating purpose” of the Full Faith and Credit Clause was to “alter the status of the several states as independent foreign sovereignties” and “make them integral parts of a single nation”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Justice Scalia,
concurring in the judgment.
I agree with the Court that enforcement measures do not travel with sister-state judgments as preclusive effects do. Ante, at 235. It has long been established that “the judgment of a state Court cannot be enforced out of the state by an execution issued within it.” McElmoyle ex rel. Bailey v. Cohen, 13 Pet. 312, 325 (1839). To recite that principle is to decide this case.
General Motors asked a District Court in Missouri to enforce a Michigan injunction. The Missouri court was no more obliged to enforce the Michigan injunction by preventing Elwell from presenting his testimony than it was obliged to enforce it by holding Elwell in contempt. The Full Faith and Credit Clause “'did not make the judgments of other States domestic judgments to all intents and purposes, but only gave a general validity, faith, and credit to them, as evidence. No execution can issue upon such judgments without a new suit in the tribunals of other States.’” Thompson v. Whitman, 18 Wall. 457, 462-463 (1874) (empha *242 sis added) (quoting J. Story, Conflict of Laws § 609 (7th ed. 1872)). A judgment or decree of one State, to be sure, may be grounds for an action (or a defense to one) in another. But the Clause and its implementing statute
“establish a rule of evidence, rather than of jurisdiction. While they make the record of a judgment, rendered after due notice in one State, conclusive evidence in the courts of another State, or of the United States, of the matter adjudged, they do not affect the jurisdiction, either of the court in which the judgment is rendered, or of the court in which it is offered in evidence. Judgments recovered in one State of the Union, when proved in the courts of another government, whether state or national, within the United States, differ from judgments recovered in a foreign country in no other respect than in not being reexaminable on their merits, nor impeachable for fraud in obtaining them, if rendered by a court having jurisdiction of the cause and of the parties.” Wisconsin v. Pelican Ins. Co., 127 U. S. 265, 291-292 (1888) (citation omitted).
The judgment that General Motors obtained in Michigan “ ‘does not carry with it, into another State, the efficacy of a judgment upon property or persons, to be enforced by execution. To give it the force of a judgment in another State, it must be made a judgment there; and can only be executed in the latter as its laws may permit.’ ” Lynde v. Lynde, 181 U. S. 188, 187 (1901) (quoting McElmoyle, supra, at 325 ). See, e. g., Watts v. Waddle, 6 Pet. 389, 392 (1832), a case involving a suit to obtain an equity decree ordering the conveyance of land, duplicating such a decree already issued in another State.
Because neither the Pull Faith and Credit Clause nor its implementing statute requires Missouri to execute the injunction issued by the courts of Michigan, I concur in the judgment.